Is Anybody Making Real Money Out There?

[somarco]

Especially trie if you use note cards for a crm

I make notes on the back of offering envelopes purloined from church pews.

 

[Todd King]

If you are coasting at less than full speed, you are guaranteed to lose your edge. Most of you will go out of business anyways. Especially trie if you use note cards for a crm or still do cold calling (i.e. yesteryear methods) like I've seen suggested in this archaic forum.

I do believe your crystal ball has a few cracks in it. Maybe you should shop Amazon for a new one.

 

[UKTX]

Here is a useful link for you: How Much Do Insurance Agents Make in 2020?

In a nutshell, 10% make less than 27.5k. 10% make more than 125k. 80% is between those two numbers.

There are 1.2m licensed agents in the US, so only 120k make more than 125K.

These are just averages, you may make way more than the average, that's what's great about the business. Its entirely down to you how much money you make.

 

[somarco]

There are 1.2m licensed agents in the US, so only 120k make more than 125K.

There are currently 81,837 members on this site and all of them make over $125k.

 

[Travis Price]

Don't conflate my observation of a pattern with an argument



Depends what you mean. Do you want to join assurance for a $50 per sale commission? Assurnace agents are "independent agents".



No. Technology breeds consolidation. Ask retail store owners how they are doing compared to Amazon and Walmart if you dont believe me. Technology separates the winners from everyone else. Those who are able to dominate digital ads and brand building combined with sales tools and automation designed to assist the customer journey will win everything.

If you are coasting at less than full speed, you are guaranteed to lose your edge. Most of you will go out of business anyways. Especially trie if you use note cards for a crm or still do cold calling (i.e. yesteryear methods) like I've seen suggested in this archaic forum.

Your observation is an argument. An argument does not mean you are fighting. It means it's a point of view in a discussion.

You are silly.

Going to Amazon to pick up a bedspread vs going in person to Walmart isn't the same as buying insurance.

Convenience is important, and agents need to adapt to a changing world (duh) but to imply that people want to talk to a call center for ongoing insurance needs vs working with an agent that understands their specific needs and picks up the phone when they call simply shows you don't understand customer needs.

Bigger companies can take a huge market, and good for them. However, it's not going to zero out the market because there will always be niches in which the larger companies cannot financially compete. Meaning, it isn't worth it to them.

 

[TheAnnuityCOWBOY]

eHealth, Inc. Announces Preliminary Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020

Convenience is important, and agents need to adapt to a changing world (duh) but to imply that people want to talk to a call center for ongoing insurance needs vs working with an agent that understands their specific needs and picks up the phone when they call simply shows you don't understand customer needs.

Keep telling yourself that if you like. Bigger teams have better customer service AND clients dont want to talk to you. They dont want you in their dining room pitching insurance to them, and they definitely dont want you calling them without a pre-arranged reason.

Perhaps you missed the eHealth, Inc. Announces Preliminary Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020

"

• 43% of fourth quarter 2020 applications for Medicare major medical products(b) were submitted by eHealth's customers online, which includes unassisted and partially agent-assisted online enrollments. For the full year 2020, 37% of eHealth's applications for Medicare major medical products were submitted online. This compares to 36% and 27% of Medicare major medical product applications that were submitted online in the fourth quarter and full year 2019, respectively.
• In-house eHealth Medicare agents represented approximately 57% of the average telesales headcount for the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to approximately 33% in the fourth quarter of 2019. "

43% of a $600 million/yr mostly medicare brokerage was business submitted only via unassisted and partially agent-assisted enrollments. How long until 95% of those enrollments are online?

or how about this? "eHealth believes its fourth quarter Medicare enrollments were negatively impacted by the underperformance of its external agent force as well as some of its marketing channels...To address the issues that impacted performance, eHealth is actively shifting telesales to a predominantly internal, full time agent model."

now go take a look at the cold calling and TCPA rules that make calling harder every year, as well as covid 19 in person issues... these next few years will see a HUGE increase in online enrollments.

This trend will continue: most agents will go out of business while a small handful of hyper technologically advanced firms will win everything.

 

[DecisionMan]

Well, the technology discussion is a big turn from the original post . . . but . . .

There are plenty of products on Amazon, both routine and complicated, that people buy without a personal advisor, a local resource.

Is there that much of a difference from someone taking a call from a FE or Medicare call center and buying a policy, than that same person shopping online on Amazon or WalMart or whatever and reading product details and reviews and buying a policy?

