Thanks for dropping by............

Hi Insurance Agents,

Welcome to my Blog. I'm excited to be offering tips and ideas that have helped me through the years selling insurance. Here you will find articles, strategies and recommendations on increasing your productivity in the insurance industry.



In the eight years I have worked in the Insurance industry, I have been fortunate to work with many top producers that have shared successful ideas from which I have been able to form some practical strategies.



The tips that I will offer here will keep you increasing productivity and income.



Please check back weekly, as I will be adding articles and tips to increase your bottom line.

Cheers,

Ethan Selph


Thursday, May 27, 2010

The battle between Mojo and Norvax for a CRM

Hi Ethan!

I have just listened to your recorded webinar from Stellar Prospects – thank you so much for all of your insight!
I have been using the Mojo Dialer for a few months, and I also use Norvax Autoresponders, and I have been really happy with both programs. I am just wondering how you set up your Call Results – and then send those prospects to lists. You mentioned that when you are working your NOT INTERESTED list and you tell someone you are going to call them at renewal, I am assuming you put them in a list to dial in December (for example). Then a list populates for renewals that come up in December. There aren’t enough Call Results, so I was just wondering if you could give me some insight on how you organize it.

Dear Krysten, 

  If you haven't seen my video on how I have set up my autoresponders through Norvax you definately need to watch that.  It is on this blog a few months ago.  That explains how I categorize all of my clients. 

  When someone tells me they aren't interested right now I move them into a folder called "Not Interested June" or whatever month I am in.  That makes it easy to export from my CRM into the MOJO autodialer.  Right now pretty much any list that that I am calling is exported from my CRM like Norvax into the auto dialer.  It can take about 3 minutes a day but it is the easiest way to do things that I can figure out.  I am in the middle of deciding whether I should build my own CRM, using Quickbooks as a CRM, and Mojo as a CRM.  All of them have different capabilities which are great but none of them offer everything that I want. 

  I am working with Quickbooks to have everything integrated with one of the CRMs' so that you can pull up a ton of different reports like forecasting tools etc to help out insurance agents.  So in the meantime I am just like everyone else..........toggling between 3-4 different programs and having my wishlist of features in a CRM which never seems to get fulfilled.

Also, do you really feel confident that the Mojo Dialer autoresponders will be able to replace Norvax? Are they going to have the volume and quality that Norvax provides? 

The one thing that the Norvax autoresponders have is the ability to be able to see who has viewed different proposals.  If you take that away and the quoting engine you have really nothing.  I don't like the fact that you cannot view any history of emails sent to your client on Norvax.  I think that problem with Norvax makes it about a 3 for a CRM.  I have to rely on protection of my incoming and outgoing emails to keep clients in check.  I have discussed this many times with Norvax and they haven't implemented anything yet and it has been a year since my conversations.  You will still have to have an email account like Outlook to be able to receive incoming emails because Mojo is going to do a pop 3 but at least it can send out an email everytime you call someone if you want.  I could really see this paying off on missed appointments and renewals.  You just don't want to go crazy with the settings otherwise people will mark you as a spammer. 

Ideally I would like to have a Quoting engine, Quickbooks, Email account, and flexible CRM into one system however it will probably take me about 1 year to complete it.  I have the CRM part built but the Quickbooks is a tough piece of the puzzle. 

Next week I am going to put up some new charts that I made up on the schedule that hopefully will help you do some forecasting stuff.  If you don't have every insurance account in Quickbooks I believe that you are losing a ton of valuable information.  If you are interested in this please contact me through www.biztartfinancial.com.

As for who is going to be the best autoresponder system this summer I don't know.  I would definately give Mojo a good try if you are on it all of the time.  I know their customer service is really good and it doesn't look like it is going to cost much more but I could be wrong.

Once again, thank you so much for all of your insights! Much appreciated!

Krysten

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

What is "churning" or "twisting" with health insurance

I have had several conversations with different insurance producers on my strategies for selling health insurance.  Some have accused me of "twisting" or "churning" policies.  I will explain how I sell most of my clients and you can decide on your own what you think "twisting" or "churning" is. 

I call my clients every 4 months to check on them and their policy.  At renewal time if I can find a better policy for a cheaper price I will apply through that company.  Here is an email from a prominent GA when I asked him if he thought I was "twisting" or "churning" insurance business.

Hey Ethan,


You are right in that if you are saving the client money and/or providing them better coverage (or a reasonable combination of the two), you are safe from any of your sales being considered churning. This is what you are doing when working with old clients and no insurance department or anyone else for that matter would ever give you a difficult time for doing this, because you are obviously doing what is in the better interest of the client.

