The career life insurance agency located in a modern suburban office looks like the ideal place to call home. But is it? Have you been told before studying for my insurance license that there's more than a 90% chance that you will be long gone before 4 years are up. Tomorrow ask your sales manager this question and wait for the response.
Ask yourself why are they willing to pay a sales manager to guide me and office rent for 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?
What has their 100 years of experience taught them? Pick the one that sounds most logical to you. My Insurance company is out to make the most money they can from agents and dividends. My sales manager and insurance company is going to everything possible to keep me from failing.
Do they actually want you to fail? NO COMMENT Let's just look at the "lead" system, which I call "the train to nowhere", There are 5 main delivery cars all carrying you along the one-way path to your final destiny. UNLESS you really want an insurance CAREER!
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. The sales manger says you will sell half and receive 3 referrals on each sale - an endless supply. Off this list, you might make a few sales, often from a relative trying to give you a break. The lesson to learn is just because a person is a friend or relative, it does not obligate them to buy.
Your sales manager should take you to see how easy selling life insurance is. He received his lead from the General Manager for a couple wanting to buy insurance. Don't be shocked if he does not take his sales presentation book in with him. Bite your tongue when the sales manager's presentation is nothing like you had to learn word for word, and not a single word different. The lesson you really learned is only the sales managers get true leads.
Wow, look at bonus policy owner leads! At the meeting the sales manager said he has a ton of leads to boost your production back up. Each of the dozen salespeople received a whopping stack of 50 leads. Your sales manager says that because they are current policyholders, they would be easy buyers. Fantastic, you day has come and your commissions should flow.
Did you know this fact? The sales manager has already spent a day cherry picking the card information, taking best few for himself. Why not? All the other sales managers do it.
After close scrutiny of the "leads", you will find many policy owners living far for your normal territory. They will have a tendency to be mostly over age 50, have health problems, and own minimal amounts of life insurance. After managing to go through 25 "leads", ask yourself, "what's wrong with this picture?" Ask other agents to find this truth. Four times each year the insurance company prints up orphan low premium policy owner cards and make sure they are fed mainly to newer agents.That means your "leads" were already unsuccessfully worked by over 60 agents.
This last group comes from the "bible" of leads, a brand new edition of the phone directory. You should also receive an official company sales script manual for making telephone calls(dated 1985). It had insurance company answers for every possible objection you could receive. (it also contains a lot of scribbling of 4 letter words left by former agents).
Now the final car rolls in. Because you try so hard, the sales manager gives YOU a special bonus. The bonus is a photocopied sheet containing 50 slots to fill in names, addresses, and phone numbers each week. The agency, will every week, would send out your 50 name list for FREE, asking people to request information on one of 25 insurance choices. These are not leads and you are still on the train to nowhere.
Ask your sales manager to describe to you the definition of a lead. Check the reply against this. The ideal lead is a mail response obtained using a direct mail list consisting solely of clients often purchasing one main product, with decent health and money for the policy premium. How many of these features do company leads provide?
Get off the death train. Go on the internet and search direct mail insurance leads. Warning, at this stage use extreme caution on internet leads. Come out from six feet under, start your own lead program. For every dollar spent, if you are a true insurance salesman, the return should be better than 5 to 1.
Surprise your sales manager. Get your name on top of the leaders sales board, leapfrogging his position with no problem.
Don Yerke started at age 20 as a rookie insurance agent. Now he is the marketing adviser at Agents Insurance Marketing USA, a firm he founded over 25 years ago. The over 150 page website is located at www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com This is the premier firm in providing carefully refined and selected Department of Insurance agent name lists. Our clients are comprised of insurance company recruiting directors, independent marketing organizations,
