Monthly Recurring Expenses Selling Med Supps & Cross Selling FE?

[bpenn9]

You are in the wrong industry.

Thanks for pointing that out. Wish you would have done that 13 years ago. Time for a change.

 

[Residentzombie]

Thanks for pointing that out. Wish you would have done that 13 years ago. Time for a change.

bpenn9 I just said that because agents need to have a passion to help others. Being cynical about a long post that I wrote simply by saying 'I'm a tool' is very disrespectful and if you treat your prospects and/or clients like that I say you are in the wrong profession. Insurance agents already have a bad reputation in this industry and I want to try to change that so I am passionate about helping others and changing the perception that the general public has about insurance agents.

If you can point out an exact reason what I said wrong or have a wrong outtake on, I would be more than happy to correct myself and consider what you say, but simply insulting someone when that person is trying to help others is extremely rude.

 

[bpenn9]

bpenn9 I just said that because agents need to have a passion to help others. Being cynical about a long post that I wrote simply by saying 'I'm a tool' is very disrespectful and if you treat your prospects and/or clients like that I say you are in the wrong profession. Insurance agents already have a bad reputation in this industry and I want to try to change that so I am passionate about helping others and changing the perception that the general public has about insurance agents.

If you can point out an exact reason what I said wrong or have a wrong outtake on, I would be more than happy to correct myself and consider what you say, but simply insulting someone when that person is trying to help others is extremely rude.

You make a lot of assumptions. And yes your post was LONG. Congrats. I see you deleted one of your posts already. Glad you passionate.

 

[entrep1776]

If you spend $1,000 on a mailer campaign you will be lucky to make $1,000 in commissions. You will spin your wheels and not make any profit or you will lose money.

Your sales ability needs to be great and this is one of the worst industry to sell in since commissions are so small and the legal liability and regulations are so large. You can make more money selling real estate which you already tried and failed. This is not different on how to market and the results will be the same unless you learn how to be a great marketer and salesman.

Go back to real estate and make your fortune their instead. Unless you have a lot of free time and money and have a passion for helping stuck up seniors save $30 per month on their Medigap policy. Also you have a decent amount of competition as well that is competing against you.

If you can master the art of selling by building rapport, asking tons of questions, and being a fantastic listener then you need to ask yourself why you are selling your butt off and only making $300 per year on a sale that usually lasts for 2 to 3 years when you could sell a home worth $150,000 to $250,000 and make 3% to 6% commission all at once. If I could start over knowing what I know about the Medicare industry, I would have choose to sell real estate instead as the struggle is identical, but the commissions are 10 to 20x higher.

If you don't genuinely have a passion for helping others you will fail.

First I appreciated you taking the time to write such a detailed response. The videos are really good. Although, there are about 2 hours of videos. I did get through them all.

Do you have any real numbers for the $1,000 mailing and not making $1,000 in commissions?

"time & passion for helping stuck up seniors" - Why do you say this? Also, if you feel this way about them why do you continue to try to sell to them?

I've worked in the Real Estate market. Have you? couple things. In my market, $120,000 is probably the average price of a house. Commissions are normally split four (4) ways. so normally 6% or 7% commission. Once between buying & selling side. Then between the agent & the managing broker. So 1.5% of $120,000 = $1,800. If you are taking a family around they may want to look at 20 houses. Then you have inspections. Then you have bank approval. Then you have then you have. Then you have move in dates. Then you have then you have. Let's put it this way. Getting a senior a supplement = $1,800 if you can get them to stick around for 6 years, seems a heck of alot easier than being a Realtor. I would have been ok with this scenario, but back in 2008, the housing market wasn't the hottest it's ever been. Also, from what I can tell the big dogs in Real Estate like Keller Williams seem to get the listings & the buyers. It's very challenging if you aren't a big dog. So, although I haven't recently sold insurance (i had brief experience selling cancer insurance D2D). If you can't make money in insurance, I think you'll have a harder time in Real Estate, IMO. Sidenote, one thing I really disliked when I was listing a house was taking the measurements of every single room in the house. PITA.

commissions 10 to 20x bigger in Real Estate in my experience not even close. Maybe the transactions in Real Estate are 10 to 20x the work compared to insurance. I would say the complexity is much much greater than an insurance product involving an insurance agent, a client, & an insurance company. Real Estate = buyer & seller. 2 agents. a bank. an inspector an appraiser etc. etc. etc. etc.

too many realtors trying to get too few transactions & the Keller Williams get 90% in my market these days.

From what I've read there are insurance agents are getting older. Although I think someone said insurance agents never retire they just move to Florida to sell insurance (FE in particular). & there are more seniors requiring insurance products.

Why do you write such lengthy posts? I've seen some of your other posts & they are very lengthy so I didn't spend the time to read them. If you are just using your posts for personal journaling? ....Again I appreciated the links to the good videos.

Little more back on how much are your monthly expenses:
One more thing I just remembered. To have access to local MLS (pretty much necessary to do business), you're looking at $1900 a year or $150/month. I don't think there is a cost like this in insurance.

 

[roadrunner]

WTF? Your way off base on so many points.

Thanks for giving me a good chuckle at the end of a very busy Productive week, assisting folks with their Medicare needs.

Seriously, if this is your attitude towards the Medicare Market, you probably need to go in a different direction.

