Anyone Remember A.L. Williams?

[Cornelius]

Here's an old Art Williams speech I ran across. I was told when Art had the company (Primerica) he had a 200,000 plus sales force of mostly part-timers.

http://www.legacybuilder.biz/Audio/ArtWilliams-The_Enemy_Cant_Win.mp3

I hope this is the right section to post this.

 

[thomasm]

Thanks for posting!

This guy could motivate! Interesting how Primerica's sales force dropped to half and never recovered after Sandy Weill forced Art out.

 

[JimmyUt]

Here's an old Art Williams speech I ran across. I was told when Art had the company (Primerica) he had a 200,000 plus sales force of mostly part-timers.

http://www.legacybuilder.biz/Audio/ArtWilliams-The_Enemy_Cant_Win.mp3

I hope this is the right section to post this.

I thought he started prepaid legal

 

[thomasm]

I thought he started prepaid legal

That was Harland Stonecipher.

 

[JimmyUt]

That was Harland Stonecipher.

Lol, I was joking. Just a jab at Cornelius.....

 

[ShawnSIM]

Would someone please expand on what happened between Sandy and Art?

 

[thomasm]

Would someone please expand on what happened between Sandy and Art?

He was asked to step down during an investigation brought on by a former rouge agent, that was eventually dismissed.

Sandy's Primerica, now owned the majority of the company so he had the pull. Art's right hand man, Herbert Humphrey, who help build A.L. Williams, took his entire down-line and went off to start WMA, now WFG.

I recommend reading Coach, The A.L. Williams Story. A fascinating history of the old days!

 

[Cornelius]

To me the genius of Art was making his business about a crusade. The crusade gave people a reason to get his message out.

Something that is interesting about the time he was in high gear he talked about a goal of saving $300K and earning 10% to give him a $30K annual income basically for life if he worked or not. I wonder what his message would be today. Like him or not the man is a genius.

Oh yea. Pre-Paid Legal is now LegalShield. Harland has passed. RIP.. Last I heard Art was a Billionaire.

 

[Robert Barney]

To me the genius of Art was making his business about a crusade.

There is a lot of truth in that, but it was an honestly motivated crusade. From this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_L._Williams,_Jr.

it says:

In 1965, Williams' father suddenly died of a heart attack. He had a whole life insurance policy that left their family underinsured. Five years later Art Williams' cousin Ted Harrison introduced to him the concept of term life insurance, a much cheaper and simpler alternative to whole life which at that time was almost never sold and rarely heard of outside the insurance industry. Williams was taken aback by the idea of not knowing that there was a choice when buying life insurance and described the whole conversation as "disturbing,"[3] recalling his father's death and referring to the fact that people had no idea of such a product. Believing that families were paying too much for whole life policies that left them poor in the wallet and deeply underinsured, Williams joined his cousin at ITT Financial Services in 1970.​

I never met Williams, but we both separately appeared on the same segment of a CBC Marketplace program (Canada) that investigated A.L. Williams selling practices. I pointed out that if consumers really wanted to minimize life insurance costs, they should shop. The program showed some sample comparisons, noting that in some cases Primerica policies were much higher priced than others available. Williams denied there were cheaper policies than he offered, but told the interviewer that if consumers could find a better deal, they should but it.

The problem that Primerica has always had, in being competitive, is the sheer volume of commission priced into their products, to take care of all the multiple sales levels in their marketing pyramid.

Further, they still embrace unisex rates, which means men get a small reduction in price, with females paying a heavy penalty.

 

[proadvisors]

Primerica isn't competitive on price. Their edge is they sell to warm markets.
Tom buys his policy from Bob his buddy who is just getting in the business...