SFB, my suggestion would be to conduct reviews with all your clients and bring in a top-notch insurance producer to help you close business.  Preferably, a producer that knows the ins and outs of concepts like economic life value, pension maximization, and long term care planning with permanent life insurance.  This way, you'll get to learn on the job, make a good bit of money in your off months, and learn about how life insurance works without messing your clients up.

Life Insurance is EASY. You can beat “AGENTS” by focusing on  the NEED. Do your fact finder, then show 10,15,20,30 years term solutions. If they follow the plan they should not need life insurance once they are ready to retire. If they do… then they have failed on their accumulation goals. If that were the case the “Agents” whole life / UL /VL solution would have casued them even more pain.  Sell insurance with these words : IF YOU NEED IT YOU SHOULD HAVE IT, IF YOU DON’T NEED IT … DON’T HAVE IT.

How do you know what a client “NEEDS” 10, 20, or 30 years from now?  I’m not saying term is bad - I sell a lot of it.  But the whole BTID strategy has blown a lot of people up, especially if they retired around 2007-2008.  For some, a permanent death benefit with guaranteed values can provide the safety net a lot of people need.

Life Insurance is EASY. You can beat “AGENTS” by focusing on  the NEED. Do your fact finder, then show 10,15,20,30 years term solutions. If they follow the plan they should not need life insurance once they are ready to retire. If they do… then they have failed on their accumulation goals. If that were the case the “Agents” whole life / UL /VL solution would have casued them even more pain.  Sell insurance with these words : IF YOU NEED IT YOU SHOULD HAVE IT, IF YOU DON’T NEED IT … DON’T HAVE IT.

Insurance planning as well as all financial services are a planning process.  Fact Find, Implement, Review.. Repeat. 

Pokerguy, your lack of insurance knowledge is causing you to not help your clients as well as you otherwise might, and it’s hurting your income.

Bob,

Most insurance carriers will provide some form of local support, all the way up to point of sale and through the UWing process.  I use Hartford that has Dedicated Life Consultants.  Doesn't cost me a nickel and I get some expert help closing sales that are WAY over my head.

Good luck!

Insurance prospecting is indeed difficult when you lack enough knowledge. To be confident, I think extra careful study about the insurance policy you are about to offer is best. Because even if you are already an expert with basic insurance knowledge, there will be certain details that is unique only with your subject. Drafting anticipated questions from each policy item is the best practice, in my opinion.

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SFB - Another idea, depending on the demographic of your clients, is making sure they have adequate disability income protection.  Most investment advisors and insurance agents shy away from this coverage (look at this forum topic, it has been almost exclusively about life insurance), but may be one of the most important early in a person's life.  If you are looking for prospecting ideas the market is huge, nearly 70% of the people in the US are without coverage.  Couple that with the fact that most advisors do not address the need, with time you could become a niche expert in this field and pick up the client's other business as well.  Another way of thinking about it is a way to preserve your investment book of business....how long would it take mid-40s married couple with three kids, one in college, mortgage and other debts to go through their $250K of assets with you if the primary income earner became disabled even for just a year?  How much longer would it take them to accumulate those assets again?

I use insurance to prospect. I mainly use group health insurance. It gets me in the door, and pays well.

Set aside one hour a day for prospecting. Discipline yourself to make this time nonnegotiable, and treat it as a priority.

[quote=Pokerguy]Life Insurance is EASY. You can beat "AGENTS" by focusing on  the NEED. Do your fact finder, then show 10,15,20,30 years term solutions. If they follow the plan they should not need life insurance once they are ready to retire. If they do.. then they have failed on their accumulation goals. If that were the case the "Agents" whole life / UL /VL solution would have casued them even more pain.  Sell insurance with these words : IF YOU NEED IT YOU SHOULD HAVE IT, IF YOU DON'T NEED IT ... DON'T HAVE IT.[/quote]

You sound like just a typical "TERM ONLY" person. I suggest you learn more about insurance. It would help increase your sales.  You are not providing your clients a great service when you commit yourself to only providing one product.  WL insurance is a way to accumulate wealth, levrage assets, and so much more. If you were truly  focused on their need you would see this.

I am pursuing my insurance studies as side course and my main target is Investment Banking for which I am studying CFA full time and doing my internship in transaction dept, I wanted to know about insurance and stuff because it will be of great use in the process, so for me insurance was just know how stuff and I am happy with it.

Which is easier to sell, insurance or a Managed Account?

I pitch insurance using what is called the theory of decreasing responsibility which states that in the early years, you may need coverage because of a large mortgage, high debts, young children, and little savings but in the later years, you’ve paid off your debts/mortgage, your children are grown, and you need retirement income.

Always sell term policies, zero in on young/mid-life families, preferably with children in their teens or younger. A lot of times older individuals will ask about life insurance but it becomes far too costly.

The reason why I focus on term policies is because of many reasons such as:
A. higher death benefit
B. invest the difference in mutual funds/stocks/bonds
C. lower monthly premium
D. investing the difference provides liquidity
E. Coverage isn’t needed for life

Whole life products typically have poor returns in the beginning years(years 0-5/6/7). You can compare by using an illustrator and simple savings calculator. Another thing is, why do they need to buy insurance to create an estate? Whole life is often sold because of it’s guaranteed payout, meaning their children will receive some money. But the benefit to the insurance company is that you stop paying the premium at a later date so they don’t have to pay that death benefit. For retired people with limited income, a $300/month premium can be extremely expensive. Another point is, why are you still saving at retirement? You should be slowly spending your money so that you have $0.00 the day that you die UNLESS your intention is to leave money to your children/heirs.

On the other hand, term policies are meant for temporary protection; until the kids are grown, mortgage is paid off, debts are taken care of etc.

Using life insurance as a savings tool is ridiculous in my eyes. Because you must take a “policy loan” to cash out. Meaning that future returns are diminished because you took out some money. For instance, you have $100k earning 10%, you took out 50k. Now your cash value is 50k but you’ve got interest charges of 4% per annum on 50k. So the remaining 50k is earning 10%-4%=6% after the policy loan unless you pay back that 50k. So where’s the savings benefit if your return diminishes because you took out money? Another thing about whole life policies is that they are usually invested in the market similar to an s&p 500 index fund. Not everyone wants to assume that level of risk. So it isn’t suitable to recommend a whole life policy when your client’s risk tolerance is more conservative.

The best way to utilize whole life is to pay premiums until the day you die. That way, you maximize the death benefit. I like to think of it as a tool to create an estate.

With the advances of medicine occurring daily, it is almost impossible to truly predict how long we will live. Therefore, mortality tables fail to truly predict advances in medicine. They will always be on the more conservative side and use information available today. Therefore, the principles of mortality tables fail to determine how long we will live and the insurance companies will always benefit because as more time passes, we die at an older age. Therefore, you’re better off investing in the markets yourself unless for some reason you think you will die sooner than the average; you pick up heavy drinking/smoking/poor eating habits after you’ve taken your insurance blood test.

The average person only needs the majority of thier life insurance coverage for only a certain amount of years (until their kids are grown up, debts paid off, etc.). They usually only need a small amount of insurance in later years to pay for funeral expenses. The big life insurance sales come from estate planning, business planning, etc.