New Agent from Colonial Life

[Tampa Bay Rep]

Re: New Agent from Colinial Life

Welcome to the forum. Hope you have a successful career at Colonial Life.

If you like, you can request some free recorded webinars and teleconferences that were done with some insurance agents sharing how they successfully sell insurance.

You can request these free recorded presentations at:

Aged Insurance Leads Info Request Form

 

[Julie.Pham]

Re: New Agent from Colinial Life

I am new here to the insurance industry and I was referred here by one of my bosses to come here and check things out. I was with Bankers Life and Casualty as an agent for 3 months and did not make a dime. Now I am at Colonial Life to give the insurance career another try. I still have yet to sell anything so i still am working as a waiter on the weekends. I look forward to meeting some of the experienced agents and learning lots of advice and insurance war stories.

Welcome back to the industry! Where are you based out of?

 

[endeav0r]

Re: New Agent from Colinial Life

I work out in Culver City

 

[twentyfourseven]

Good luck and hope your second try on the insurance industry works!

 

[wthigo@cl12]

Re: New Agent from Colinial Life

"The above is true, but it's an oversimplification. Here are some of the reasons that working in the worksite benefit area is "hard."

- One company has huge name-recognition and a bad reputation in many areas and if the boss has even heard of whatever company you are with (which they haven't) when he hears "worksite benefits" he thinks about the 10 guys from that company with the bird-mascot who called him last week.

- Worksite companies are similar to other (semi) captive carriers. They bring on a ton of people knowing one a tiny percentage will make it but hope most will write one group, quit and those groups becomes cash-cow "house accounts" for the manager.

- Many worksite benefits are way overpriced for healthy people who would save more money and get better coverage by getting their own personal coverage for LTC, DI, accident, etc. Thus, at some level you are screwing people and that will not make you feel good about yourself.

- Group health rates have gone through the roof such that companies are dropping their contributions to much lower levels meaning the employees have to pick up the tab leaving far less discretionary income for ancillary coverages.

- Worksite carrier comp is often very low. There are too many levels of management above you with hands in your pocket.

- At your level, there are often others who will split... the enroller and the coordinator for example.

- To make real money you have to enroll your own groups meaning you have to be knowledgeable about a huge number of benefits which means a lot of study time that could be used prospecting and selling.

- Enrollments can be a huge time-sink for you. Some people are great "blue collar" enrollers and others are great "boardroom" sales people. Few are both... but have to be in order to make any money in this game.

- You will hear the term "working conditions" a lot. This is the amount of time (and place) you will get with each employee. The carrier wants you to sell complex UL or STD plans in the 15 minutes the boss gives you with each person. It can't be done so you end up selling quick to explain, low-cost/low-comp accident and hospital indemnity.

- The sales-cycle can take forever, especially if people are on vacation or sick or if partners have to agree, and if the HR lady does not want to do payroll-deduct (or list-bill.)

- Companies are not increasing their head-counts and any reductions usually mean a cut in your comp.

- Worksite carriers are manic about chargebacks. They will follow you to the end of the earth for ten bucks!

- With some carriers if you don't do a minimum amount of production you will lose your vesting (another way of saying there IS no vesting!)

- You often have to work a wide geo-area meaning a lot of driving / traveling which is "down" time.

- Many carriers will micro-manage you, which can be a good thing, but often a bad thing as you will probably want to do worksite as a part-time gig and they are going to try to monopolize your time by holding group cold-calling events or tag-team door-knocking days. (Neither work too well.)

- With many carriers your manager can arbitrarily split your comp with anyone he wishes and upper-management will back him. Happened to me. I did 90% of the work on a case and manager gave 50% of my comp to another agent who did the 10%. Why? Politics, favors, etc. It's a dog-eat-dog jungle in worksite districts/regions. When you shake hands with your manager, when you walk away make sure you count all your fingers!

- Worksite can become a maintenance time-sink where employees call you with problems when claims are not paid.

- Some worksite companies have a reputation for not paying claims very promptly or at all. Check some of the "rip off" web sites. This eventually will come to haunt you.

- The base comp for worksite products vary and are not high to begin with. Money is made via a bonus structure... and worksite companies have a bad habit of ending the bonus program just before you reach a "level" and move the goal line too often so that no one ever gets across.

- Most often is is the managers who earn the nice trips, not the players on the field.

- Some companies will put pressure on you to recruit new people into the agency/district/region and may even make your continuation contingent on you bringing in at least one or two people.

- In my experience, worksite benefit companies have truly terrible management. I don't know why. Many are old-school, high-pressure, "beat 'em up" sales jocks.

Bottom line, given the amount of work vs. the amount of reward, I believe that a reasonably competent sales person can make a better living with less work and less stress being an independent agent in life and group health and DI without all the baggage and low-comp of "partnering" with the worksite carriers.

I wish you the best of luck. You will need a lot of it to "make it" in the worksite sector, especially if you are in an economically "hard hit" location.

As always, YMMV.

Al (who once wrote for Colonial)"
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AL3....I really enjoy your straight forward posts and this one, by far, really nailed it for me in words as to what I was feeling when recently being recruited by Colonial Life.

I just signed up recently to this forum and made some posts to get more insight about companies, agencies, going independent since I am so new to the idea of selling insurance and was just called out of the blue to do some so called "consulting" work which of course just turned out to be "now go out prospect, work on scripts and have fun". Seriously???, Of course, I was in no way ready for that any time soon.

Since my experience in the first few days of training didn't go very smoothly and it felt like a BS emotional roller coaster for me, I went with my gut and walked away.

To many hurdles, road blocks and clearly from day one it was stressed about the Aflac competition but even more so the CL agent competition from the people in the same room as you was rather thick. Of course, since I have no sales experience or B2B experience maybe I just sensed it more than most who just expect it like the wind..HA!

Anyway, your posts spelled it out for me how extremely difficult it is selling "supplemental insurance" aka "worksite products" can be. In my opinion, it is even a bigger risk for those who are just starting out in the insurance biz.