I've never heard of any sort of 20% or other percentage rule. I think whoever you talked to heard this hear say from a non-credible source, or maybe was just confused altogether. If there was such a rule, it would be state specific and I can tell you that rule definitely does NOT exist in PA. And I've never heard of any other state having any such rule.

One other thing to add, even if a specific state did have such a rule, it would be impossible for them to do anything to you as an agent if you saved all of those clients either money, or gave them better policies. You are really doing what's in the best interest of the client at that point. What are you supposed to do, turn the client away even though you can save them money? Bottom line is, your safe. You're really got no concern with this.

Thanks Ethan!

Thanx Much,
John Pequeno
American Insurance Organization


Here is the Wikepedia version of "twisting" or "churning" health insurance. 

§ 781. Twisting
(a) A person shall not make any statement that is known, or should have been known, to be a misrepresentation (1) to any other person for the purpose of inducing, or tending to induce, such other person either to take out a policy of insurance, or to refuse to accept a policy issued upon an application therefor and instead take out any policy in another insurer, or (2) to a policyholder in any insurer for the purpose of inducing or tending to induce him or her to lapse, forfeit or surrender his or her insurance therein.

(b) A person shall not make any representation or comparison of insurers or policies to an insured which is misleading, for the purpose of inducing or tending to induce him or her to lapse, forfeit, change or surrender his or her insurance, whether on a temporary or permanent plan.

West's Ann.Cal.Ins.Code § 781

Churning, also known as twisting, is an attempt by an unscrupulous agent from an insurance company to cancel your existing policy and replace it with a new one, drawing down your cash value (called ?juice? in industry jargon) to pay for it. This activity generates additional commission for the agent and may result in your having to pay more down the line. It is also a word used to describe the actions of a stock broker who continually buys and sells for an account, churning profits for the broker oftentimes eating up whatever profits might be there for the consumer.


You can view the link here at http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_churning_and_twisting_in_insurance

Limited Medical Plans

I particularily don't like limited medical plans but Teamcorp seems to be above average.  Since AIM Health Plans has had so many problems this is the next best option instead of a risk pool plan.  Their benefits are, I believe, twice as good as AIMS' but the whole lack of HIPAA compliancy issue is a little hard to sell for Teamcorp.  I am selling this as a short term plan and then I work like the dickens to get a copy of their medical records from the client and try and sort out a bunch of their pre-existing conditions.  It definately seems that doctors and facilities are exaggerating the health issues now adays.

You can also have the client go to http://www.mib.com/ to get a copy of their consumer report from the Medical Information Bureau.  I always tell my clients that they have every right to see what their doctors' opinion is of them. 

You can get around a 25% commission with Teamcorp and I truly believe it is better than not having any type of coverage.

Monday, May 10, 2010

How to call "Not Interested" leads or "Aged Leads"

Ethan,

Are you using Mojo as your CRM?

When you call old leads 1 year old + what is the general scripting?

Thank you,

Dave

Dear Dave,

I haven't been using the Mojosells.com product as a CRM because I didn't realize that it is capable of that functionality until a few weeks ago. I fully intend to use that system as my CRM especially since they will have email autoresponders that will be combined with the CRM in July 2010.

Whenever I am calling someone that expressed themselves as "not interested" a year ago I follow a few guidelines that make my call with them a bit more pleasant.

1. I take a deep breath before I start talking to them.
2. I combine 3-4 sentences into one so that there is no way they can tell me "not interested" before I finish my phone introduction because there is no pause.
3. My voice script is as follows...........Hi my name Ethan and I talked to you last year about health insurance and you said that you were interested and I told you that I would follow up with you if I noticed that there were some cheaper plans that have come out and that is why I am calling you. What insurance company do you have? How much do you pay each month? What is your deductible? Etc..........
4. If they aren't interested again I let them know that I will call them back about a year from now when they get their rate increase and if they get a rate increase before the next 12 months are up to call back on the phone number that shows on their caller id.

Autoresponder Template

Autoresponder Template 15 Dec 09 Rev 2[1]

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Insurance Leads and Bookkeeping

I just had a client call and ask why they were double billed. I opened up my Quickbooks file that shows all of my clients and the payments that have been made to the insurance company and was able to resolve the issue right there. I didn't even have to call the insurance company! I cannot tell you how beneficial having all of your accounts in Quickbooks is.

You can use Quickbooks as well to let you know which lead sources are most profitable. Usually we can import your statements from the insurance companies right into Quickbooks.