7 Things We Wish We Knew Before Selling Insurance...

What's going on, everybody? My name is Tim Shooker. This is Julian Polito, and we are Advanced Agent Marketing. In today's video, we're going to be going over the seven things that we wish that we knew before we started selling insurance. Now, if you're new to the. New to the business, make sure to stick around to the end of the video because we want to know these seven things. I guarantee you that you are as well. And if you're already in the business, watch through the whole video, tell us what you think you know. Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree. Maybe there's something else that you. You wish that you knew before you started in this business. So without any further ado, we're gonna go ahead and get into number one, which is there are so many options for IMOs.

Yeah, no, Tim, that's very true. I wish I would have known this before getting into the business because.

And real quick for our new audience out there, people that are new to the business. What is an imo?

Yeah, thank you for touching on that, Tim. I totally. We forget about some of the lingo in the business, how people don't know that IMO's is an insurance marketing organization. And what that means is basically, this is the company that you go to work for. Maybe they're usually providing you all of your leads and they will typically take a portion of your commissions or whatever to provide training. Provide training or support, something like that. That's the structure of the IMO and how they're typically supposed to work. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of IMO's out there. I mean, you can throw a rock and hit three in a town sometimes. And I said a town, not even a city. I mean, you can do these things are everywhere. And I mean, an IMO could be something as small as, you know, two guys working out of a garage to something as big as, you know, thousands.

Of people selling insurance.

The biggest one is what, 15,000, 20,000, something like that.

Something crazy. Yeah.

And so, I mean, there's a lot of options out there. Don't limit yourself. I would say, I'd say do some research first.

Don't just jump into an IMO because your friend recruits you. That's. That's a mistake that both of us made.

Yeah.

Is you got recruited, you didn't really shop the options. It was, you know, this person flattered me. They said, yo, I should come work for them. Great personality, so on and so forth. And then for me, you know, is my best friend jumping into the business, of course, I'm going to follow. Why would we look at other options when, you know, this one is right on the table? And that's a big mistake that a lot of people make. Checking on other things is huge.

I would. I want to give one more piece of advice, too. When you're looking at this, me coming from a background of being a server, I was, you know, I've been in sales in the past. I had. And then I started, you know, waiting tables after, you know, the pandemic shut everything down. But the one thing that was. That was kind of difficult to wrap my head around at the time was the fact that I just. You get a compliment from a stranger. He's an executive at the company.

The guy.

The guy who recruited me helped found the company, and it was pretty cool. But the thing was, is, like, with that company, they'll throw spaghetti at the wall just to get someone to come on and work for them. They don't care. It's not a hiring environment with, like a Fortune 500 corporate structure interview process. It's a, hey, please come work for us. We're begging you. And so at the time, you know, again, coming back from serving, I thought maybe this opportunity was just once in a lifetime, which getting into the insurance business is. But, you know, I looked at this situation, I didn't even think other options would exist, maybe because potentially I thought there were, you know, again, corporate hiring processes, actual systems that were in place to, you know, ensure that the business was healthy. But again, look at options. If someone tells you it's the only thing out there or shows you their Rolex or show or, you know, pay stubs or anything like that, they're just trying to, you know, be flashy. They buy you some sushi or something. I would say run as far away as you can. I might even hop on a plane and move states. I wouldn't. Don't get into business with those people.

Absolutely.

But number two, there are so many options for leads, and they are not hard to generate. Tim, you're the lead guy here at Advanced Agent Marketing. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, and this kind of relates back to the first one. A lot of IMOs will use leads as a way to control agents. And the reason why is because. Yeah, exactly. The reason why is because every agent needs leads, especially the new ones who aren't just going to knock on some stranger's door, you know, go up to the lady buying apples at the grocery store. Leads are pretty necessary for most people's business. And IMO's will try to kind of frame it in a way that leads are impossible to generate, or they're the only ones that can generate leads. But there's so many different options for leads. You got direct mail. Even referrals would count as a lead source. You got live transfers, TV leads, and, you know, our personal favorite, which is Facebook leads, leads from online. And the thing is, you know, coming from somewhere where we're constantly preached, you know, These leads cost $50 to generate. 40. $50, $70 for a lead. You know, it's pretty terrifying as an agent to think, okay, so if I leave, I have to pay for, you know, 25 leads. 70 bucks a lead. It's pretty expensive.

