Career Life Insurance Agency Provides Worthless Leads
The career life insurance agency located in a modern suburban office looks like the ideal place to call home. {A very temporary home that is}. Why am I not told before studying for my insurance license that there’s more than a 90% chance that I will be long gone before 4 years are up? Why are they willing to provide an insurance sales manager to guide me, and provide me with a cubicle to do busy work? Why do they initially money subsidize my commissions before releasing me on my own? Why am I required to learn the sales presentation book and canned sales speech word for word?
Has their 100 years of experience taught them, that after awhile replacing me with a rookie is a smarter financial transaction than keeping me around. Do they actually want
me to fail?: NO COMMENT, Let’s just look at the “lead” system, which I call “the train to nowhere”, There are 3 main delivery cars all carrying me all the one-way path to my final destination.
First is the infamous “100 man list”. Before you start selling you are required to fully complete this form of names, addresses, phones, and how you know them. This is supposed to be my personal goldmine. The sales manager says I will sell half and receive 3 referrals on each sale – an endless supply. Go ahead and try this at home. Try filling out the first 35 spots on the form. After accomplishing this, my eyes and mind were in a daze. The next day after completing 15 more, my brain was fried. I entered every relative, relative of a relative, friend, friend of a friend and every neighbor on my block whether I knew them or not. Since the form was due tomorrow, I got the same idea half the other new recruits did.. I grabbed a phone book and start filling up the darn 100 man list.
Off this list, I managed to make 10 life sales, also selling two referrals. This was just enough to keep me above the radar. But considering I used the first month solely concentrating on these people, I also found out that just because a person is a friend or relative, it does not obligate them to buy. In fact it might turn your relationship south.
My sales manager took me along to see how easy selling life insurance is. He received a lead from the General Manager from a couple wanting to buy insurance. I became shocked when he did not even take his sales presentation book in with him. Even more alarming is that the sales manager’s presentation is nothing like I had to learn word for word. From this experience, I learned the sales manager instructed me on what the sales office wanted me to know, even if it made me uncomfortable and I lost sales.
Next came bonus policy owner leads. At the meeting the sales manager said he had a ton of leads to boost our production back up. Each of the dozen salespeople received a whopping 50 leads of present company policy owners. He said that because they were current policyholders, they would be easy buyers. Wow, this looked great, my money train should roll now. [The sales manager had already spent a day examining the card information, and chose a dozen to save for himself.) Why not? All the other sales managers did it.
After close scrutiny I found all the policy owners lived in a 50 mile radius, were mostly over age 55, and had bought very minimal amounts of life insurance. After managing to go through 25 “leads”, I set up 5 appointments, and was able to sell the spouse of one some life insurance. Something though didn’t seem right with these leads. I asked a couple other salespeople, and got the truth. Four times each year the insurance company printed up these policy owner cards and made sure the career agency gave them to 4 new agents. That means some of my “leads” were already unsuccessfully worked by over 60 agents. I tried to get more training but my sales manager, was always, meeting with other managers, on appointments with new agents, on his own appointments, or interviewing a new prospective agent. My manager promised me next week to show me a system of 100’s of leads.
This last group were phone book leads. I was given the ultimate book of leads, a brand new edition of “the phone directory”. Next he handed me a somewhat worn out copy of the official company sales script for making agent telemarketing calls (dated 1985). It had insurance company answers for every possible objection I could receive. (it also contained a lot of scribbling of 4 letter words in notes left by former agents). Now because I was trying so hard, the sales manager was going to give ME a special bonus. The bonus was a photocopied sheet containing 50 slots to fill in names, addresses, and phone numbers each week. The agency, every week, would send out one of my 50 name list for free, telling the people about our insurance plans. Sure this got me 2 sales a week, but I still on the train to nowhere.
I found out quickly that my career agency didn’t really care if their agent lead system worked, and the life insurance company didn’t want to invest any more money in me, although I had written over 100 solid life applications. I didn’t ponder why, I just said good bye.
I had a consultation with a friend of mine working for a semi-captive, semi-independent firm. The agency director there told me I would have to spend money to make money. Now if I could sell just 5 policies a week, and receive higher commission, I could net 2 to 2/1/2 times my previous poverty income.
See the groundbreaking article, “New agents stock the insurance company freezer”
By: donald yerke
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
Don Yerke is the marketing advisor at Agents Insurance Marketing USA, a firm he founded over 25 years ago. This is the premier firm in providing carefully refined and selected Department of Insurance agent name lists. Our clients are composed of insurance company recruiting directors, independent marketing organizations, insurance wholesalers, and general agents looking to recruit quality agents. Check out our hottest articles. dyadvisor@gmail.com Our over 150 page website is located at http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com.
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