Association Member Benefits Advisors

[BTDT01]

This company claims to provide "free leads", when in fact they are not leads but recycle of retired teachers contact list. Many of these folks live on a limited income and can not affort additional expenses. While the other half are doing quite well financially, however, they the retired teacher or former school employee (bus driver, cook, janitor, maintenance person) need to be sold on purchasing LTC, a cancer policy, final expense policy etc. You spend your day callling for appts off the list of retired school employees list and look to set an appointment, nothing wrong with working for an appt, however, these are not leads. The difference between these contacts (leads) and the phone book, is that your are only calling retired school employees, its like the Physicans in yellow pages, at least you know that your calling on doctors. As for pay, well when selling a LTC policy which is an average of say $150/mo for a total of $1800 annual premium you actually get paid $315.00 or 17%. Of course the policy has to be accepted by Mutual of Omaha. The company will advance you the $315.00 but that is only half of your commission the balance of the othere $315.00 is paid out as residual income. So you sell an $1800 annual policy your commission is suppose to be $630 you only get advanced 50% and the rest is paid out for as long as the client has a current policy.

This a great opportunity if you plan to say there for years. Company has a high turn-over rate, you need to spend at least 12 hrs a day for 6 days to really make any money, plus the expense you have on a daily basis. As for me it was too much hype....

 

[Lucky2k]

I recently interviewed with AMBA and I'm new to the industry. Could I get a little more feedback on the company..... Is this truly the real deal or do I need to run. They seem to talk a big game but I'm not sure the leads are any good. And the training will take out a week of my pay. Please help me!!

 

[billberry12]

"17%."

No way should anyone selling LTCI expect to make any money at this rate. IMHO.

 

[grod]

As others have stated, the products are great. However, what brings agents to their organization is their promise of having "more leads than they can handle". At least that is what their letter to me said, when I joined them a few years ago. Their online posting claims the same.
In reality agents are lucky to receive one or two leads per week. What you do get is list from their database and are expeted to make hundreds of calls, or you can do door knocks from this same list. I was selling all of their products, LTCi, Cancer, Life, but their commissions are so low and when you consider your fuel cost it just does not make sense.

I didn't necessarily mind the cold calling or the door knocking, but so many agents before you have called on the same list, that these folks would get upset. When you are one of a dozen agents making hundreds of calls a week to the same list, it doesn't take very long to start pissing people off.

 

[damicarelli]

I've worked with AMBA for 5 years...they are the endorsed provider for 26 state retired teacher associations in the U.S. I've read this forum and much of it is true, some not true. AMBA was formed by the Retired Ex-President of United Teacher Associates Ins Co in 1999. He sold UTA (after starting UTA in 1981) to Great American Life Ins Co at that time, but wanted to keep his sales force so he formed AMBA. We are a captive niche marketing agency focused on LTCi, Annuities, Cancer, Final Expense, and Med Supps. Sales reps here don't pay a dime for the leads (which are fully provided). Lead generation is paid by the sales managers and AMBA. The commissions are lower than many other contracts out there, so if commission rates are all you are looking for, other companies pay higher rates of comm. But, if someone is looking for free leads and a structured sales system to actually get you into 20 doors a week...this could be a good fit for you. As far as the residuals being garbage, they are probably not going to be large after only working here for 6 mos (for whoever posted that) but they are competitive. I am very happy with my residuals so far! ($10-11k per month after only being here 5 yrs). We also advance commissions weekly on submitted business in addition to residuals! AMBA is a very ethical company committed to the success of its sales reps. In the last 5 years they have done everything they told me they would do, and then some. I got lucky and found a good company! I also understand that there are some associations that are loosely organized and an "endorsement" from them doesn't mean much. Not the case here. Without the 26 state retired teacher endorsements we have we would be just another agency struggling for leads. We deeply value our retired teacher endorsements and they love us because of all the new members we bring them in the process. It is a win win for both. I would be happy to answer any other questions that anyone might have with a straight answer!

I have a second interview scheduled and I was told 4 appts a day, 5 days a week would provide a nice income. After reading posts, it seems like there are only about 4 leads give or take that are actually given out? I guess every insurance agent would be chomping at the bit if you got 20 pre-set appts a week. I was also told you would set your appts on a particular day in one zip code area so you wouldn't be running all over the place. Are you a current 1099 contracted employee? What the heck are people talking about being captive. How the heck can you be captive if you are not a W-2 employee?

 

[damicarelli]

I joined this site just to reply on my experience with this company.

I worked there for about 3 months and washed out that fast. Here's my story. (this is all with the senior division, I feel like the workplace division actually has a better job than senior).

I applied on career builder and got a call from a DM. He sounded very enthusiastic and it was infectious. Scheduled an interview and went in. This is what should have been the first red flag: they were trying to sell the company and job to me. I should've realized if you have to keep telling me everything is wonderful, something has got to give. The first interview was pretty much "Rah Rah Rah our company is great, do you think you would like working here"(while nodding head). Of course the answer is yes.