Yeah.

And if you don't. If you don't sell anything, you're out of a lot of money, you know, and that's. That's the thing is, leads really are not that hard to generate. We teach agents how to generate their own Facebook leads for under 3, $2 apiece most of the time. So whenever somebody is trying to bribe you with leads, just know that it's entirely possible to do that on your own.

Someone trying to use leverage to either hire you or keep you to stay in their business is probably not someone you want to be in with. I would say, no, you shouldn't have to twist someone's arm to get them to work with you.

No, definitely not.

And I think number three would be how devastating chargebacks can be. And I have some personal experience with this. When I first got into the business was, I think, two, three months in. I wrote about $6,200 in one day. It was a pretty interesting story, but a little too long for now to tell. But it was a crazy day in what I kind of dealt with, but ran some nice, good people and, you know, signed them up. And anyways, a few weeks later, I get a phone call. My face turns, you know, super white because all the blood drained from it. And I hear, yeah, we're gonna have to cancel. You know, one didn't pay their premium, another one charged back because of. I forget what it was. It was another stupid reason. But, yeah, so $6,200 in one day in chargebacks after already getting paid on it. Now, if you have a family or if you're. Even if you're just living on your own, $6,200 in chargebacks is pretty rough. So that. That actually almost took me out of the business. Luckily, I have. I have the skills to just go out and make up for It, But I had to work my butt off. If I hadn't, if I had been trying to do a four hour work week or work 40 hours that, you know, that took, that took some effort to recoup that loss because now I'm having to come back from $6,200 in the hole to come back and make up, to then make money on top of that. So I had to make, just to get that money back. I had to make, I had to make 12 to, you know, 12,400 just to get that back.

Yeah. For the new agents. Again, you know, because we get into all these, you know, industry terms and whatnot. What exactly is a chargeback and how do you get one?

Yeah, Tim, that's, that's a great question. I did it again. Jumped right ahead, jumped the gun. You know, chargebacks are basically whenever, you know, you sign someone up for the insurance, you get paid by the insurance company or the insurance carrier. Right. And then they take the money back because the client either didn't, didn't pay their bill, you know, passed away within the first year, or some other unknown obstacle, maybe they've already applied for insurance and either end up getting declined or after they look at it further, investigate it and you've been paid on it, whatever. There are various amount of reasons as to why you get a charge back, but basically the company will pay you and then take the money back out of your account. Which granted, you do have to pay it manually, so you do have to actually go on and make the payment to the carrier. So they can't just take it back out of your account. But that is something that is definitely downplayed to people who are getting into the business that are new and maybe don't have any experience with that.

100%.

Yeah. So I think number four is honestly, this is a huge one. The difference between a captive and a non captive agent. Tell us a little bit about that, Tim.

Yeah, so basically, you know, in the insurance business there's two different main models of an agent. One is captive and one is non captive. So a captive agent, which is what we were previously, you know, our dumbasses didn't read the contract. But make sure you read the contract.

That's a lot.

That's a big piece. But a captive agent is basically where the IMO or the company that you work under owns your book of business. Now, whenever we go ahead, I was.

Going to say to make sure, Tim, that not only do they own it, but they, they retain the rights to your commission. So if you're with a company like this for 10 years and they just decide that they don't like you anymore. They retain the right to stop paying you at that time, even regardless of if you still have renewals coming in from like, you know, maybe Medicare or something like that. But there's no. You don't have any autonomy, you know, you want to be kind of. Tell us what vested means, Tim. I want to make sure that the audience knows what non captive and captive is and how that contrasts.

Yeah, basically. So, you know, again, as a captive agent, if you decide to leave, the company keeps your entire book of business.

When you first get in, you may not realize how big of a deal that is, because we knew that we were captive, but we didn't understand what that actually meant in practice. So when, if you go on and sign on with a company, let's say you're like, oh, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They were slapping cash on the table. They were slapping me in the face with cash. I'm just smelling the money. I'm all into it, whatever.

I sleep in cash.

