FMO Advice

[Todd King]

Todd, Newby is right on sales skills development. Skills gained from selling MA plans and saying you dont have to pay anything is very different than selling $60 a month monthly payment to someone on SSI. People who sell MA plans or health insurance at the beginning dont develop strong sales skills. People who sell FE first develop more skills quickly. And people who sell fully underwritten term develop even better skills if they can survive the beginning. Lets also look at this from beginning cash flow. Most people enter the insurance world are relatively broke. FE is the fastest way in the first 3 months to turn into positive cash flow.

Sorry, but my point had nothing to do with the sales skill of MA agents. None of it was about sales skills of anything. It was all about which target market gets you the most in the end.

However, I will agree that he is right on the point about the sales skills.

 

[jdeasy]

I will guarantee that your FE leads were not targeting "zero" income like FEX is running nowadays. You weren't going in and seeing the poorest of the poor on a regular basis. That's what I'm talking about. If you want to target the FE audience, you certainly can't use a bottom income of $30K or so like you can with Medicare.

You would be wrong. I was the first FEX agent and I was doing a zero bottom income filter from day 1. As were most of the agents that followed me. I would guess they still are? I haven't asked anyone about that in a long time. Maybe it will come up at our symposium this week?

But you have no frame of reference since you were never an FE producer. Of course you can't teach what you don't know.

 

[jdeasy]

I'm attacking your statement that selling a free product is weak. And that's why so many spaghetti throwing dsnp against the wall fe and former fe agents don't do well long term in mapd . Fe is a transaction sale for most fe agents . 30 mins gone , 30 mins gone . Most fe agents rarely if ever talk to their client again unless they are contacted . Mapd takes much much more to keep it on the books 1-5 yrs .

It is weak. There are no sales skills in order taking. The MA agents that want to add FE almost all fail. They don't know how to sell. I agree it's a much tougher deal and the hourly pay is awful. But not because of sales skills or a lack of sales skills.

The maintenance of MA is terrible. But make no mistake, they are clerks.

On the other hand, successful FE agents that add MA find it to be the easiest money they ever made. "Shooting fish in a barrel" is the most common statement.

But, once they get a few hundred on the books they start to feel the service side and retention side of the MA business and realize they might have bought a pig in a poke. I hear weekly, if not daily, " I see now why you don't fool with this anymore".

 

[DonP]

It is weak. There are no sales skills in order taking. The MA agents that want to add FE almost all fail. They don't know how to sell. I agree it's a much tougher deal and the hourly pay is awful. But not because of sales skills or a lack of sales skills.

The maintenance of MA is terrible. But make no mistake, they are clerks.

On the other hand, successful FE agents that add MA find it to be the easiest money they ever made. "Shooting fish in a barrel" is the most common statement.

But, once they get a few hundred on the books they start to feel the service side and retention side of the MA business and realize they might have bought a pig in a poke. I hear weekly, if not daily, " I see now why you don't fool with this anymore".

I did just as well selling fe as mapd . The reason I switched gears 3 yrs ago is 2 fold . I didn't want to be on the hamster wheel with very little renewals with fe .Being at 6 fig renewals in 30 months proved me right . That said it was 3 times as hard as fe as far as retention and service goes . I physically have to save 6-8 a month . But once I save 1 time 95% stay for good . And the second reason I enjoy Medicare so much more that fe . The referrals I get for more Medicare and fe is crazy. But again the amount of work to touch my clients 5 times a yr is a ton of work . To each his own . Wether it's fe or Medicare the only thing that matters is deposits minus all expenses . All my Medicare commissions are net profit basically as I have no lead cost

 

[Todd King]

You would be wrong. I was the first FEX agent and I was doing a zero bottom income filter from day 1. As were most of the agents that followed me. I would guess they still are? I haven't asked anyone about that in a long time. Maybe it will come up at our symposium this week?

But you have no frame of reference since you were never an FE producer. Of course you can't teach what you don't know.

I was talking about Scott, not any agents under him. But your frame of reference is non-existent since you apparently didn't bother to read or you have no reading comprehension. Nice try though.