Sabtu, 28 April 2012

Sabtu, 01 Januari 2011

A New Site for Insurance Training

I'd like to announce that after almost a year of work I've finally launched a social network for insurance agents which is a professional organization for all life, health and senior agents. It's also NO COST to join!

NOLHA (National Organization of Life and Health Agents)

We have sections for health, life and senior agents with video training and an article library. We also feature free live webinars and detailed information for all states. I also am building the first "compare" section where insurance agents can finally compare all products and services.

I heavily recommend when you visit the site that you sign up for the newsletter. The site is updated very often as more and more content is loaded.

Kamis, 31 Juli 2008

New Blog

I'll leave this blog up since if you're a new agent you can dig around in past posts and find a lot of great information.

I have a new video training blog on Wordpress:



As always, I heavily recommend joining the association I started - IHIAA - which is now experiencing fantastic growth and we're now starting to tour around the country putting on free workshops. 


Kamis, 05 Juni 2008

Talk about lack of updates!

Well it's been quite a while since an update on this blog but I'll get back to updating it a few times per week.

It was a very tough transition for me from selling health to working on the association full time. I did not expect the rapid growth - guess I'm by far not the only one who's looking for a positive environment.

With the members we currently have it's interesting now to talk about lead sources. We started out recommending 4 shared lead source we thought were at lead decent - not over-sold.

Results? Agents simply do not do well directly competiting against other agents and it's largely a failed concept. The agents who say "it works" needs to define what "works" means. If it means hunting people down day after day week after week so they can land 1 out of 15, to me that is not "working."

We are now only recommending exclusive lead sources or recommending agents generate their own leads from local marketing efforts - choice is theirs.

We do have one shared source left standing - quite a good source: http://leads4agents.com 100% search driven and non affiliates. If you want shared - there's your source.

The same members we have who were doing either poorly or "so so" with shared and doing great with exclusive. We also have another exclusive source coming to the table.

Exclusive leads run around $18 a pop and 90% are indeed exclusive. Simply put, only 10% go onto other lead sources.

Closing is working out to 1/6 which means $108 returns $700 commission on average with a fraction of the headache of working shared.

You can even get to 1/10 and $180 returns $700 which is ugly but still at $520 profit, you actually have a life and you only need to work 40 leads that week to net just over $2,000.

If you want the three exclusive sources we use - contact me.

Downside to exclusive? Volume can be an issue if you want a small area. You need to be prepared to take the entire state and you need a budget. It's not a program for the income challanged.

On the telemarketing front, we have demoed now with three agents a voice mail campaign BtoB - so it's DNC compliant. When the owner answers they hear a message asking if they would like to receive quotes on health insuance. If yes, press 1, to be removed, press 2.

So far a 10,000 call campaign had resulted in between 18 to 22 leads with the campaign costing around $300. That's around $15 for a live transfer. Now - that's not qualified or health filtered but 1 out of 10 is $150 to return $700 and again, your phone rings.

Kamis, 01 Mei 2008

Association as main job now

After yesterday's Norvax webinar my main job now will be running and managing the IHIAA. To me, the number of members is amazing and I greatly appreciate every member.

This industry has so many flaws I can't even count....but let's try:

  • Horrible lead sources agents stumble across - waste hundreds/thousands of dollars
  • Between lacking to no training on products or the correct products to sell and why
  • Zero training about writing apps relating to the claims review process
  • No community atmosphere
  • No unbiased source of info - we're an association - do not make overrides so we don't need to "steer" agents into selling for any particular carrier
  • Agents trapped into bad contracts - can't escape
  • Agents trapped in bad agencies - can't escape
  • Taught "kill it and grill it" methods of writing business - write an app - onto the next kill
  • More of a "just get the deal" - less focus on "career agent"
So we can solve a lot and there's power in numbers.....a lot of power in numbers. Regarding my blog - I'll keep updating it as to what's going on in general, but at this point I'm just dealing with my existing block of business and referrals.