You need the right partnerships to grow your life insurance business
My life insurance career started in 2002, when I entered it as a captive agent for one of the largest insurance companies in the country. I was a good sales agent, but I wasn’t happy. I felt like a “captive” in the other sense of the word: captive to a business model that required me to constantly sell, sell, sell the benefits of having life insurance to anyone I could make an appointment with.Some of them didn’t want to buy life insurance, even if they could afford it and their families might have benefitted.
Buying life insurance, I came to realize, is a highly personal decision that involves weighing many factors, from finance to family planning to health. I couldn’t make the decision about whether someone needed life insurance. Only they could make that decision. But I was required to try to convince them anyway. It didn’t feel right.Neither did the hefty fees for the products I sold, which I knew were higher than many competitors’.
Then a funny thing happened. As I dutifully worked to make appointments trying to convince people to buy life insurance, a few customers came to me. These people actually wanted to buy life insurance. They didn’t need convincing. Some were young couples starting a family. Others had experienced the death of an uninsured family member.
A light bulb went on in my head. I realized there could be many more people out there who want life insurance and do not have to be sold. I figured the best place to find these people was on the Internet.
The idea felt comfortable; it felt right. It’s how I would like to purchase life insurance myself.
The internet would do more than take the wheedling and convincing out of life insurance sales, I thought. If done right, it could also be faster and cheaper for customers. The more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. In an increasingly digital age, more and more people would start to prefer this tailored, unobtrusive way of buying.
I got licensed in all 50 states and went to work developing an online system allowing people to get the most competitive rates. Whether they decided to buy or not would be totally up to them.
In 2004 I launched my first website, www.compassquote.com. It allowed people to run quotes without having to enter their e-mail address or phone number. I let customers do their own research on the site and decide for themselves which company to apply with.
It worked. The business grew slowly but steadily every year.I was always on the lookout for the latest and greatest new technologies that would increase my efficiency. In 2009, my search led me directly to E-financial and its virtual agent program.
Partnering with eFinancial took my business to the next level in a big way. I collected a little information from prospects and entered it into eFinancial’s system. Then, eFinancial took over the process.
For my business model—selling insurance through the internet and over the phone—there’s a tremendous amount of paperwork and email correspondence. It can be daunting and time-consuming. But once I partnered with eFinancial, I was able to concentrate on marketing and selling insurance and leave the paperwork and the back-end case management to them.
It was a partnership made in heaven. Now, eFinancial takes care of 90 percent of my case management, and now my job is almost hands-off. Working with eFinancial has allowed me to focus on my website and marketing, growing the business. As a result, sales have skyrocketed.
In 2012, I qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table. Every policy I did was written through eFinancial. I now have another life insurance website, www.truebluelifeinsurance.com, and continue to grow both businesses. Having the right partner has made all the difference.
by Brian Greenberg
Brian Greenberg is the founder and CEO of CompassQuote Insurance Services, LLC.
CompassQuote provides life insurance to customers online at www.compassquote.com and www.truebluelifeinsurance.com.
Brian is a member of the BBB, NAIFA, and MDRT.