I'm so glad I found these Insurance Forums!

[Tristan Bills]

Brand spankin' new agent here with exactly zero years experience, and what a surprise... I'm struggling to get my agency off the ground!

Background:

I have been in Real Estate since 2016 and my bread 'n butter comes through Transaction Management. Basically, Real Estate Agents leverage my experience and processes to grow their businesses. In 2019 my team started a Mortgage company and that's when I started Loan Processing, it was a natural extension of what I had already been doing.

Things started slowing down in September of last year and the mortgage company closed its doors due to some creative differences with management. Nothing I had done up to that point generated recurring revenue and I was looking for another related business that could. I chose Insurance because I'd ordered hundreds of Mortgagee updates for Lenders and knew every file needed insurance to close.

Insurance so far:

I am licensed in Utah and have Property & Casualty, as well as Accident, Life, and Health lines of authority. I am with Smart Choice, First Connect, Agentero, and Family First Life at the moment. I have a couple direct appointments with carriers like State Auto. My bread 'n butter business above generates ~30 very qualified leads per month and my network of thousands of Real Estate professionals is also a good source.

I have stumbled through quite a few quotes and have written a total of two policies this year... an Auto policy for myself, and an E&O policy for a Real Estate partner.

I'm starting to get year-end calls from my carrier AEs and I feel there are some appointments on the chopping block if I don't start delivering.

What I'm Struggling With:

Not having an insurance background I have been struggling with exactly how the conversations are supposed to go. I listen to podcasts, I've bought (and read) several books, and I've reached out to a ton of Insurance Agents who I've ordered updated Mortgagees from in the past to get some direction. There's a ton of scripts out there for Life and Health, but surprisingly very little for Property & Casualty... until I found these forums.

There appears to be a lot of helpful agents here and I've already pieced together a script that I'm going to implement immediately. I would be interested in additional scripts specifically for Homeowner's Insurance and some Auto (curse my carriers who refuse to quote mono-line, that's cost me a few policies in itself).

I'm not much of a salesman, my strength is in listening and consulting, so that's what I'm shooting for in my scripts. I tell my clients there's no pressure here: I make suggestions based on my products and expertise, and they get to make all of the decisions.

 

[Baseball7]

https://youtube.com/@LifeandEverythingInBetween

There are a few presentation videos about Final Expense on this channel. Feel free to reach out direct and I’m happy to help if there’s any other way I can.

 

[Allen Trent]

Here is the most common PC quote script

"Can I quote your home & auto insurance"

Do that enough times each week with people either supplying you their dec sheets or using the public data available for their property/vehicles. Have you quoted all your friends, neighbors, existing RE & mortgage clients? Or are you mostly struggling to get people to quote?

Or, are you trying to have your network of people do this before you perfect it?

Lastly, you said you started a mortgage company, but that ended due to disagreement with management.....weren't you the management?

 

[goillini52]

Lastly, you said you started a mortgage company, but that ended due to disagreement with management.....weren't you the management?

He disagreed with himself.

 

[Allen Trent]

He disagreed with himself.

trust me, I have been in plenty of meetings where I come up with a great idea, etc & then proceed to state all the reasons it shouldnt be pursued, etc. I think I could be a tech billionaire if I also wasnt a Karen & Debbie Downer

 

[Tristan Bills]

Lastly, you said you started a mortgage company, but that ended due to disagreement with management.....weren't you the management?

Haha, no it was my Real Estate Broker and Principal Lending Manager (basically the Mortgage equivalent of Broker in Utah). I started my Loan Processing company when they started their Mortgage Company, so I basically lost my biggest (only) mortgage client. Now I have four, but with rates where they are they're not producing as much as they'd like.

 

[Jccwell]

Brand spankin' new agent here with exactly zero years experience, and what a surprise... I'm struggling to get my agency off the ground!

Background:

I have been in Real Estate since 2016 and my bread 'n butter comes through Transaction Management. Basically, Real Estate Agents leverage my experience and processes to grow their businesses. In 2019 my team started a Mortgage company and that's when I started Loan Processing, it was a natural extension of what I had already been doing.

Things started slowing down in September of last year and the mortgage company closed its doors due to some creative differences with management. Nothing I had done up to that point generated recurring revenue and I was looking for another related business that could. I chose Insurance because I'd ordered hundreds of Mortgagee updates for Lenders and knew every file needed insurance to close.

Insurance so far:

I am licensed in Utah and have Property & Casualty, as well as Accident, Life, and Health lines of authority. I am with Smart Choice, First Connect, Agentero, and Family First Life at the moment. I have a couple direct appointments with carriers like State Auto. My bread 'n butter business above generates ~30 very qualified leads per month and my network of thousands of Real Estate professionals is also a good source.

I have stumbled through quite a few quotes and have written a total of two policies this year... an Auto policy for myself, and an E&O policy for a Real Estate partner.

I'm starting to get year-end calls from my carrier AEs and I feel there are some appointments on the chopping block if I don't start delivering.

What I'm Struggling With:

Not having an insurance background I have been struggling with exactly how the conversations are supposed to go. I listen to podcasts, I've bought (and read) several books, and I've reached out to a ton of Insurance Agents who I've ordered updated Mortgagees from in the past to get some direction. There's a ton of scripts out there for Life and Health, but surprisingly very little for Property & Casualty... until I found these forums.

There appears to be a lot of helpful agents here and I've already pieced together a script that I'm going to implement immediately. I would be interested in additional scripts specifically for Homeowner's Insurance and some Auto (curse my carriers who refuse to quote mono-line, that's cost me a few policies in itself).