Millions more MAPDs are bought by seniors by responding to ads or self-shopping on Medicare.gov than are purchased from agents.

So I think there are challenges ahead for the industry.

However, I completely believe in my value proposition to my clients and prospects and have a huge persistency rate. Why? Because for those people either referred to me, or for those people who I prospect to, my experience, advice, and selling ability separate me from any online or call center competition.

The internet will simply be another competitor to compete against, and I'm completely up to the challenge.

 

[Travis Price]

eHealth, Inc. Announces Preliminary Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020


Keep telling yourself that if you like. Bigger teams have better customer service AND clients dont want to talk to you. They dont want you in their dining room pitching insurance to them, and they definitely dont want you calling them without a pre-arranged reason.

Perhaps you missed the eHealth, Inc. Announces Preliminary Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020

"

• 43% of fourth quarter 2020 applications for Medicare major medical products(b) were submitted by eHealth's customers online, which includes unassisted and partially agent-assisted online enrollments. For the full year 2020, 37% of eHealth's applications for Medicare major medical products were submitted online. This compares to 36% and 27% of Medicare major medical product applications that were submitted online in the fourth quarter and full year 2019, respectively.
• In-house eHealth Medicare agents represented approximately 57% of the average telesales headcount for the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to approximately 33% in the fourth quarter of 2019. "

43% of a $600 million/yr mostly medicare brokerage was business submitted only via unassisted and partially agent-assisted enrollments. How long until 95% of those enrollments are online?

or how about this? "eHealth believes its fourth quarter Medicare enrollments were negatively impacted by the underperformance of its external agent force as well as some of its marketing channels...To address the issues that impacted performance, eHealth is actively shifting telesales to a predominantly internal, full time agent model."

now go take a look at the cold calling and TCPA rules that make calling harder every year, as well as covid 19 in person issues... these next few years will see a HUGE increase in online enrollments.

This trend will continue: most agents will go out of business while a small handful of hyper technologically advanced firms will win everything.

Everything you're talking about a small agent can do and offer better service than a call center.

It's called adapting.

Considering most agents that are active here are in their 60's+, it's up to younger agent to adapt.

I'm not worried about E-Health. I can do absolutely everything that they can do now.

PS: Cold calling does work. But it isn't an efficient use of an agents time.

If I have 5 telemarketers calling for me and I speak only to leads... Is your argument that I can't be successful?

If I drop 6k in mail per month and only speak with people that want to talk to me (let's say 1%) and close 30-40% of those, I can't be successful not grinding out as much as possible?

C'mon son...

 

[Travis Price]

There are plenty of products on Amazon, both routine and complicated, that people buy without a personal advisor, a local resource.

Is there that much of a difference from someone taking a call from a FE or Medicare call center and buying a policy, than that same person shopping online on Amazon or WalMart or whatever and reading product details and reviews and buying a policy?

Millions more MAPDs are bought by seniors by responding to ads or self-shopping on Medicare.gov than are purchased from agents.

Yes. There's a difference between buying a TV on Amazon and speaking to an agent in a call center about insurance. That's such a weird comparison... They may not be speaking to a local agent, but they're still speaking to an agent.

As for Medicare.gov...

I don't care.

I'm not trying to market to people who do it themselves. I'm marketing to the significant amount of people that need help.

Until Medicare.gov (and the call center) stops giving people 28 options for Medicare plans and doesn't make it a pain in the ass to talk to them.. I'll have plenty of people to talk to.

Here's my biggest point:

Stop worrying about things you can't control and adapt to things you can.

 

[DecisionMan]

Bigger teams have better customer service AND clients dont want to talk to you. They dont want you in their dining room pitching insurance to them, and they definitely dont want you calling them without a pre-arranged reason.

Any agent who is reputable and honest and educated in our industry will completely disagree with that statement.

Its just not true.

I don't need millions of sales. I need a solid base of repeat clients and renewals and need to add a few hundred new clients every year to make MDRT and good money and live a good life.

And even the youngest and technically literate and internet-savvy clients prefer a face-to-face advisor they relate to and trust. They clearly see the difference.

If you're a good advisor, people will prefer the personal relationship and kitchen table meeting.

I think in the quote above, the words "better customer service" should be in quotation marks as a scare quote to imply the opposite of the term. Large organizations should get a lot of credit for those that actually produce good customer service, but its rare and hard to maintain.