Exactly. But you start running for a few months and you really realize it wasn't what you thought it was or it wasn't what they were telling you, which most of the time that's the case you decide to leave. Now, let's say you've written a bunch of business, you have a bunch of Medicares that you're planning on getting paid on next year, and you up and leave, that company keeps all of that business. It's not yours. It never was in the first place. And so typically, you know, sometimes being a captive agent can make sense, you know, just depending on your situation. But both you and I were big freedom guys. I like to have control of my own interests and be able to move from place to place if I need to, for sure. And if the ship starts sinking, I don't want to be strapped and tied to the mast of the ship. I want to be able to jump ship and hop on the lifeboat. And that's what being a non captive agent allows you to do. And so for the majority of people, we would definitely recommend being non captive.

Absolutely. Especially with the way that the direct mail system is going and the fact that a lot of companies are either struggling to generate leads with direct mail either because of distribution with the post office, or people not sending them back because they're getting used to it. I mean, you know, if you beat a dead horse, that's one thing, but beat a dead horse for what, 60 years now? That's, I mean we're talking about not even leftover bone anymore, you know, dust.

Yeah, literal dust.

They're just beating dust. It's just, you know, mixed in with the earth now. Yeah, forget about it. It's blown away.

Exactly.

Yeah. I think that's important to know. But number five, this one is huge. What is roll up debt? Right? Roll up debt is basically when you are responsible for everyone's commissions under you. Right. So you have the upside potential to get what are called overrides, which in my opinion are the most beautiful aspect of the business outside of renewals. You know, it's the recession proof business. This is one of the aspects that contributes to this and it also will help you grow as an agent if you decide to go the route of recruiting. I'm very, very pro recruiting. I think if you can offer opportunity to others, especially in America, it's a beautiful thing. I love that being first gen. So the opportunity there is huge. But with opportunity comes great risk. Whenever you are looking at getting all of these overrides, it's not just a free and clear. I get to keep all the cash and sit back, kick my feet up and let it happen. No, what we see is that if you want to do the throw the spaghetti at the wall method where you're just recruiting anything that fogs up a.

Meal, your Uber driver, the guy that took your Happy Meal, order whatever, groceries.

Guy on the side of the corner with anything helps. He's not talking about getting into the insurance business, he just wants cash. Let's clarify that. So with that being said, you can get roll up debt. I've heard horror stories up to a quarter million dollars though. I think the biggest one I've heard so far. But you know, if somebody doesn't like, you have to think about it, it's kind of like a chain reaction. If this guy is below you and he writes a bunch of business and he gets hit with, you know, 50 grand in chargebacks because everybody below him didn't pay their charge backs because they were sleaze bags, you know, and he has 100 grand in chargebacks, you know, in addition to the 50 that was below him. If he quits because he's like, I'm not paying 50 grand, forget that. Now you're responsible for 150 grand in chargebacks. And that's really where it'll happen is when you see the chain reaction of an entire team quitting or something like that. It's very manageable. If it's only one person. But, you know, this is something that if you hear someone saying, it's not a big deal, this doesn't really affect anybody in the business. You're not going to see this be reality where, oh, man, you know, you're going to get flunked out because of this. If they're acting like it's not real or it doesn't exist, or even if it does, it's on such a small scale that it won't even affect you, that is a very big red flag because that's. That would be almost the equivalent of telling someone, hey, you can get on this plane, but there's no way it ever crashes. Like, yeah, it'll get you to where you want to go, but there's absolutely no physical way that it could crash. Then you get into a plane crash. Now you're gonna be wondering what, you know, why that guy Tell me that.

Well, honestly, that would probably. That would more like. More. More go along the lines of your odds in a car crash.

Yeah.

Because those are much more common than plane crashes. But exactly, exactly what you're saying.

Exactly. And so I think, number six, let's go ahead and touch on that for everyone here on the workload and the different methods to running your business. Kind of touch on that for us, Tim.

Sure. So as far as workload goes, lot of times people will preach the insurance business for the freedom aspect, which is a huge part of it and is entirely possible. The problem is they don't tell you about the work that goes into it. And this is especially true when you're doing face to face with telesales. I mean, don't be wrong, you still got to work hard, but you're not doing all of the driving. Now. When I got into the business, you know, you had already kind of led the way and set the expectations, but, you know, don't really have any problems with hard work. But it still kind of slapped me in the face a little bit with the amount of time that we were dedicating to the business. I mean, we had Sundays was our only day off. Mondays were in the office and, you know, the rest of it we were running in the field. And what I mean by that is right when the sun gets up, you're leaving and driving to an area could be an hour and a half on a good day, two and a half hours on a bad day just to get to where you're going to work, you're, you know, hitting the first door by about 8, 9 o', clock, go in maybe stopping for lunch if you're not in the middle of an appointment and then you're not done door knocking until the sun sets. And in the summer that's about 8 o' clock every single night.

