Giving back to the board

[Crabcake Johnny]

I have an idea to generate some modest revenue for the board. All the experts on this board, and there are many, could each write a comprehensive short manual on their area of expertise.

For each field of life, health, senior market and annuities it would include:

*List of companies to get appointed with
*Commission structures of those companies
*Marketing strategies that work and the ones to avoid
*Proven closing techniques

This could all be compiled in one "how to start selling insurance" booklet and Sam could set a price and charge for it. The money is used to off-set costs of running the board.

You can't possibly imagine the number of agents who come to this board and are simply lost. They also have to troll through hundreds of posts to find the info they need. In many cases new agent don't even know which companies to contact or even how commissions work.

Because of the lack of information many simply end up with bad contracts or with "turn and burn" captive companies. They're also paying "$150" to download garbage programs that are little more than motivational books.

Thoughts? What would the price be?

 

[Guest]

Good idea John.

The real estate investing field is littered with "courses" on how to get rich in real estate that cost $150-$1500. Most of them are not worth the paper they are printed on.
We could compile a worthy manual that would provide real direction for people in the insurance field that would be well worth a small investment.

The price should be set after completing the manual--it will depend on the detail of its content.

I think it would generate a lot more income than you might think though--it would do much more than offest this site's costs.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

The price of the manual would be made up by selling one deal. I talked to an agent not to long ago who got a 10% Assurant deal, doesn't own his business and was promised "all the leads he could handle." He actually got 5 shared leads a day. After two weeks he didn't close a deal and his GA stopped sending him leads saying that he needs to close a deal first - recommended that he start cold-calling. And he's trapped under that deal for 6 months - simply didn't know any better.

Even if he had written a deal:

$3,500 X 10% = $350 commish

or

$3,500 X 20% = $700 commish

How much would it have been worth for him to find out all the scoop before signing a contract? I'm not suggesting at all that the price would be $350. I'm simply trying to show the value.

 

[James]

Monte Zucker, a famous portrait/wedding photography has established the standard in photography forums as we would all like to see this one do for the Insurance Field. What Monte did was rather interesting, kind of in the line you are talking about and it has been a great success from what I understand, you can check out the site at Zuga.net. Now his site is well established and he been at it for some 10 years plus it seems?

Now what you can do there is view instructions on what he calls his "Stars", they offer trailers, say the first 5 minutes of the video instruction course (Weddings, Portraits, Commercial, Food, Nature, Scenics etc etc a long list of specialties) and then the viewer can decide to purchase more. From what I understand, Zuga takes a cut and the artist gets a cut, everyone makes money and the viewer knows that the artist offering the course is Monte Zucker approved. Now Monte has been awarded life time achievements from places such as the UN and Nobel Committee, known as a great guy by all that know him!

While video courses would be great, I simply don't see many here having the ability, maybe more than I suspect but I really doubt it. Yet though it wouldn't be hard, well wouldn't think it would be difficult for this site to have a second home page that one could view "Courses Free and Premium" and than they could see the first section, maybe the first chapter and than decide to buy in to get the whole book. This way any poster that the site approves and maybe for a charge can post Chapters or Books for purchase or offered for free, whichever the author and the site agrees on.

 

[James]

Now at Zuga the posters on the forum generally give thumbs up or down about the varying clips. That way any prospective customer thinking about buying a course or video can go to the forums and see what others think of any given course.

 

[natem2112]

I think that this not only a good idea....but something that should happen.

I, along with JohnP, Sti and others have all had the pleasure of learning from our mistakes, most new agents enter in to this industry having no clear idea of what they really are doing. The training for new agents out there is not even close to what it should be, a stocker at the local Piggly Wiggly gets more focused training before actually getting on the job.

I went to a meeting a few weeks ago with one of the brokers that I do business with, there was this new agent next to me, a 30 year old single mom, who had just left the UGA trap. ( I just cringed when I heard that)

She was telling me what all she was doing, how she was spending here money, asking me if she should get this website package for $300.00 a month, was that a good price? ect.

She didn't have a clue...and hadn't written business in over 3 months.

I offered her practical advice and told here where to start, focus on Assurant and Golden Rule first and so on.

But my point is that there are thousands just like her, there is a huge need for a practical guide for newbies.

I believe the burden is on us if we don't help them.

I would help wit this in any way.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

We're also getting into "watch what we wish for" territory with this board. With internet exposure from the major engines we could very well be in a postion of having a ton of newbies on the board. Posts could soon be clogged with new agents asking for the same advice over and over. It's simply to hard to search all the posts to find the info you need.

A lot of newbies also won't join since they know they're not a part of "the club." However, those same newbies might purchase the guides if they were marketed correctly.

I also think this is something that we should do. All we need is to organize it and simply get it done.

 

[Guest]

I own a book publishing company...

http://www.adams-blake.com

... and MIGHT be willing to publish it and sell it to the trade if it is any good (and of any length) and pay a royalty back to the board (or to the individual authors as done on college texts where there are multiple conributors.... or both.)

If I like the manuscript my company would put up ALL the money to design, edit, print, and distribute it... probably close to $15,000 (but it can be done for less... depends on length of book... paper is not cheap!).

Traditional royalty publishing pays author 10% of net... net being defined as cash publisher receives (not profit). Most books are sold by publisher at a 40 to 60 % discount from list price. A $10 book will probably sell to Barns/Noble for 4 or $5 and the author would get 10% or forty or fifty cents. Sound low? Well, author takes zero financial risk... and still owns rights to the book.

Or we could do a co-publishing deal as well where everyone pays and takes risk but shares in profits. In co-pub there are contractural arrangements of who pays what and who gets what.... it can become a mess... lawyers get involved, but with the high risk of doing books these days these deals are becomming more common.

I'd like to publish to the insurance agent/agency sector. If any of you write a manuscript, please send it to me. However, we do not pay an advance on an un-finished ms. and usually don't pay for a completed one either unless you are a known (sellable) author.

Just a thought.

Al

 

[J.R.]

Having a book available for newbies is a great idea. I would have gladly spent money on a start-up guide versus taking 2+ weeks to read this entire forum.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Well, you could kick it up a notch and this industry is SCREAMING for an unbiased "tell all" book on the ABCs of breaking into the insurance business. A "Selling Insurance for Dummies" actually could go on the shelves of major book chains.

If done correctly and marketed correction someone could really make a lot of money.