Surviving As an Insurance Marketing Recruiter

The following information illustrates why surviving is a constant challenge and failing of fellow insurance marketing recruiters is a daily happening.

FACT - Only 50% of agent recruiters treat agent recruiting as a full time sole occupation. The others find being an insurance marketing recruiter harder than initially fought. Income quickly enters the picture, and must immediately be dealt with. The logical choice for many is to merge in personal sales products. A lack of hands on recruiting skills training or marketing knowledge is more deadly than a viper and cobra combined. Sadly, within the next 3 years a total of 47% of today's insurance marketers with not be with us.

1. TOO MANY RECRUITERS. It is far too easy to find a multi-level contract where you can earn overrides on brokers you recruit to sell insurance products. Some extremely well established insurance marketing organizations provide almost all brokers to start out with a MGA, Managing General Agent contract. The Managing General Agent wins with higher personal commissions, his producers win with decent policy payments, and of course the insurance marketing organization signs up more independent agents and receives higher sales volume. Even though this is not a pyramid scheme, the foundation can easily crumble.

This creates a recruiting problem for the other sales agent recruiters. They now have a new generation of casual brokers with higher level contracts to compete with. Seeing the possibility of "easy money" it entices some broker to try breaking into the insurance marketing ranks.

2. NO EXCLUSIVE MARKETING RIGHTS. Rarely is an insurance marketer given an exclusive territory by the insurance company. That means there are no sole rights to market the insurance company's particular product or entire product line. For national independent insurance marketing organizations, this typically can cause recruiting pain and financial drain. The newest issue of a major insurance publisher may promote 3 different national firms displaying costly full page ads going after the same producer at the same time, with the identical product. In turn. so many insurance companies are extremely ignorant when giving out marketing rights. As a result a wide base of rather eager potential brokers never hear about their product.

3. CHEAP MARKETERS NEVER ADAPT TO CHANGE. There are more ways to reach prospective producers than dialing the phone over and over again. Something cheap, does not automatically make it profitable, yet it is usually the most time consuming.This same horde of marketers using cheap methods are the same ones not staying up to date with news affecting insurance marketing trends and their future.

For example: Currently a gigantic misconception exists that telemarketing only applies to Consumers lists. Marketers are anxious to to start calling agents, semi-independent agents plus independent brokers. None of these categories clearly exempt from the FTC rulings. There call on of 3 styles of agents with a do-not-call listing and you many be looking at the help wanted ads, along with a fine up to $11,000. CAUTION All cell phone numbers are protected, so do not call them. Plus you must get FTC approval before any mass telephone soliciting to anyone who has not requested your call.

Insurance agent recruiters are suppose to be effective at contracting top-notch or up and rising agents. There is no saying that they must slave away at the phone, trying to reach their ideal agent. If you are going to call lots of agents, hire an outside marketing firm, or a person you can train for about $10.00 per hour. Ask yourself how much is your time worth? Hopefully it is worth more than $10.000 per hour. The insurance world is constantly revolving. If you can't adapt, get out of the way of others that can.

4. PROS & CONS on EMAILING. Inexperienced marketers do not understand the advantages and faults of emailing insurance brokers. They think they can go out and purchase an accurate list of insurance agents that they contact in-house over and over. Take my word: No source is going to provide you your own personal email list of insurance agents. Believe me or feel free to spend hours intensely searching and trying to prove me wrong. Caution: Insurance Email List Cons are plentiful.

Unfortunately there is not (and probably never be) a phone book like directory of independent insurance agent email addresses. Few established agents have less than 3 different emails. One of these they will readily give out, the email address is used as a spam collector. Add to this that during the course of 12 months one email will be dropped and one new one added. Agents do not like feeling like they are just a number. One out of 1,500,000 to be more exact. When agent email blasting is done, most have some form of email blocker stopping your message. Even if your email reaches an actual insurance agent, statistics show that 2/3 of emails are never read. Spam whistle blowers are abundant and effective.

The advantage of emailing insurance agents. Properly done, emailing the right agents, in the proper manner gets five stars. These should be agents you already have under contract. Or they could be leads of prospective agents you are following up on. ALWAYS get their email address. If you have an insurance website, offer something for free so the agent will provide a valid email address. Some agents hesitate up to 7 months before deciding to contract. Sending a series of monthly emails could easily pay off in picking up additional producers at virtually no additional cost. It is also an ideal, cost-effective way to let your producers know about the other products you offer.

Understanding why fellow marketers are failing, allows making changes necessary to surviving.

Well published author, Don Yerke likes to concentrate on what you don't know or what no one else dares to print. Tell it like it is.

Watch for his new paperback book debuting on Amazon this spring. It is loaded with great insurance marketing and recruiting information.

Come and get your FREE "Think and Grow Rich" Ebook by Napoleon Hill instantly. The website address is [http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com]