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Most of those being recruited to FE via Facebook, Craigslist, ziprecruiter, and indeed will wash out quickly. Many of them are selling higher priced carriers and often go to GI too quickly. They are being "trained" to buy copious amounts of leads but not necessarily being trained how to work them, or how to "work" at all. The recruits end up thinking the leads are weak, but we all know it is they and their training that are weak.
Many IMO's/Agencies are little more than Lead Mills. Instead of recruiting ten agents and training them to be $100K+ producers to earn an override, it is easier to recruit 50 new agents to buy 20 new leads a week at $20-$40/lead, and just keep selling the dream as "older" recruits fail out to be replaced by new recruits to keep the lead purchases up.
That's why when I replace a policy, I try to get the agent's name and number and if I do not already know him or her, I call the agent. If they are still in the business I simply introduce myself, maybe talk shop for a few minutes, and move on. But often I find that the agent has since left the business. I offer to buy any remaining leads they have on the cheap. I have made some real good profits buying "used" leads from agents no longer in the business for pennies on the dollar. I like to say (to myslef) that I have never found a lead with an expiration date.
Most of these recruits are simply making the IMO's money off the leads while building legitimate replacement inventory for those of us who are hoping to be in it for the long haul.
This is where I really respect a group like FEX Contracting and guys like @Jose Arteaga (who, of course, learned as an FEX agent) ... they really do seem more concerned with producing producers like @jdeasy than with selling marked up lead inventory (I suspect one big reason for their success in training up big producers is the presence of JD - the lead unicorn in a herd of unicorns).
The same with my upline @SPUR CITY ... while I am not interested in recruiting/building, for those in our group who are, the emphasis is on recruiting and training quality producers, not mass recruiting lead consumers.
Insurance seems always to have been a "recruit the masses, train them in classes, sell their friends and family and fire their asses" industry as @Rearden likes to say. Only with FE insurance, instead of selling their friends and family it is "recruit the masses, sell them leads until they are broke, then recruit new masses."
I'm in a few insurance groups on FB. Tons and tons of folks being recruited into the business. I get 5 to 7 PM's FB messages a day from these folks with questions that indicate that the individual is highly unlikely to make it as an agent. Far too many do not understand that this is a sales job, like it or not. You need to be able to read people. And you simply cannot be in it for the "flexible schedule."
If you're calling to insurance is because you think you're going to work two days a week, well, I won't say there are not those doing it. But those folks are the 1%. And on the two days they work, they work!
As an example, recently found a lady FE agent who gets her leads Saturday morning. Calls through them from 9 AM to 12 noon setting appointments for that day and Sunday. She runs appointments 'til 9 PM Saturday and Sunday, and door knocks in between. Two days of flat out, focused like a laser beam work and effort aimed at making sales. She probably puts in more actual productive work on those two days than most newly minted FE agents will in their first month with a $600 to $800/week lead order hangin on a choke collar 'round their necks.
The difference between her and the masses: She was trained to produce results, not simply, or merely to consume leads. Also, she is not lazy. Even at two days/week, anyone who will run like that is a worker.
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