More than the home office building, more than the equipment inside it, and more than the goodwill that your company has built up over the years, the single greatest asset that an insurance company has is its customers. Without them, it has no business. But how many companies truly understand their customers and what keeps them happy and loyal? Carriers have spent thousands of dollars on software tools designed to improve the relationship between company and customer, yet these installations routinely fail because the company doesn't fully understand what the relationship is all about.

Customer relationship management. Everyone seems to think they know what it is, yet one CRM expert says that 75 percent of last year's CRM installations showed only minor or no improvement in sales figures. CEOs are dying for double-digit sales increases and many are willing to throw small fortunes at that goal, but there are as many stories of 50 percent sales hikes as there are urban legends-and too often they are one and the same.

That's why executives look for miracles in software like genies in a bottle. Software is a tool-a good tool, but a tool nonetheless. And a tool is only as good as the person operating it; in the case of CRM, that means understanding what your company needs and how it can be accomplished.