Telesales is definitely a different animal. And most independent agents lack a system to replicate or a mentor to follow.
But even if they do have those things, they still have to be well funded and make lots of dials.
Automation and artificial intelligence automatically reaching out and responding to leads will help immensely, but nothing replaces getting enough leads every week and putting in the work (making dials).
We tried converting a lot of Indy agents to telesales when covid hit, but most didn’t do the work.
A call center is a different animal. You are not hiring entrepreneurs, but employees. They show up to make dials and a $60,000 a year income. Much better than working in the local factory or bar. And when they’re done for the day, they’re done.
Controlled distribution is super profitable. More work involved for the upline though.
Persistency can be worse than the field, but it’s not as bad as some make it out to be.
Sure there will be great field agents that can replace what you’ve written, but it’s still nominal in the grand scheme of things and already baked into our numbers.
I will say the agents that seem to do the best in telesales are Medicare and Health agents.
Health agents are killing it nowadays. We’ve got health agents with 10,000+ leads in their Autopilot account.
These guys are writing $500,000-$1M a year in premium.
But the world has changed, like it or lump it. Covid has pushed more people into the digital world.
It wasn’t that long ago that we told people to not trust people you meet on the internet… now we order our food online and have it delivered by complete strangers.
53% of advertising is now done online and 95% of that is done through Facebook, Google, and YouTube. And that’s growing year over year.
Direct mail is still king… if you’re buying leads.
If you can develop a Facebook lead at 1/6th the cost, eliminate the time suck factor by utilizing technology, and even if you close 50% less compared to DM, your Cost Per Acquisition will be lower, while working the same (or less) amount of hours.
Now if there was only a course that taught agents how to do all that
I also agree with you Josh. Agents that feast on telesales agents is a small sliver of the pie. Mapd is a different animal in that its no cost for most thus many will switch on the phone . Many agents aren’t skilled enough to replace it . And it seems when low income people get 20 calls a day 4 days in a row there not intelligent enough to block the # and answer it . But shake and stir has made it much much harder for telesales co’s to get thru on the phone. Also the ghosting of #’s which was a huge problem is down 90% i bet. So telesales outfits face problems in contacting going forward. I know my spam calls are down 80% or more.
People do not tend to believe what they think to be wrong..
