Adventures In Insurance

Most people only deal with insurance companies as a customer. Unfortunately, I dealt with an insurance company as an agent which gives a new meaning of frustration. So, here is my story.

After I moved last year, I started looking for a job. As most people do, I posted my resume just about everywhere on the net and responded to just about every employment ad I saw. After a few months an insurance company contacted me (I was not looking for an insurance job) and suggested that I consider selling insurance. I knew nothing about selling insurance nor did I have an insurance license but they assured me they could help me get licensed and become successful.

Before I would give this a try I had a few conditions and if I didn’t get the job because of these conditions then I would be fine with that. I told them I did not want to do cold calling. They said we would be only contacted people that have already been contacted by the company. Second, I said I am not a high pressure sales person. They said they do not tolerate high pressure sales. The next condition was that I would not go door to door to sell insurance. They said you only go door to door if you want to. Finally, I said I would not lie to any customer. They said I would be fired if I lied to a customer. With those conditions understand, we moved forward.

Step one was to attend a 2 hour briefing where they introduce the company and give us some information about the job, the company, and what is expected. They said they are looking for PhD’s, not as in doctors, but their definition is “Poor, hungry and driven”. I didn’t understand that at first.

Next was to obtain my “Producers License”, which allows me to sell insurance in this state. The insurance company had a few options but they recommended the online training course. So, I bought the software and studied the course. The program was not hard and after a couple of weeks I scheduled my test and I passed! I am now a licensed insurance producer.

Now that I passed my license, I was scheduled to attend a 4 day training session the insurance company was putting on nearby. With about 30 other people, we attended this fast paced training program. After 9 hours each day we ended up with a few hours of studying each night. Everybody who attended the seminar was hired already. Well, not hired, but under contract with the insurance company. Up to this point I have made $0 yet I had already invested a couple of hundred bucks plus a few weeks of study.

Next I need to spend some time with a trainer and learn the ropes. I thought that was what the training session was for. During the training sessions we had to learn scripts both for the phones and in person. Now the first day I had to listen to people on the phone calling customers all day long using variations of these scripts. These insurance salespersons had taken the basic script and tailored it for themselves. I was concerned that this was cold calling, as many people where hanging up on the caller right away, but I was assured that these people had been previously contacted by the company and it was okay to call them. That didn’t add up, but ok, I needed work.

The next day I was out in the field with a trainer visiting potential customers that were contacted yesterday and had setup an appointment. Well, that didn’t work well as most people where not home or didn’t let us in the door. Not a good day. My trainer said this is unusually and I accepted that statement.

Back to the office the next day and it was my turn to start calling. They provided me a call list from a nearby town and I started calling the people listed. Every time I started on my script they quickly hung up on me. Not encouraging. My trainer said I was too mechanical when I read the script. I need to learn it and speak it as if I was just saying the words, not reading them. I also needed to learn the philosophy of “Acknowledge and move on.” Which means when talking to a prospect you need to knowledge that the person said something and move on with the presentation. Let me give you an example.

“Good morning Mr. Smith. I am Bob Ackerman with such and such company …”

Mr. Smith interrupts, “I don’t need any more damn insurance.”

‘I know Mr. Smith. That is exactly why I called.” Then I continue my script.

You see, I acknowledge he said something, doesn’t matter what he says, and I continued with my prepared presentation on the phone. That catches a lot of people off guard. They first assumed that I really did listen to them, which I didn’t, and they stopped enough to start listening to the rest of my presentation. I did have a little problem with this and my trainer explained that people are conditioned to say no to insurance agents and this little technique starts to build trust and it is my job to continue to build trust until an appointment is set, and then at the appointment, continue to build a trusting relationship until a sale is make. So the rest of the afternoon I spent practicing the scripts with others as my trainer setup more appointments for the next 2 days.

I got to admit, many of the veteran agents had a real talent for sweet talking a customer. They get their bad calls as everybody, but once somebody is on the phone and listening, the magic really happens. In the mean time, at the twice weekly office meeting, veteran agents were bragging about the commissions they made on recent sales. They appeared to be making big money and I figured if they could, I could. So, I decided to put 100% effort into this.

Back in the field, free of the office, we started our appointments. My job was to watch, carry the presentation notebook, listen and learn. I watched my trainer get us invited in while controlling the conversation. That is the technique that makes everything work; the salesperson has to control the conversation. If not, we might as well leave.

