Sell life insurance with the right IMO
As most of you know, there are several insurance marketing organizations that will lie and manipulate you into signing up with them. One of the newest ones recruits agents to sell life insurance products, and is claiming that you can earn up to 140%. They use multi level marketing tactics to offer the dream of being wealthy and advertise on LinkedIn regularly. You may have noticed their ads and posts spouting out inflated statistics and claims of having agents that are six figure earners. Here is something that keeps coming to mind. If you are in the middle of an MLM pyramid, and the guys at the top have 140%, how is it possible for you to get paid 140% on your sales? Even better! How do you spout these unreachable claims to your down line agents, knowing you will never reach that 140% mark yourself?
We did a little investigation for anyone that wants to sell life insurance with this company and here’s how it went!
I thought of giving this guy a call. Well, after putting some thought on how to approach him, I decided to avoid the phone. Since I have no intention on joining his agency and misleading him to think I might want to sell life insurance through him, I felt there was no need to call him. He is making the claim on Linkedin so I contacted him on Linkedin. The conversation printed below is pretty much how it went. I also want to make clear that I do not totally blame the final expense insurance companies or mortgage protection agencies for this. Agents that want to sell life insurance, need to do their due diligence and research.
Me – Hey man, you guys keep posting how your compensation is super duper huge. What level do you start a brand new agent with no experience at?
BS Recruiter – We don’t cap commissions and offer up to 140%
Me – What is your First Year Commission for a new agent?
BS Recruiter – It’s really high
Me – Exactly what is your first year commission for a new agent?
BS Recruiter – That doesn’t matter, you can get up to 140%
Here’s the bottom line!
I never did get a straight answer. Understand, I speak with a lot of agents and some of them are contracted to sell life insurance with this company. When we ask them what their first year commission is, they say it’s around 100%. It’s like they blindly accept what they are told and don’t actually do their own research. Finally, last week, I got a call from an agent that wanted more information on our sales system. He told me that he was with that same final expense insurance company, and told me “around 100%”. I took the opportunity to see what he knew about his contract. Here’s what happened!
Me – Call the carriers that the agency appointed you with, and have them send you your commission schedule
Agent – Ok, I’ll do that
The agent forwarded me 2 of his commission schedules. Surprise, surprise! His first year commissions are right at 70%. He only had 80% for one product. Most of his commissions were between 50 and 75%. His highest commission was with a product that is not even competitive and tends to be difficult to get through underwriting. This is a niche product that is hardly even usable for anyone that wants to sell life insurance.
Here’s what’s messed up. Even if he did well with these guys, his chances of being successful was against him in a big way. This MLM company stacked the deck so high, you need a tractor to tear it down. When I showed this to the agent, he was extremely upset and contacted them immediately for a release. I suggested he check out this video on how to get released, in conclusion, he is now producing with us. No one likes to get their pocket picked.
Do your due diligence first
The easiest way for you to avoid an IMO that isn’t good for you, is to do research. The nice thing about our modern society, is it’s easy to find out the good and bad with IMO’s that sell life insurance. Nobody wants to do extra foot work but it usually pays off in the end. Consider this! Once you sign up with the wrong IMO, they won’t release you. In order for you to sell the same products with someone else, you have to wait 6 months. During that time, you could have business fall off the books. If enough of your sales cancel, you could end up owing thousands before you can even write more business with that specific carrier. Keep reading for a few ways to insure your future with the right IMO.
What’s the moral to this story?
Don’t ever sign up with an IMO without seeing your commission levels first. Not all final expense insurance companies control what their down line managers do, therefore, they assist in providing a breeding ground for unethical recruiters. As with all industries, you will notice that there are some extremely shady creeps that recruit insurance agents, hence, they only care about making a profit. Just make sure to do your homework and investigate anyone you intend on contracting with. Thankfully, we have Google at our disposal! This has become the most effect tool for outing these shady marketers to everyone that wants to sell life insurance.
There are also plenty of companies that offer fair commission levels and lead costs. You just have to find them. A lot of these insurance marketing organizations also believe you should learn the business from the bottom up. That means once you are a professional at selling the product, then you can decide to build a team or enter into management. We teach this to our agents. However, there are several final expense insurance companies or agencies that will only allow you to sell the products. They tend to deter their agents from growing an agency as they don’t want to end up training their own competition, hence losing the ability to recruit more agents down the road. Unfortunately, this limits the growth of the agents that sell life insurance, therefore capping their income.
What’s my opinion of this whole switch and bait nonsense?
It’s important that we out these corrupt insurance marketers or they will keep up their unethical marketing tactics. Here’s the problem! A lot of these shady IMO’s have you sign a contract with a non disclosure agreement, before you can even contract with them to their life insurance products. You find out that you’ve been cheated and can’t even say anything to anyone without worrying about being sued. A non-compete agreement is the tell tale sign of these MLM, mortgage protection and final expense insurance companies. There is nothing wrong with protecting your company, but convincing agents to sign a non-compete because you’re doing shady stuff is just horrible. Sadly, it’s still acceptable!
If you find yourself contracted and working with a potentially unethical insurance agency, check out the video below on how to get a release agreement signed. Feel free to contact me direct at doug@ufesonline.com. I’ll be happy to give you some sound advice on how to deal with your specific situation. We know that everyone is different and there are many companies with unique business models. Just because something is not good for me, doesn’t mean that it’s not good for you. This is where you will be better off deciding for yourself, based on the options laid out for you. We will be more than happy to lay out several options and point you in the right direction. The last thing you need is to end up picking another IMO that doesn’t fit you or that is doing something shady.