Just how High Can Contracts Go??

To be a serious Fe imo you need to offer fixed cost leads.

Ehh, yes and no... Most of the agents that I speak to have no balls to put their money where there sales ability is, and simply won't put up the deposit necessary to be on fixed cost leads.

Half of the agents that we contract, that swear they will eventually buy leads, never buy a single lead...

HALF...:yes:

The typical FE agent wants to learn on someone else's dime and then want's higher than street once they close a sale or 2.

I'll never forget the desperation that we were feeling when I failed at selling FE in our own town... then I put my money where my mouth is and sold the gun collection, did a massive mail drop in an area that looked promising, and turned our finances around... almost immediately at that point....
 
Todd with all due respect if that is how you feel you should refuse to contract agents direct.

This practice is one thing I really dislike. is The condoned and thinly veiled, industrial hoodwinking, that is perpetuated by the narrative of protectecting a MGA at the expensive of the writing agent.

I would NOT trade my credibility with writing agents to protect the income of know nothing MGA's income source.

Any recruiting organization that does not publicly disclose starting contract levels, uses this leverage for the sole purpose of keeping the agent ignorant. The agent's ignorance is what is good for the recruiter, not for the agent... otherwise they would disclose it.

There is not 1 way that hiding the contract levels from agents is beneficial to the agent.

If you are an agent and choose to negotiate and do business with organizations that conceal starting agent contract levels you are likely on your way to a very costly learning experience.

Travis

So if I moved my 3 agents (who I buy all of their leads and train) under fex and then they contact you direct for a higher commission, how would you handle that once you find out they are already in your downline?
 
So if I moved my 3 agents (who I buy all of their leads and train) under fex and then they contact you direct for a higher commission, how would you handle that once you find out they are already in your downline?

Newby has already said, that he has had some of his own agents that were under him through Equita that he has released direct to Equita to bypass him. And he didnt see a problem with that.
 
Newby has already said, that he has had some of his own agents that were under him through Equita that he has released direct to Equita to bypass him. And he didnt see a problem with that.

Yes but I'm asking about my agents, I do have a problem with that considering I may have invested thousands in lead cost and need to see a return and level of profit before I would release them or increase their commission.

So my question was if I got some contracts under fex, how would they handle that situation?
 
Yes but I'm asking about my agents, I do have a problem with that considering I may have invested thousands in lead cost and need to see a return and level of profit before I would release them or increase their commission.

So my question was if I got some contracts under fex, how would they handle that situation?

Most marketers on this site wouldnt agree with your stance. You should provide an upfront release and whenever an agents wants to leave you, for any reason, you should let them walk.

I cant speak for FEX, but I imagine that is their take. Im sure JD can elaborate.
 
Most marketers on this site wouldnt agree with your stance. You should provide an upfront release and whenever an agents wants to leave you, for any reason, you should let them walk.

I cant speak for FEX, but I imagine that is their take. Im sure JD can elaborate.

Providing and upfront release for my 3 agents wouldn't work bc of financial commitments I've made. My 3 agents are people that I know that I gave them an opportunity to make more money so I'm not actively recruiting, but I'm curious how others with a similar business model do it? If you invest money in their leads would you still provide an upfront release?
 
Providing and upfront release for my 3 agents wouldn't work bc of financial commitments I've made. My 3 agents are people that I know that I gave them an opportunity to make more money so I'm not actively recruiting, but I'm curious how others with a similar business model do it? If you invest money in their leads would you still provide an upfront release?

All my agents sign noncompetes, and arent vested until after a year.

Im in telesales, so we invest a lot in our people, especially in leads.

I will release however, but not for telesales.

Thats not a popular thing on this forum, but we are upfront and honest, and many walk away because of that, but much like you, there is too much investment at stake, if you do things the right way, and the company needs protected too.

Alot of the marketers on here dont invest actual money into their agents, so its easy to release them. So do, but most dont.
 
All my agents sign noncompetes, and arent vested until after a year.

Im in telesales, so we invest a lot in our people, especially in leads.

I will release however, but not for telesales.

Thats not a popular thing on this forum, but we are upfront and honest, and many walk away because of that, but much like you, there is too much investment at stake, if you do things the right way, and the company needs protected too.

Alot of the marketers on here dont invest actual money into their agents, so its easy to release them. So do, but most dont.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I never thought about prolonging the vesting period.
 
Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I never thought about prolonging the vesting period.

It only works if you are actually buying legit leads for people.

You cant make people sign noncompetes and not vest day one, and give them raw data to call on. You'll run out of business quick. The competition will eat you up and take your agents.

But if you are trully investing in people, you gotta protect your company from certain agents who wont follow through on commitments or write bad business.
 
So if I moved my 3 agents (who I buy all of their leads and train) under fex and then they contact you direct for a higher commission, how would you handle that once you find out they are already in your downline?

I'll tell you exactly how we handle that. 9 times out of 10 I would recommend that you not put your agency under us. We are an agent direct company. We are for producers. Not middle men.

9 out of 10 agencies that contact me have no production. They just have a guy that wants to put several other guys under him. And shave their commissions. I tell them that our agency is the worst place that you can put your agency. We are exposing your business plan as a cancer. I can like you fine personally but in business we are the guys you don't want your agents to find. And I've had that conversation with many of them.

You can imagine how shocked these guys are to hear this after they have been fed the recruiting Kool-Aid that the scabs of the industry fill them with.

The agencies that work well with us are producers that bring on agents AFTER they kill it themselves. They have earned higher contracts and they can put agents under them at the same commissions we do. If they are doing a more focused ramp up training with an agent they will sometimes put an agent on a temporarily lower commission with a schedule to get to our street level. And (gasp!) none of this is ever hidden from the agent. It's always the agent's choice.

Can an agency have a contract under us and run their agency completely separate from us? Sure. We have guys with one or two under us. We have no idea how they are running their agency. Doesn't matter. They aren't branding themself as a Fex agency. If one of their agents contacted us to come on with us it wouldn't be because he knew we were his upline. Most of those type agencies don't disclose it. I've had three of those happen ever and we just communicate with the other agency. In two cases the other agency wanted us to take over the agent because they were problem agents. We helped steer them elsewhere. In the other case the agent was a decent agent and I steered him back to where he was and helped those guys communicate and resolve their issues.

What you guys don't seem to understand is we don't want every agent and definitely don't want every agency. If we had an agency that constantly had their agents wanting to come to us we would resolve that by asking the agency to move on. if the agency was just recruiting agents out of ignorance rather than being competitive in the market place, that's not who we want to put our loyalties with.

The difference with us is we are agents. We think from the agent's perspective not the recruiters perspective.

But back to the main focus of this thread: can anyone really defend making commission levels an Easter Egg hunt? Other than to protect middle men?

Again my posts were not intended to start a flare up with Todd. I know Todd personally and he's one of the good guys. But that practice which is common is designed to HURT agents. And it hurts a lot of them. It needs to change.

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All my agents sign noncompetes, and arent vested until after a year.

Im in telesales, so we invest a lot in our people, especially in leads.

I will release however, but not for telesales.

Thats not a popular thing on this forum, but we are upfront and honest, and many walk away because of that, but much like you, there is too much investment at stake, if you do things the right way, and the company needs protected too.

Alot of the marketers on here dont invest actual money into their agents, so its easy to release them. So do, but most dont.

And I agree with you on that point. In fact that's the whole point I'm making. Any terms you make are fair as long as it's easy for the agent to do his homework before committing and make informed decisions.

It's the "keep the agent in the dark" stuff that is wrong.

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So if I moved my 3 agents (who I buy all of their leads and train) under fex and then they contact you direct for a higher commission, how would you handle that once you find out they are already in your downline?

That's easy. We talk with you. Hey you have some agents who aren't happy. Most likely the answer would be to quit buying their leads and raise their commission. If they are wanting to come to us they are attracted to buying their own leads and higher commissions.

If you can't make them happy you are going to have to release them to somewhere else anyway. No one wants unhappy agents. We would never take a down line's agent unless the down line asked us to. And like I said before we have had them ask before but never on an agent that was desirable.

We've had more agents want to come to us from uplines than down lines.

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I've had contracts with Todd King in the past and he's a nice honest guy. He's the only one of the 4 main imo's on here(Efes,360,FEX ) who doesn't offer a fixed cost lead program for the Fe guy. He's got no skin in the game because he doesn't want the hassle and potential financial liability . He basically just offers raw contracts to the Fe guy. Todd why would any serious Fe guy contract with you over the others?To be a serious Fe imo you need to offer fixed cost leads.

That's not true. Many agents already have a lead source they are happy with.
 
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