 

[Residentzombie]

My experience of dealing with a direct mailer campaign is information I obtained from my previous brokerage firm. You can verify how effective these mailer campaigns are by emailing companies like Target Leads and others. Mailing the 67+ demographic will get you roughly a 1% response rate and mailing T65s will get you roughly a 3% respond rate. The information that spending money on these campaigns will return what your original investment from comes from my office manager and Chris Westfall also confirmed for me that that information is fairly accurate. This is why I listed commissions rates for both MA policies and Medigap policies so that you can do the math yourself.

I call seniors stuck up only because of the perception that the general public has of insurance agents. Ignorant was probably a better term to use. The majority of the general public hates insurance companies, hate sales people, hates telemarketers, hates pharmaceutical companies, and envies wealthy people. The perception that we must overcome with people is already an uphill battle and from my time on this form, I can't say that I don't blame the general public for their perception of us because for many agents that perception is accurate.

Your welcome for my training videos and I do agree that they are very good which is why I shared them with you. I genuinely enjoy helping other people and I have a passion for it. If you share this passion and have great sales ability, you should do fine in this industry. I just want to point out some of the problems in our industry upfront before you invest your time and money into this profession to only later discover these problems and you decide to leave the industry having lost your time and money. We all need to weigh the pros and cons of everything we do in life to decide if the venture is worth it or not and I know many agents here are seasoned professionals that have been doing this for over 10 years and have an established book of business.

Yes I don't know much about real estate other than what I've learned from watching Bryan Cassella talking about the southern California real estate market and I agree the $12,000 figure is off from the average home value of $120,000 to $150,000. I just typed that to show the comparison of the financial gain from 1 sale in real estate to 1 sale in Medicare insurance. If you're also selling life insurance in addition to Medicare insurance, you can definitely increase the income you can make and you will have an easier time to earn a higher income. David Duford warns new agents to not learn two different industries at the same time however. There is much to learn and David recommends to new agents that you pick one industry and learn and master that industry first before you enter into other industries.

The demographic of insurance agents is that way because of CMS imposed regulations in our industry that happened in 2009. Chris Westfall cites the statistic that from 2009 to 2014 42,000 insurance agents left our industry of Medicare. Anyone who is honest about the Medicare insurance industry acknowledges it is tough because commissions are small (but residual) and the excessive regulations that CMS has on us. 34% of Medicare beneficiaries have Medicare Advantage plans and 28% of seniors have Medigap plans. The CMS regulations are on Medicare Advantage and Part D drug plans, but not Medigap plans. Many agents only sell Medigap to avoid the horrendous MA and PDP regulations, but you must understand if you sell Medigap only that your market in Medicare is only 28%. Many seniors simply don't have the money to afford a Medigap plan because of their poor performing 401K plans and bad money management from their working days. We are dealing with a large majority of consumers who are on a very fixed income and Medicare Part B takes a large chunk of seniors' Social Security retirement checks. If you ever want to press a senior's hot button talk about how much money Medicare takes from their SSI checks, most LOVE to whine and complain about this.

I hope that whatever I was able to say did help you and I'm not trying to discourage anyone from joining our industry, but 42,000 insurance agents left from 2009 to 2014 for a reason and it's best that you understand why that is. I do believe that the majority of us in the sales world have a bad reputation from the mainstream media as people who are greedy and take advantage of consumers for personal gain. The best sales people who make a lot of money due so because they have a passion for helping others and if you possess that passion and play your cards correctly, you will do great in this industry.

Have a blessed day and good luck to you in your ventures. Help as many people as you can and you will be rewarded in the long run. Just make sure you follow all the CMS rules so you don't get your license suspended or revoked. I find it amazing that people want help but then complain when someone offers too much help (lengthy posts). I don't understand the logic of that. I heard that the average person has the attention span of a goldfish (17 seconds).

 

[GreenSky]

Who has time to not only write such long posts (although we did know a guy from Sacramento area who did this) and who wants to read them?

Perhaps limiting posts to 2-3 paragraphs would be a better idea. The information might be great but using the forum to write blog posts is absurd.

I've yet to read any of them due to the length.

Rick

 

[bpenn9]

Who has time to not only write such long posts (although we did know a guy from Sacramento area who did this) and who wants to read them?

Perhaps limiting posts to 2-3 paragraphs would be a better idea. The information might be great but using the forum to write blog posts is absurd.

I've yet to read any of them due to the length.

Rick

Exactly................

 

[sman]

Who has time to not only write such long posts (although we did know a guy from Sacramento area who did this) and who wants to read them?

Perhaps limiting posts to 2-3 paragraphs would be a better idea. The information might be great but using the forum to write blog posts is absurd.

I've yet to read any of them due to the length.

Rick

Ditto. I got to "I call seniors stuck up..." and decided I had read enough. Can you imagine him on an appointment? The prospect probably has a dazed look after an hour of non-stop talking.

 

[senior-advisor-indiana]

Who has time to not only write such long posts (although we did know a guy from Sacramento area who did this) and who wants to read them?

Perhaps limiting posts to 2-3 paragraphs would be a better idea. The information might be great but using the forum to write blog posts is absurd.

I've yet to read any of them due to the length.

Rick

I read it 7 times and took notes. I'd recommend waiting for the movie to come out...