Came to next interview. I actually got to ask questions. They tell me that these sales are almost unfair to the clients theyre so easy to make if you "follow the system". Everything they sell is outlined in some of the other posts. It's to the retired teachers and state employees associations(more on those later). I'm thinking "this is awesome so I don't have to sell to my family and friends". I was told about the training in Austin,TX and that I'd have to get licensed(all on my own dollar). "but OH, there's a catch, if you sell a certain amount in premium in the first week or two, you get all that money reimbursed."

So I take the test, get licensed and drive to Texas. Getting there, I'm given a presentation script that I have to memorize. I did and was damn good at it too. I could still give that thing in my sleep. That was pretty much all you learn along with some goofy psychological principles about keeping people's attention on you during the presentation. You also meet the executive management. I won't say who is who, but one of the guys was someone I wouldn't mind drinking a beer with and hanging out. The first thing the other person told us about was how he was excessively rude to a salesman who came to his door, not exactly what you want to hear. And the first and nicest thing anyone (who worked at the company for any amount of time) could say about him was that he is "extremely professional" which to me translates to not personable at all. More on that one later.

So I pass the training with flying colors, still have dollar signs in my eyes. Get back home and on my first day of work I am given a phone script that was never mentioned to me and given a list of people to call. So call...after call... After call is made. I almost went through the whole list before someone actually scheduled a meeting with me.

Before I go further let's talk about these associations. When you call the retiree, you are saying "I am your benefits advisor" and all that. These people think you are from their retirement system and you are going to be telling them how their benefits are changing. Most of the time you talk to them they are scared out of their mind. You aren't, you're not even from a union. The association that endorses you is actually just a lobbying group to help pass legislation that helps the retirees, most of them haven't even heard of these associations.

The phone script is very misleading and at some points is almost downright false. But let's assume you get the meeting and are meeting with "Mrs. Jones". You schedule meetings at fifteen minutes after the hour(to make yourself sound more "busy") and you tell them that you just come over, drop off info, answer questions and move on to the next retiree. You make it sound like you have stuff for them and you're going to be there for 10 minutes....you'll be there for 1.5-2 hours if they don't have too many objections.

Giving the presentation is actually the best part, but probably the thing you're going to spend the least amount of time doing as you need to be "hitting the phones" virtually nonstop. The closing process though is the most awkward thing in the world. Their motto for that is "ink on the app". If you keep writing and get in and out as fast as you can, maybe you can sell something before they realize they've bought something.

Something else that happened to me. On my first day, I called a retiree, went word-for-word from the script, and scheduled a meeting. The lady proceeds to call her retirement system who handles her benefits to ask if she knows who I am and who the company is. They have no clue. Her husband calls me back threatening my life if I come to their house. So I do what any smart person does, I didn't go. No need to involve the police, just let it roll off my shoulder.

Little did I know, the retirement system called the association that had endorsed us and didn't have anything good to say. The head of the association called the company (see the above "very professional" guy) and he flys in to correct any misunderstandings. We go out of town to the meeting and he proceeds to sit me down in front of the entire state and say that he was "this close" to firing me and basically embarrass me in front of close to 25 people. The said event happened on my FIRST day and I was reading directly from the script HE had a part in writing. Needless to say I didn't officially quit then, but I basically stopped working. I still made a couple of sales and I know if I would've actually put in 50 hours a week and tried I couldve sold a few more, but I just didn't care at that point. about 2 and a half months later I just stopped taking calls from them until they got the hint.

The company's culture is....annoying at best. Very Rah Rah, always talking about being "sports-minded", always saying that the best sales people only want straight commissions. They do have a lot of contests with awesome prizes and trips and all that jazz. They're not lying with that. They also have a good awards program. They will try to wow you with a very nice office and people wearing thousand dollar suits and all that. The thing I had to ask myself was "do I really want to be like the people here?" all the successful people were basically the same person with a few differences. And my answer to that was a resounding no. There is potential to make money here, but there is working for any insurance firm. I would rather make 30k a year and be happy than have to go back to that company, but that's just me.

I'm glad I worked there for the brief amount of time I did because it showed me something I definitely did not want to do with my life. I hope this helps anyone considering working for this company....honestly, you'd do better with a Northwestern Mutual or even Primerica who is known as a straight revolving door.

Wow! I was so excited on my first interview, and with all of the experience I have, I thought this would be a no brainer. This is good info. I guess we would have every agent knocking down AMBA's doors to work for them. I have my second interview scheduled and not as excited. Good to hear real life stories.

 

[xrac]

Just got a recruiting email from these guys.

 

[agentjhc]

Just hit a recruiting email from these guys.

Same here...................

 

[Todd King]

Street level at a minimum with Mutual for their LTC is 57%. If you could get your own list you could become independent, do the same thing and make money then.

 

[Garroty]

Don't join this company! You will starve and then you cannot sell cigna for 3 years after you leave! They will screw you!