Advice Before Making this Move

Anonymous7

New Member
4
I have been tossing around the idea of moving into the Life Insurance industry for roughly 3 years now. I have around 12 years of sales experience mostly in 100% commission retail and have always been in the top percentage for performance. I currently have interviewed and researched NYL and Mass Mutual in my area and am definitely leaning towards NYL.

I understand that the general practice to get started in most of these companies is to fill out a list of your warm market prospects and build from leads and referrals. I did test the waters a little bit and reached out to some contacts that I felt could benefit from a life insurance product and not just my closest friends. I had very good feedback and had a list of about 20 or so people that are willing to sit with me. My main concern in making this jump is what do you do after your warm market dries up. The most successful agents are obviously not working off of nothing but their warm markets referrals. Also, when first making this jump, I hear that it will take some time to get a steady income coming in. So what would some of you tenured agents recommend as a backup money source? like 6-12 months of monthly expenses put away?

I have heard all the horror stories of working for a captive agency that just wants to suck every possible lead from you with no concern for your success, but I also know that making a giant step into a completely new industry would be significantly harder without any training and guidance. So your thoughts of NYL as a company and whether or not you feel this company is truly interested in your success.

I am reaching out here for a little advice because I have started that corporate ladder climb with a good company. However, now that I have experienced management and everything I thought I wanted to work towards. I have realized that if I continue this path, I will just end up working 60 hours a week, in a corporate retail environment, and only making a fraction of what a decent Insurance agent makes. I feel that if I am going to make this jump, it should be soon.

Thank you for your time.
 
There are a lot of new firms out there that now will let you work from a computer and give you much much better ways of doing things. If I were you I would not give anyone your potential leads for getting started either. Save them for yourself once ready to go....you will need them. I work on a virtual system for Visionary Insurance Partners and they are a really good Virtual Firm. They have worked out well for me. However, I had to go through a fairly lengthy interviewing process and then also pay a start up fee once I did get selected. They provide a great training package and give you all the tools needed to be able to do a good job working virtually. There are other brokerage firms that are virtual out there that are also good. USABG is another good firm. They have a fantastic system too. You have got to be careful and make sure you get with a good firm. There are a lot of people on this forum that still work using the old way of doing things and will tell you if you are paying any kind of fee to get started you are getting ripped off. That is simply not true and they need to start thinking a little more forward. They have been jaded by multi level marketing firms that have ripped people off. But in this day and age there are a lot of great firms that do also charge some upfront fees. Some of the best firms out there currently do charge a one time set up fee. There are firms that will take advantage of you, so you must be careful. But if you are able to get with a good virtual firm, it will allow you to see 10X as many clients daily while working from your computer at home or at an office. Virtual Insurance Sales are definitely the way of the future. A captive situation is a much tougher way of getting started and does not give you the variety of products that a brokerage firm will.
 
There are a lot of new firms out there that now will let you work from a computer and give you much much better ways of doing things. If I were you I would not give anyone your potential leads for getting started either. Save them for yourself once ready to go....you will need them. I work on a virtual system for Visionary Insurance Partners and they are a really good Virtual Firm. They have worked out well for me. However, I had to go through a fairly lengthy interviewing process and then also pay a start up fee once I did get selected. They provide a great training package and give you all the tools needed to be able to do a good job working virtually. There are other brokerage firms that are virtual out there that are also good. USABG is another good firm. They have a fantastic system too. You have got to be careful and make sure you get with a good firm. There are a lot of people on this forum that still work using the old way of doing things and will tell you if you are paying any kind of fee to get started you are getting ripped off. That is simply not true and they need to start thinking a little more forward. They have been jaded by multi level marketing firms that have ripped people off. But in this day and age there are a lot of great firms that do also charge some upfront fees. Some of the best firms out there currently do charge a one time set up fee. There are firms that will take advantage of you, so you must be careful. But if you are able to get with a good virtual firm, it will allow you to see 10X as many clients daily while working from your computer at home or at an office. Virtual Insurance Sales are definitely the way of the future. A captive situation is a much tougher way of getting started and does not give you the variety of products that a brokerage firm will.

Hmm, definitely an interesting response and I appreciate you taking the time to do that. I haven't even considered an online or virtual firm simply because of some of the experiences I have heard. So I had always planned on just going with a big name company and from what I have found, NYL seems to be at the top of that category. I will definitely keep an open mind about a virtual firm, but wouldn't you lose some of the big perks going that route? Like the first, second and third year commission matching up to a certain percentage that you would receive through a big company like NYL or Mass Mutual?
 
Starting with either NYL or Mass is a great way to build a solid foundation in this industry. You will get all the training you can handle for product knowledge, presentation analysis/software and underwriting. You should take a closer look at Mass. They are very flexible with placing outside business, not nearly as captive as NYL. Mass also has a very competitive product portfolio. If I were starting over as a brand new agent, Mass would be my choice. Either way, getting face to face and in-house training is your best method for success.

