accompanying life agents on a sales call

[thepensionmaven]

I am in the frequent position of accompanying many life insurance agents on their pension sales calls. I try to limit this because I'm afaid I won't be adequately compensated for my time.

I can see it two ways:

1. If we sell the case, I get the administration. Many times, I leave a bill for the administration or the plan document and they pay immediately.

2. Lawyers and other professionals charge for their time. We are professionals (although lawyers like to think of theselves as THE ONLY professionals on the planet.

If I am charging $500 on a case, and it takes me 2 hours each way travel time plus an hour meeting with the client, I have not made any money. And, if the agent blows the sale, we have all wasted our time.

Steve

What is the usual practice, if there is one?

[Ervin Barham]

This is the age old question. When you go out on a sales call (and I have done many of these with stock brokers) are you a salesman or an administrator?

Most admin firms have one or more "sales people" who do this and get paid a commission on the sale of the admin. Thus it becomes a marketing cost and is built into your admin fees.

If you are like me now, which is I am the sales force, the administrator and the consultant, I bill for the time if I get the business. But I also let the broker know up front - so he knows to qualify the prospect!

I'm sure there are many other methods - hope this helps.

[actuarysmith]

I am in a role of shareholder, consultant, salesman, and administrator. We have a fairly large block of plans (1,400) and we all wear many hats.

We get alot of calls from agents, brokers, planners, etc. to accompany them on sales calls. I usually try and "screen" them before agreeing to anything. If I had $1.00 for every time I picked up the phone and was told there was a "done deal" waiting for us".....................

Anyway, I usually mention to them that there are a few of us, and hundreds of them (referrals sources that are prospecting). Simple math forces us to conclude that you have to have some rules to operate by.

1. We normally ask referral sources to go to the initial fact finding meeting alone. They are not to try and sell anything - just ask alot of questions. (you may have to coach them).

2. We normally will not attend ANY prospect meeting outside of a one hour driving radius for ANY reason, Period. Attending this type of meeting would cost you at least 1/2 of a full day. Unless you charge for the meeting, you probably will not recover enough cases/ revenue over time to pay for the lost production in other areas.

3. We ask the referral source to give the prospect a very general idea of our fee structure on the initial fact finding visit. We provide the referral source with ranges to communicate. We mention that this will be fine tuned when we provide a formal proposal. (This will save you from driving an hour to see a prospect, only to find out they did not realize that there were admin fees to pay or that their perception is that they are too high. I am not kidding, this has happened.)

4. After the agent/broker has had the initial fact finding visit and communicated our fee schedule, we generally provide a formal proposal. (Sometimes we need a few additional pieces of information).

5. Depending upon the geographic location of prospect, type of plan, potential fees generated, etc. We will offer to attend the final sales meeting. Our goal is to get an appointment with the real decision maker. Don't waste time with anyone else! (In the small to medium size client arena, this normally includes the owner(s)).

6. If the prospect is not very good, we ask the agent to get a prelim sale on the formal proposal without us. If the prospect still appears to be very interested, then we will go out to meet the client, hopefully to close the sale.

Please keep in mind that these steps occur in an ideal world. We try and operate by these guidelines as best we can. In reality, we still get called in to ackward situations where we have to go out on the first call (political reasons, big name prospect, major producing broker, etc.).

If you are just starting out, you may have to go on a few more rookie agent/ broker meetings earlier in the process. Then as your block of business builds, and you get several referral sources properly trained, you will find yourself selling more plans with less effort. Something to look forward to.................