I'm not much of a salesman, my strength is in listening and consulting, so that's what I'm shooting for in my scripts. I tell my clients there's no pressure here: I make suggestions based on my products and expertise, and they get to make all of the decisions.

As far as life insurance scripts, Don't Frankenstein a script together from podcasts and YouTube videos. Find an agency with a proven script and a proven system. Follow their system closely, and watch the sales rack up.

 

[DHK]

There's a ton of scripts out there for Life and Health, but surprisingly very little for Property & Casualty... until I found these forums.

Welcome to the forum!

First, I'm not a P&C agent and never have been. Talked to many though.

If you wanted to make calls for P&C, it's pretty basic as you're simply offering quotes. However, I would recommend that you 'pre-qualify' or 'sort' your insurance buyers into two categories:
1) People who want the lowest price no matter what and don't mind bouncing from company to company
and
2) People who value a longer term relationship with a company even though it'll be a little bit more expensive, they want the company to be there for them and reward them for the long-term relationship. These companies emphasize service and would rather apologize for a slightly higher cost than lower service standards and claims paying experiences.

Which would happen to describe you?

Then you can offer quotes accordingly.

The premium kinds of companies (Farmers, Allstate, State Farm, etc.) are for those who want the long-term relationship and are willing to pay a bit more for it. These buyers also would tend to be a more favorable risk profile.

The others... well, you'll know whom to quote and you won't want them with your higher tiered companies since it can mess with your compensation and bonus programs.

I got the idea from a Zig Ziglar audio "Sell your way to the top". There was a point where he referenced an insurance conversation.

(Paraphrasing):
"When our company was founded, the company founders had a choice to make: they could either:
a) lead by having the lowest costs, but having service issues and make claims paying harder to qualify for, or
b) they could lead with a strong service proposition and long-term relationships, and just have moderately higher prices for that.

They chose to be the second company... and you're sure glad they did, aren't you?"

I simply used that kind of decision as a way to sort out your buyers and serve them according to how they value and buy their coverage.

 

[DHK]

For life insurance... learn to ask sequential questions, listen, and be able to direct the conversation.

This video "Find the pain to set the appointment" is excellent from Jeremy Nason with Insurance Pro Shop:

 

[Al3x Lee]

The premium kinds of companies (Farmers, Allstate, State Farm, etc.) are for those who want the long-term relationship and are willing to pay a bit more for it. These buyers also would tend to be a more favorable risk profile.

I agree with your entire post other than these being the premium companies. They'll take just about anyone and price out those they don't want. Also Farmer's is now acting like an independent by brokering business through their Kraft Lake Insurance, which is their independent sector. The Farmers agents themselves don't handle the brokering or relationships on that end, they just send an app and get a quote back.

Many of the Farmers agents I know are selling products that they know nothing about because it's not a Farmers product. It's the blind leading the blind when they sell these policies to their customers.

I work commercial P&C, picked up an account that had a $2 million loss that wasn't covered thanks to their Farmers agent who was a real 'great guy'. Unfortunately, he sold a product he knew nothing about and gave the insured a false sense of security about said product and caused his client to lose $2 million. I hope his E&O limits were sufficient.

Not having an insurance background I have been struggling with exactly how the conversations are supposed to go.

I tell my clients there's no pressure here: I make suggestions based on my products and expertise, and they get to make all of the decisions.

I've got some bad news, you stepped in from a soft real estate market, meaning soft for you the agent, into a hard insurance market. You no longer get the benefit here of being a no pressure consultant. You need to have some authority in your conversations, not in a tyrannical way, but in a way that makes your client feel some pain for what they're lacking.

People survive on comfort, if they're comfortable, they have no reason to change their insurance over to you. 90%+ of your clients will not be well versed in insurance. They know they have insurance and assume they're covered, MANY of them are not covered for what they think they're covered for. I'd say 50%+ of agents aren't well versed in the coverage they sell. That's where you create the wedge. I would recommend the book "How to get your competition fired without saying anything bad about them" aka The Wedge by Randy Schwantz.

In order to make a sale in insurance, usually another agent is getting fired, and many of them deserve to be fired because you can do a better job for your client. This is where you get to use your consultative skills and guide them in the right direction, and they NEED direction, trust me. It's not like real estate where they're buying for their preferences, they're purchasing to protect their assets and livelihood.

I used to sell appliances 100% commission. (This was actually in Utah, RC Willey if you're familiar) I was good at it, but had to quit when I moved states to be near my mother who had cancer. That's when I went into insurance and got my ass kicked because I thought the consultative approach I used selling appliance would work in insurance. It doesn't. In insurance you're on the offensive.

Some good advice I got early is that insurance is a marathon, not a sprint. What does that mean? It means you're building relationships, doing quotes, and at first you're not going to make many sales, but you have to keep trying. You also want to make a good impression on people where you don't win the business at first, because you might get it next year or 5 years from now.

The conversations are a lot simpler than you might think. Since most of your clients don't know much about insurance, you need to be able to explain complex subjects simply and be able to interpret their policies (Not just their dec pages, you need to know the coverage forms) By doing this, you can take a look at what they have and find the weaknesses and create discomfort for them if you can prove that they're truly missing out on something.

Where DHK makes a great point is that you need to sell on value. The value of your knowledge and ability to protect your clients is what makes you better than a Geico rater. I've had clients stay with me that got quotes that were 1/3 of my price, but the coverage was atrocious and I was able to explain to them why it was a bad idea to switch, and they trusted my advice enough to stay.

Lastly, I would highly recommend getting yourself a mentor, someone who has proven themselves in this space. And I don't mean someone who appears successful on the outside, someone that you can verify their results.

90%+ of P&C agents fail in their first 3 years. That means the first 3 years are critical.

Best of luck to you my friend, welcome to the forums.