After a few days of appointment calling, I started to set a few appointments on my own. I started to get better on the script. After a few weeks in the field with a trainer, I started to deliver the presentations. The first few times I stumbled on my script and once back to the office I spent time with others practicing my script. There were several pages to memorize.

Now I made nothing in the first month but on the second month I started to see some sales. Some sales were with the trainer where we split the commission 50/50 and some sales I did by myself. I started to see some hope in this business. I continued to hear these veteran agents making lots of money from their sales and I had hope of money coming in. Still, at this point I had made less that $500 for 3 months of effort (from when I started the course that is, not from when I started selling).

But on the personal side I was starting to get grumpy and didn’t sleep well. My friends said I was turning back into the person I was a few years ago when my last job started to get bad. So, I started to try to figure out what was going on and I quickly remembered my 4 conditions of employment I stated right from the front. I had broken every one of them.

My first condition is that I would not cold call people. I spent 1 day a week, all day, calling 150 to 200 telephone numbers to obtain 5 appointments for the next day. I also spend another day of the week calling 200+ telephone numbers to obtain 5 appointments for the next day, and since there are 5 days in the week, setting 5 appointments for that day. That means 15 appointments a week. That doesn’t sound like much, but I was getting one person to talk to me out of every 20 calls and every fifth person I talked to usually was an appointment, on average. So I called almost 500 people a week. I didn’t like that as most were verbally hostile and hung up on me.

Now these people were suppose to be people that the company has contacted and they expected our call. After some investigation, I discovered that these were the people that the company had mass mailed and these people did not respond for information. So, I was cold calling people that were not interested.

The second condition was that I would not do high pressure sales. While on the phones they were saying that we should, “acknowledge and move on” at least 5 times before hanging up. I was getting hung up on as soon as I said the company I represented. Once the prospect knew it was an insurance company calling, they hung up. I was told me presentation was wrong. These people didn’t want to talk to an insurance agent. I also thought some of the presentation material was close to high pressure. The script was designed to confuse and pressure the prospect into being concerned that they do have the wrong type of insurance or not enough. They, the branch managers, insisted that this was not cold calling, but I started to feel differently.

The third condition was that I would not go door to door. A couple of times while out with the trainer she said that since a few appointments were not home and we had hours before our next appointment, we need to knock on doors to get appointments. Absolutely not I told her. She sent me back to the office to make more calls and set some appointments.

The final condition was that I would not lie to a customer. And I felt that I was lying to the people I talked to. I was implying things that I did not know were true. I said I was bringing them a package of information and all I was bringing them was a presentation. Several had asked for my package of information which I did not have.

I had these concerns and I talked to the person that hired me and he gave me his answers to my concerns and I was told to take a couple of days off to think about it. He said the following things. As for the cold calling, he insisted that I was not cold calling as the company had already contacted them. Well, it is a play on words, but in my mind that was not cold calling. As to the high pressure sales he said the scripts are designed to avoid high pressure sales and direct the customer into realizing their needs. Maybe so, but if this presentation was presented to me, I would walk away, hang up, or do something. Regarding door to door sales, he said that was my choice but sometimes you have to do that, until I built up a portfolio of customers. I still wasn’t going to do door to door. Finally he said I was not lying to customers. We were saying in our script that we were providing a, “package of information regarding your rights and entitlements …” We did not have a package. We had a presentation. He tried to convince me it was the same thing.

While thinking about everything that was said, I had an epiphany. I finally understood the “PhD” comment from the beginning. They wanted the, “poor, hungry and driven” because the pay is poor, since you don’t have any money you are hungry, and their promises of big money keeps you driven.

At the next office meeting, as I was listening to the big sales from the veterans, I looked at our point board. You are awarded points based on the sales commission and everybody has their point total on the board. Salespersons were ranked according to sales total and the higher totals got bonuses. The board shows one point per dollar of commission earned. I quick mental calculation showed me that most of the people had less than$8,000 of commission this year, and it was already September. Unless the last few months are killers, I could make more at McDonalds flipping burgers.

I also realized that whenever I talked to them, they always, “acknowledged and moved on,” to what I said. They never agreed to my conditions, they “acknowledged and moved on”. They were not concerned about me and my concerns; they “acknowledged and moved on”. They used their sales tactics right on me, and I bought it, until now.

I finally realized that I was compromising what I believed and I had to resign, thus ending my brief career as an insurance sales person.

I sleep well at nights now and my friends say I am not longer grumpy.