It’s been a while since I blogged. I recently entered a season of change. Turning 65 gave me much to think about. What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I got heavily involved in projects I’d been wanting to do since my twenties.
You’re supposed to be able to do stuff like that at my age. And tomorrow, I have yet another birthday. What is happening with the time? Didn’t I just have one of those?
You can probably tell from my last post that I was getting frustrated too. The last life insurance policy I was working on with a family, the husband and I had talked for months about what his best path would be. I designed the best conceivable plan and he told me he was ready to buy a policy. But he lives in California and I live in Florida. And he and his wife didn’t realize that. They wanted to be able to step into my office. His wife absolutely refused to give her personal banking info to me over the phone.
Bottom line, I put about twenty hours of research and prep time into writing a policy that, in the end, fell flat when the wife put an end to it. Unfortunately, she had been ripped off from someone on the Internet in the past.
Upsets like that are a normal part of this business. I was paying $50-70 per contact so that they would call me. I refused to do what so many other life insurance sales people do. They buy two and three year old leads for 50 cents a piece.
They call each lead 9x per day using an autodialer, or hire someone to call for $10/hour. They don’t feel like spammers because they receive live dials. Their hourly worker will transfer the call when that 100th call answers and is ready to talk. They don’t care how many people tell them please stop calling. They get paid by the hour. They set return call appointments.
That’s how 99% of agents do it. And the ones who just keep forging ahead, are the ones earning six figure incomes.
Doing business that way reminds me of eating hamburgers and chicken. You don’t see the slaughter. You just see the sandwich.
They get really good at closing too. They don’t really care if a product is in their prospect’s best interest. Their only ethic is their personal gain. Where’s the beef?
The beef is their commission check. You should be aware of how commissions work in this business. The client doesn’t pay the agent. The insurance company does. Life insurance generally pays a percentage from 80-140% of the first year’s premiums to the agent. Large policies can have a sweet pay off. Health Insurance tends to pay a fixed initial amount and then pays monthly or annual residuals to the agent for the life of the policy. I like health insurance. Everyone knows they have to have it. Life insurance – you’ve got to see the value.
That’s how this business works. When I don’t work I don’t get paid. My residuals start to drop. So taking some time off is costly. Then again, a good week isn’t necessarily measured in income. A better week might be finally doing something you’ve wanted to do your whole life.
Weeks like that are better weeks indeed.
I can’t tell you how nice it feels to finally have that one project complete. I’ve been walking around with a degree in music composition for the past forty five years and not using it. That’s changed now. As my wife will attest, the hard part is getting me to stop. And there is still quite a bit more to do …
Show Me the Money
Poor woman. She wants to make sure I’m paying the bills. Yes, dear.
She does have a beautiful heart. But I’ve spent all of my healthiest years paying the bills. And no, I don’t see how writing music will make me any money. She’s got me on that one, .
Balance.
I get it. But I know I’ve got health insurance season coming up in October. Are you ready? We’ve got a pretty good client base right now, and quite a bit of work left to do following up on all those who’ve called asking about life insurance this past year.
I realize I’m more of a “you-call-me” kind of guy. Way too passive for my wife’s taste. I may well be doing my contacts a huge favor by urging them to immediately take action. I sometimes have to get over the fact that I believe people don’t want to be pushed into life’s decisions. There’s a place for common courtesy.
But I give good insurance advice for a living. And when you don’t buy, that can cost you thousands of dollars and be tremendously hard on your family.
If only I hadn’t ever experienced the pain and reality of it. I’ve had more than one client pass within a year of writing a policy. One passed literally two days after I wrote a policy.
Did you know that I have to pay back my advanced commissions when that happens? I do. In fact, I still pay one company monthly because of a huge advanced commission they paid out. If the man had only held on six more months. I’d have been in the clear. His family would have enjoyed being with him as he aged. But my business is one that protects people against bad news. And ironically, when it does all it is supposed to do in that worst case scenario, which is my strongest selling point, I have to pay back the commissions I’ve received.
It’s a consolation at a hard time for the family but it’s a double ouch for me.
It makes me consider pitches like, “what will happen if you walk out the door and get hit by a car tomorrow? How would your family adjust financially?” This is a very common sales pitch in the insurance industry. I don’t avoid it. It’s a harsh reality that bad unexpected things can happen. And then there’s every insurance salesman’s pet peeve – the time to ask me for a life insurance policy isn’t after you find out you have cancer. It’s before you get that sort of bad news. Is there a tactful way to say this?
Imagine saying that for a living. I’ve learned to get comfortable with it but for the most part, I still rely on people to think that through themselves. I figure that’s why they are calling me. I don’t like to insult people’s intelligence by stating the obvious. Instead, I’ll ask open ended questions like, “why do you want to buy insurance?
Ultimately, most of the companies offer similar levels of service so it all comes down to price. How fast does your cash value build up? And what is the cost of your premiums? I research what the best product is based on a person’s health, age, gender, location and budget. People can’t do that by randomly searching on the Internet. I look through a database of about 64 companies and hundreds of types of policies. Then I write up policies based on that research. That’s what I do.
I’m not that guy who sells ice pops to Eskimos. But take it from someone who put off working on his materpiece for forty years … there’s a time and a season for everything. I needed a few months away from the daily grind of the insurance business. But Honey, our insurance business is about to hit some all time highs. Hang in there. Thanks for letting me have a little play time. I feel refreshed.