Nah, it's actually longer than that, Tim. There were nights that I went until after nine.

Yeah, the sun wasn't even set yet. Or you just, you went when it was dark.

Well, it was dark, but after nine. But like, I mean you can get sunlight all the way up to 9 o' clock here sometimes. That's true in the mid summer. Yeah.

Especially if you're flashing your headlights on their house. It's still bright outside.

Right, Exactly.

But you know, as far as that goes, really understand what you're getting into. This is not a get rich quick scheme. This is not, you know, whatever the fad is, this is not Amazon fba. You know, this takes work. Right. You have to put in the work to reap the rewards. And going into this with the 40 hour workweek mindset, the 9 to 5 mindset, you're not going to get too far. You know, you might make money, but at the end of the day you're going to get eaten up by chargebacks and you're gonna get eaten up by just not writing enough business. Yeah.

And people, I mean, and just to put it, I mean to put it nicely, people like us that are just willing to go out there and go from sun up to sundown, I mean if you're, if we're working, you're sleeping. Good luck. I mean, you know, we're not the only ones out there.

Far from it.

Yeah. The people that work with us in our company are the same way. We don't hire outside of that. And especially with the. There's other organizations out there that are also extremely competitive and looking to be extremely successful. So if you're looking for, again, this is just a disclaimer. If you're looking for a four hour work week. This is not that business. It never has been and ever will be.

And touch a little bit about, you know, the different methods of running your business because that was one of the things that, you know, we kind of thought about and we saw other people doing it, but we never considered it as like a reality or a real way that you can make money.

Are you. And you know, be a little more transparent there, Tim, in saying that. Are you talking about telesales in general?

Telesales vs face to face? You know, a lot of people will push face to face is the only way to do it, you know, I don't know if maybe where we used to work had a special backdoor deal with Exxon Mobil and bp. We're trying to get us to spend money on gas, but telesales was never really an option for us.

It was never an option. In fact, it was complete. It was discouraged to a fault. You were, you were chastised for even mentioning that, you know, which makes really no sense if you think about it. But, you know, when we were looking at kind of different ways of running the business and how to do, you know, what it is that you did. I actually did some telesales while working there and just kind of, you know, didn't really mention that because I didn't want to be chastised for being more efficient for, you know, being smarter with running my business. Because again, that's exactly what you're doing, is you're running a business.

That's what it comes down to is just working smarter too.

Exactly. And so if you were, you know, if you were to say that every time you were, if you owned it at McDonald's, you had to walk to Harris Teeter to buy the beef every 20 minutes, you guys probably would not run a McDonald's. And that's kind of how it felt for us when we were driving around. But the different kind of methods that we saw available to us, I mean, now we've got, you know, once we looked out on the business, we've got all these different types of leads, you.

Know, having, using automations as well, automations.

Huge portion to your business. And that was something that was huge for me. I've done, done different types of sales, a lot of different types of sales where I've cold door knocked, I've gone B2B with no leads, no point of interest, nothing. Just cold door knocking businesses. I've done cold calls for real estate. I've done a lot of, a lot of different types of leads. I've done, I've called Zillow leads, realtor.com leads. Geez, those are rough. I'll tell you that. A lot of people just want to see the house online. They don't actually want to do anything. I've called all sorts of things and even the direct mail leads, despite the fact that it wasn't always, you know, these weren't really high intent leads at all, to be honest. But you know, you get a lead from Facebook that's only talking about life insurance, it comes through instantly. So your, you know, chances of conversion, of closing them are increased by 900%, I think. Is that MIT that said that?

Yeah, MIT. Yeah.

And that's. I mean, that's coming from a credible source, a study that they did. And that right there was eye opening when I realized if I can connect with these leads, instantly they're in the mood, they're ready to talk, they're ready to get going, they want to sign up. They know it's about life insurance, they know it costs money. And I can get them on the phone right now as they're filling out the form.

I can't get up to their house that quick. I have to call them.

No. And in addition, you know, also with all the powerful tools, with technology that are available to us now, I mean, you can have your CRM. Literally when your lead comes in, it starts texting your lead and you don't even have to call them.