If you can prove consistent production from your previous sales jobs, you might be able to get a draw.

Best advice: take a couple agents from each company out to lunch. You don't need the top agents, but avoid the rookies and non-producing bums. Ask them where they get their prospects and how they sustain their business.
 
Starting with either NYL or Mass is a great way to build a solid foundation in this industry. You will get all the training you can handle for product knowledge, presentation analysis/software and underwriting. You should take a closer look at Mass. They are very flexible with placing outside business, not nearly as captive as NYL. Mass also has a very competitive product portfolio. If I were starting over as a brand new agent, Mass would be my choice. Either way, getting face to face and in-house training is your best method for success.

If you can prove consistent production from your previous sales jobs, you might be able to get a draw.

Best advice: take a couple agents from each company out to lunch. You don't need the top agents, but avoid the rookies and non-producing bums. Ask them where they get their prospects and how they sustain their business.

Excellent, thank you for your advice. I was leaning towards Mass Mutual at first but I didn't really like how their match system worked as far as when you were paid out and how they broke it into quarters. Where with NYL if you sold a policy, you received the match that same paycheck. For someone getting the income started, that seemed to be a pretty big benefit. Tell me more about the draw though, I am not quite sure what that is exactly. I can 100% prove my consistent production.

Another appealing part of NYL for me is that I have a buddy that was actually agent of the year with NYL last year in my area. And he of course has told me that he is going to be there to show me the ropes, but I dont want to make my decision based on his help. I would rather approach this change as if I am completely on my own (outside of training from the company of course) because I know how busy he gets and I would rather be self dependent on marketing and lead generation ideas. That is actually why I decided to sign up on this forums and get some unbiased opinions of my situation :)

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Also, they have recently offered that I don't have to quit my current job right away. That I can get my license and start training and doing appointments on my days off until I am ready to "trigger" myself. This has been a pretty appealing option, however I have heard that by going this route (part time) it makes your chances of success even lower than the average success rate, which is already very low. Any of you have experience in starting out this way? or does everyone pretty much recommend jumping in with 2 feet?
 
Don't let a small difference in how commissions are paid be a deciding factor in your career path.

A draw is a guaranteed monthly base. Any commissions earned are reduced by the amount of your draw. I've seen 2-4k/month, up to 18 months. I'm sure both NYL and Mass offer this, they just don't advertise it. Make sure the General Manager of each agency knows they are in competition for you.

Having a buddy that is local and also agent of the year should influence your decision. He will probably be more concerned about your success than anyone else.
 
Don't let a small difference in how commissions are paid be a deciding factor in your career path.

A draw is a guaranteed monthly base. Any commissions earned are reduced by the amount of your draw. I've seen 2-4k/month, up to 18 months. I'm sure both NYL and Mass offer this, they just don't advertise it. Make sure the General Manager of each agency knows they are in competition for you.

Having a buddy that is local and also agent of the year should influence your decision. He will probably be more concerned about your success than anyone else.

The draw aspect is pretty interesting, because had I ever been offered that, I would have made this move 2-3 years ago. The main reason I hadn't made the move was because I didn't want to put my families security on the line with no guaranteed monthly income unless I had enough money in the bank to fall back on. I was actually told by both companies that they did not offer anything like this. I am now finally in a position where I have about 8 months or so of monthly expenses put aside and that is why I am finally thinking its time to try it out. I will definitely have to bring this up to them though.

And me having a buddy that has experience some good success definitely is part of the reason I am leaning towards NYL, I just meant that I didn't want to make such a big career move based solely on having him there to help. I figured if I could do my research while I studied for my test and had a good solid game plan on what I needed to do to be successful, than his help would just be an extra bonus on top of my own ideas.

Anyone have any thoughts on starting out doing the trainings and first bit of appointments on my days off and getting my feet wet before quitting my management job? Do you feel that if I put forth the same amount of effort on those couple days a week that I would be fine? or do you feel this is one of those career fields that you just have to jump in and fully dedicate yourself?
 
Both companies are good. I think you will find there is more flexibility with MM versus NYL.
 
Anyone have any thoughts on starting out doing the trainings and first bit of appointments on my days off and getting my feet wet before quitting my management job? Do you feel that if I put forth the same amount of effort on those couple days a week that I would be fine? or do you feel this is one of those career fields that you just have to jump in and fully dedicate yourself?

Get the licensing and contracting done while keeping your current job. Once you have an agent number and commissions can be deposited into your account, make the jump. If you putz around working part time it will become frustrating. I know some members here worked p/t for years before transitioning f/t - personally I've never seen it work. A plane can't take off the runway at half throttle.
 
I love MM, you get all the benefits of being captive, but can sell other carriers all day long. I would say having a year of expenses saved up will help a lot. Ask the managers any and everything that might be a problem, better to find out now.
 
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