Beginning a Career at Mass Mutual

[cqmoore]

Hello members,

All the information you all have given was vital to my decision to work for Mass Mutual. My situation is unique in the fact that I am a school teacher and the firm is allowing me to finish this semester of teaching and start in December. During the time while I am teaching they are going to get me licensed with life and health. I am posting because I want more advice on things I can be doing to make my transition from teaching to insurance smooth. How can I be building prospects and what are some good websites to look at? What are some skills I can began mastering? Thanks again for any and every piece of information you all are able to share. Also I know that I have to get my series 6 and 63 license but should I consider getting my series 7?

God Bless

 

[moonlightandmargaritas]

Also I know that I have to get my series 6 and 63 license but should I consider getting my series 7?

Make finding a continuous stream of potential clients your ONLY priority. Everything else is academic (no pun intended).

A Series 7 hasn't much value (nor does a 6/63), if you have nobody to use it on.

 

[DecisionMan]

Ask your contact at Mass Mutual to get you the producer guides for Whole Life and for the Disability Product, along with access to fieldnet's online video training for those products.

Get to know the products real well.

Simultaneously, start picking a business market to cold-call hard and find a few good scripts to use. You'll be in the white-collar market with the Mass Mutual products (which is fine), and the business market has a ton of support from the advanced market team in home office to whom you'll have direct access.

Day one hit the phones hard, hard, hard and line up a ton of appointments. Read Nick Murray's "Game of Numbers" in preparation for your prospecting. Bob Klee in the cold-calling forum made a great comment yesterday that "either the phone is ringing in or it is dialing out." (don't get caught up with lead cards, orphan clients, appointment setters. This is a DIY business for newbies).

Since you start in December, you have a shot at making some big numbers in the calendar year if you get off to a real good start with appointments. Mass has real nice rewards for producers, so make the first year count when the requirements are much lower to get the trips and bonuses.

Lastly, read this forum, even the Business Insurance Zone videos - one-a-day.

Welcome to a great business!

 

[xrac]

Make finding a continuous stream of potential clients your ONLY priority. Everything else is academic (no pun intended).

A Series 7 hasn't much value (nor does a 6/63), if you have nobody to use it on.

M&M is correct. Make prospecting your only concerm. Start building a list of prospects: fellow teachers, former students, parents, etc. that you will call later call on.

 

[DecisionMan]

Yes, its probably a good idea to build lists of colleagues, former students, friends to call, but this brings us back to the old debates about the various versions of Project 200.

IMO, for a newbie, why waste such good contacts and relationships as practice when one can do a lot of cold-calling and blow up prospects with whom one doesn't have any relationship?

Save the good contacts until you know your products and application-of-product well enough, even until after you've written 20 apps. Then call the people you know.

You'll sound a lot better and do a much better job for them.

Again, my opinion.

 

[moonlightandmargaritas]

Get to know the products real well.

Product knowledge is the least important part of the equation.

Simultaneously, start picking a business market to cold-call hard and find a few good scripts to use.

Cold calling is the least effective (not to mention least efficient) prospecting method for this market.

Make a list (as xrac suggested) of every single person you know. The idea is to get each of them to give some names of people that they know. Create some leverage.

 

[DecisionMan]

Well, different strokes for different folks.

Having worked with a lot of Mass Mutual agents and knowing two very successful MM GAs quite well, I can say that it seems that those stuck in the friends-and-family market with the "let me tell you a little about the new business I'm in" approach end up with nothing or maybe some small term policies.

Few agents write enough term at Mass Mutual to be able to succeed. Actually, I don't know of any who have.

Mass Mutual is huge in whole life and DI, and the premiums make for nice commissions which makes it possible to stay in the business - the entire goal of a new agent.

Plus, Mass Mutual's products are excellent for the business market which has both a business checkbook and personal checkbook and is easy to subdivide into an easy target market.

Hence my recommendation to call businesses, write them good policies and see how to develop a case, then work the friends and family.

Just my viewpoint.

 

[BNTRS]

Lastly, read this forum, even the Business Insurance Zone videos - one-a-day.

Just not this week, I hear Steve's guest this week is a real tool.