From Call-center to Indy

[insurance enthusiast]

Greetings esteemed insurance masters -

I seek your advice on finding the right IMO for H&L

I do not want 4 or 5 girlfriend IMO's each with her own finer points - I want a wife IMO that does her job and does it well!

Currently I am a noncaptive agent at a call center brokerage and hold 20+ non res licenses Most biz conducted in AK, CA, NV, TX, CO, FL, PA, MI, TN

At the end of the day, who would you recommend as a reliable and efficient IMO/FMO? - opinions and experiences welcome!

 

[Josh]

What exactly do you think the job of an IMO is?

An IMO is just a way to get great contracts, that's it. All of your work should be direct with the carriers.

Health and life are two different critters, you'll likely need one upline for each.

What is your plan for generating new business? Most call center reps are order takers and struggle with lead generation even more than the average scratch agent because they're used to getting a steady flow of leads.

 

[Guest]

Greetings esteemed insurance masters -

I seek your advice on finding the right IMO for H&L

I do not want 4 or 5 girlfriend IMO's each with her own finer points - I want a wife IMO that does her job and does it well!

Currently I am a noncaptive agent at a call center brokerage and hold 20+ non res licenses Most biz conducted in AK, CA, NV, TX, CO, FL, PA, MI, TN

At the end of the day, who would you recommend as a reliable and efficient IMO/FMO? - opinions and experiences welcome!

What are you wanting to sell? Term life, final expense, med supps, med advantage, individual health?

 

[insurance enthusiast]

I plan to hit mostly health, accident, CI, term life, and FE

My expectations for the IMO are to make sure I get paid on time and have quick response time if I have a question - further that their lead prices are reasonable (free if they are cold) -

I agree that most call center agents are order takers, I am surrounded by them

I assure you I am not - I work all shared leads, the same ones many of you call, and have a high success rate.

Thanks for asking the follow up - This helps me to round out a plan if I do make the leap -
keep em comming

Cheers

 

[Josh]

Sounds like you need a GA, not an IMO.

 

[insurance enthusiast]

My understanding is that an IMO can help you find a reputable MGA - is that right?

 

[Josh]

Sometimes. Frankly, I think you're expecting an organization that isn't really out there.

If you want to be independent and earn a high cut, you're not going to get much hand holding. The carriers should be your goto for answering questions and you should be making sure you're getting paid, especially in the life business.

You also need to focus on a line or two vs everything.

 

[insurance enthusiast]

Thanks for the help -

I was under the impression that the IMO would get me higher % on contracts, quality CRM systems, and reasonably priced leads.
In addition, provide support in terms of getting paid from carriers - i.e. they handle the back office and I write bussines based on the leads purchased via their systems.

Sounds like I misunderstood the value prop presented on the websites -

Thanks for clearing this stuff up a bit - sounds like I need to research this further -

Again thanks!

 

[Josh]

I was under the impression that the IMO would get me higher % on contracts, quality CRM systems, and reasonably priced leads.

Some may be pitching it that way, but here's what it boils down to:

An IMO is only going to get paid X% and if they're paying a high commission, their override isn't going to be huge. They can either pocket all of the override or they can put some of it back into the business and give agents a reason to do business with them. They're not going to spend all their override doing that. For them to get a discount on leads isn't going to cost much, but to devote staff to doing the agents job (asking underwriting questions, CRM to a lesser extent, chase commissions) is going to take manpower which is going to cost money. Do you want to do that yourself or have an upline have to pay someone to do it?

In addition, provide support in terms of getting paid from carriers - i.e. they handle the back office and I write bussines based on the leads purchased via their systems.

You're not talking about an IMO at this point, we're closer to a GA/Agency.

Sounds like I misunderstood the value prop presented on the websites -

You might not have. You could have been misled. There are a lot of recruiters pitching to a system that doesn't really work for agents. I know a lot of agents that do well with life insurance and a lot of agents that do well with health, but I don't know *any* that successfully market both. Either they market life and sell health as it comes along or they market health and sell life as it comes along. Add CI and the other products into the mix, and now you have too many things going on to be effective at any of them.

Thanks for clearing this stuff up a bit - sounds like I need to research this further -

Your best bet would probably be to talk to a few uplines. You may also want to consider joining iliaa.org and looking through their training videos, there is a lot of great stuff there!

Good luck!

 

[insurance enthusiast]

Thanks again - - this was very helpful!

I'll be sure to check out the link