Is the old school way of insurance sales- gone forever?

[noah]

I was trained by a guy that was using screen sharing pre-zoom to deal with remote customers in a large area. I was lucky to have started out that way. I have clients that prefer face to face, and others that love the online meetings. I do a lot of both but have an odd 2-state area with one state 2000 miles from where I live and my business in the distant state is actually growing from referrals, which surprised me when I moved.

Bottom line is I am glad I am not dragging a briefcase full of paper forms door to door and trying to mail or fax them all in after a long day of having people tell me to go away.

Majority of my clients do not know how to turn a computer on.

The most fun part of the business is seeing the creature who answers the door when I'm door knocking.

We don't drag briefcases full of paper we carry a tablet and do EApps. The only thing I fax are surrenders and remove draft requests.

Nobody tells me to go away most are very polite and glad I stopped by.

 

[Jccwell]

Majority of my clients do not know how to turn a computer on.

The most fun part of the business is seeing the creature who answers the door when I'm door knocking.

We don't drag briefcases full of paper we carry a tablet and do EApps. The only thing I fax are surrenders and remove draft requests.

Nobody tells me to go away most are very polite and glad I stopped by.

Right. DNelson makes lots of inaccurate assumptions in his comment.

 

[jdeasy]

I was trained by a guy that was using screen sharing pre-zoom to deal with remote customers in a large area. I was lucky to have started out that way. I have clients that prefer face to face, and others that love the online meetings. I do a lot of both but have an odd 2-state area with one state 2000 miles from where I live and my business in the distant state is actually growing from referrals, which surprised me when I moved.

Bottom line is I am glad I am not dragging a briefcase full of paper forms door to door and trying to mail or fax them all in after a long day of having people tell me to go away.

Are you selling FE?

 

[Live and Learn]

Save the recruiting pitch for the uneducated.

That's a Facebook spiel.

We don't recruit. We are a Fortune 500 company.

 

[Live and Learn]

It's a great deal for the pimp. I agree.

It's not for the producing agent.

You really have a bad attitude. Did someone hurt you when you were a young agent?

 

[Live and Learn]

Who wants to get up in the morning and go into an a cubicle or home office and be tethered to a desk,computer,phone all day long ?

Nothing worse than being trapped all day long.

Is being isolated like that good for your health ?

Do you really think you're going to be able to have a long career 10-15-20-30 years being isolated,trapped indefinitely?

Do you think the difference in production,extra money is worth the damage your doing to your mind and body ?

Do you think you can overcome the damage you are doing to yourself with money?

Nothing better for your mind than to be out there in the field doing F2F meeting real people,breathing fresh air,enjoying the atmosphere of actual life.

Telesales will play out simply due to working conditions and humans naturally crave human interaction.

None of what you say applies to me. I live in the mountains and can be at a river in a 5 min walk. All of our agents are remote. I have a home office with a massive window that looks up at the peaks that are just down the street. My kids are homeschooled and I can walk out of the office and be with them. They don't have to be exposed to the horrors of public school. This works for us.

 

[jdeasy]

You really have a bad attitude. Did someone hurt you when you were a young agent?

I don't have a bad attitude at all. I'm quite content. You, on the other hand, seem to be quite the whiner.

You don't sell FE. Yet you decide to pimp in the FE forum.

And every Fortune 500 company recruits.

 

[Larry Shoemaker]

I have noticed, lately, that the vast majority of FMO/IMO type recruiting on the job sites, internet, craigslist, so on... are all now virtual, sell from home. Online zoom calls for sales interviews. Sell them online, over the webs. In two years , it will be 40 yrs since I got my first insurance license, as I am sitting at 38 yrs now. I just wonder: when all of us old timers die off, will anybody go door to door and face to face? Since covid, the trend has been to work from home.

I have had an interesting career with insurance, most of which has been, "training the old fashioned way". Will this method of training and sales go bye-bye? Has it been gone already for a few years?

There are two parts to this issue; how we connect and how we "sell". I have seen less training on connecting and on selling. The internet has added a new dimension to connecting; however the principles remain the same. Again, "selling" never changes - just some things about how we do it.
Now for the "sticky" part. Sales techniques and tactics. Some agents choose to focus on profitability whereas others focus on relationships and results. I believe the system has drifted toward the "spaghetti on the wall" approach to sales and recruiting. Volume over quality. There are metrics to evaluate the health of agencies, if the records are kept. Agent turnover, duration, rapid disenrollment for a few. This conversation opens the door to a lot of topics. One other is, where is our industry going? Are we (or can we?) innovating? Our products are more complex than ever. Are agents properly equipped to run their practice efficiently and effectively? How can they be? We live in a world of compliance, yet I never hear a thorough discussion of running a compliant practice and how to do it. For example, how many agents have general liability insurance? Or, have a well-organized office (ADD allowed for)? I'd love to hear from ya'll!