Yeah.

Text them in books an appointment for you. And you're just running appointments and calling leads that didn't book at that point.

Mm, yeah, that's. That's true. I do like that aspect a lot as well. It saves a lot of time because now you're making phone calls to jump into strict. You know, you jump straight to the appointment, which means even if they decide not to buy, you're able to get to the next. The next lead or the next appointment.

It's not 15, 20 minutes to your next door knock. No.

So I think that brings us to number seven, the impact of relationships within the business. And Tim, I want to touch on this a little bit and then kind of get your input a little here. I think that it's kind of more or less a spiritual experience. Wouldn't you agree?

100%.

And I'm going to expand on that. And saying that when you're dealing with. And I would recommend this to anyone, you know, and we do this within our business. We want to see you do face to face because you should learn it from the ground up. You know, if you're. If you're getting into the business and you're not doing face to face, it's easy to kind of see people as a number and just kind of a voice on the other side of the phone almost. You know, it's very inhumane. And it kind of sounds weird to say that, but it's very different when you've actually sat in their home. You've watched. You've seen what they watch on tv. You see what they eat, you see what they wear, how they act.

Their grandkids come over in the middle of an Appointment?

Yeah, they offer to cook lunch for you. You know, maybe, maybe they apologize because they said there's a mess on the ground and they actually go out of their way to clean up for you despite not knowing that you were coming over to talk to them about business. They do that just because out of respect for you. Not even as an insurance person, but just as a person, period. In general, you learn a lot of things from the life experience of the older people, the older generations, and it's something that, that really can be life changing. But it's also the people that you get to work with. I would say there's a couple of groups that are known for having camaraderie. You could reference the military. They have great camaraderie, Sororities, fraternities, sports teams, collegiate high school travel teams, professional teams. But I would say that final expense sales is probably on that list somewhere for a level of camaraderie. Because you see together in this business, I mean, there, you don't see this every day. You know, you're meeting people from all walks of life, different countries, different. I mean, it's a melting pot here in America. And it was honestly, it's honestly just been more or less a blessing. You know, what do you, what's your, your take on that, Tim?

Yeah, and you know, I would 100% agree with everything that you, you just said there. One of the things for me, you know, when I got into this business, it wasn't that I was passionate about insurance or just wanted to, you know, go sit in people's homes while, you know, their couch smelled like cigarettes. That wasn't it for me. I mean, maybe it is for some people, but for me personally, I saw it as a recession proof business and a way for me to make money when the market was up and make money when the market was down. And you know, that, that was really what it was for me. But as I got into it, I fell in love with the people aspects of, and you know, like you touched on earlier the life experience of the older generation. I mean, no shade on my generation, but they're 10 times cooler. You know, they're, they're funny, they've got, you know, cool sayings. They, you know, talk to you, they'll talk to you. They're not like this the whole time. And one of the things we learned, if you nail a plastic bag full of water to a post outside your house, it keeps the bugs away. I mean, who, who even thinks of that? Or who was the first person that.

Came up with that, how does it even work?

It's insane. But Yeah, I would 100% agree that starting the business with face to face, getting that human element, and then once you feel comfortable in the home and comfortable talking to these people, then transitioning to telesales and trying to become as efficient as you can with your business, that's the way to do it.

I agree. And you know, with that being said, we're going to go ahead and close out here with everything. That's all we got for you today. But, you know, comment, subscribe, like down below, tell us everything that you're seeing. If you disagree with this, let us know. If you agree. Or maybe you don't have any experience, please ask questions. We're making this content for you. We want to know what you think and what you want to know about, you know, what it's like selling insurance, how you can, you know, how you can be successful. Our goal is more or less just to help you see success in this industry. And I think that's all I got for you. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, quick point before we go here. If you're interested in learning how you can generate your own Facebook leads that come in instantly, you know, we're talking within 30 seconds, you're on the phone with this problem.

Less than that I've seen come in. I had a lady, she said, you've called me. It took three seconds for you.

Three seconds within three seconds. Right. If you want to learn how you can generate your own Facebook leads for under $2 a piece, this is not $50 for direct mail, you know, this is not $30 from a lead vendor. You control the messaging and everything. There will be a link down below to a webpage where you should click on and you'll find out more information about what we're offering there. But, you know, without any further ado, we will see you guys in the next one.

See you then.