life insurance leads

Life Insurance leads

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Commerce Bank chooses Efinancial to power life insurance business.

Commerce Insurance Services Enhances Web-Based Consumer Services

CHERRY HILL, N.J., April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Commerce Insurance Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Commerce Bancorp, Inc. , has introduced a new service available to customers via the commerceonline.com website. Now customers who visit the website can obtain instant term life insurance rate quotes and initiate their purchase of coverage online. The new service is being offered through a partnership with EFinancial, a nationwide, web-based life insurance brokerage.


"In the spirit of the Commerce tradition of convenience, we wanted customers to have quick access to quotes and coverage for one of the most popular types of life insurance," said Commerce Insurance Services CEO, George E. Norcross, III.

Michael Tiagwad, Commerce Insurance's President said: "Important life stage events like a marriage, purchase of a new home, the birth of a child or planning for retirement typically trigger a number of financial services transactions which include decisions about the need for more life insurance. Typically the first question in the consumer's mind is the cost. We wanted to create a convenient shopping experience for our customers to get term insurance rate quotes - online, whenever it's convenient for them - then follow that with service provided by an exceptional team of licensed professionals to help the customer select the coverage that's right for them, finalize their application and get their coverage started."

EFinancial is a web-based insurance brokerage that has developed proprietary software "ALISS" (The Automated Life Insurance Sales System), the first product to automate nearly every step of the life insurance sales process from rate quotes through application, medical exam (when required) to the final steps of policy issuance through licensed professional insurance agents. According to Michael Burns, CIS Vice President of Life Insurance Operations, only a select number of A-rated life insurance companies' products will be offered through EFinancial's software. Mr. Burns commented, "Once again, in the spirit of convenience, we've selected a few insurance companies we believe offer great coverage at competitive prices for our online offering."

About Commerce Insurance Services
Since its inception in 1996, through strong internal growth and carefully planned acquisitions Commerce Insurance Services (CIS) now ranks #22 among the nation's top 100 largest insurance brokerages. Through a network of 14 offices, CIS serves more than 130,000 clients with nearly $1 billion in annual premium volume, conducting business in all 50 states. Commerce Insurance Services is a full-service insurance brokerage offering personal insurance, Commercial Property & Casualty Insurance, Employee Benefits and a number of Risk Management or Employee Benefit Consulting Services for larger businesses.

About Commerce Bank
Commerce Bank, "America's Most Convenient Bank," is a leading retailer of financial services with nearly 400 convenient stores in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Virginia and southeast Florida. Commerce plans to build 65+ new stores and create 1,800 career opportunities in 2006. Headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J., Commerce Bancorp has $40 billion in assets and, in 2005, achieved a 27% increase in core deposits, a 34% increase in net loans and total asset growth of 26%. For more information about Commerce, please visit the company's interactive financial resource center at http://www.commerceonline.com.

About EFinancial
Founded in 2001, EFinancial (http://www.EFinancial.net) is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and is a nationwide life insurance brokerage working with more than 3000 independent agents. EFinancial's proprietary software "ALISS" (The Automated Life Insurance Sales System) is the first product to automate nearly every step of the life insurance sales process. EFinancial also operates an award-winning consumer website (http://www.EFinancial.com) where Internet shoppers can compare quotes from top carriers online.

Forward-Looking Statements
The Company may from time to time make written or oral "forward-looking statements," including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in its reports to stockholders and in other communications by the Company, which are made in good faith by the Company pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These forward-looking statements include statements with respect to the Company's beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, expectations, anticipations, estimates and intentions, that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties and are subject to change based on various factors (some of which are beyond the Company's control). The words "may," "could," "should," "would," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause the Company's financial performance to differ materially from that expressed in such forward-looking statements: the strength of the United States economy in general and the strength of the local economies in which the Company conducts operations; the effects of, and changes in, trade, monetary and fiscal policies, including interest rate policies of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the "FRB"); inflation; interest rates, market and monetary fluctuations; the timely development of competitive new products and services by the Company and the acceptance of such products and services by customers; the willingness of customers to substitute competitors' products and services for the Company's products and services and vice versa; the impact of changes in financial services' laws and regulations (including laws concerning taxes, banking, securities and insurance); technological changes; future acquisitions; the expense savings and revenue enhancements from acquisitions being less than expected; the growth and profitability of the Company's non-interest or fee income being less than expected; unanticipated regulatory or judicial proceedings; changes in consumer spending and saving habits; and the success of the Company at managing the risks involved in the foregoing.
The Company cautions that the foregoing list of important factors is not exclusive. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company.Commerce Insurance Services

Web site: http://www.EFinancial.net/
http://www.EFinancial.com/
http://www.commerceonline.com/

Digital Signatures Add New Meaning to Quick Issue Life Insurance!

By Karl Sorton
www.efinancial.net
Karl is the brokerage manager at Efinancial.net. He has been in the insurance industry for over 20 years. Karl has also worked at Eterm, and Insurance Only in addition to running his own successful brokerage.

Tax time just passed by again and more people than ever filed their return with a digital signature. Not one bit of ink is required to sign a US tax return in the digital age. All you have to do is type your name and click a box on a computer screen that declares that action completes a digital signature with just as much legal force as a traditional wet signature. A digital signature may have even more credibility since we can read EVERYONE’s digital signature! If its good enough for the IRS it should be good enough for life insurance companies!

Now some companies offer digital signatures on-line, which can help agents speed processing of life insurance applications. On-line applications eliminate the mountains of paper insurance carriers have been known for. Carriers that have gone digital don’t have to maintain hundreds of thousands of paper files, or scanning equipment to scan the information on that paper into computers. They don’t have to employ people to do data entry, the data is already there. If you stop for a moment and think about the tremendous money saved by not having to maintain the apparatus to move information on paper into the computer, and just start with the customer and agent entering data on the computer instead, you can see how carriers can save enough money to make competitive products available on an electronic platform.

Agents need to save money too. The problem is an agent can’t afford to drive across town to sell a $300 premium policy, put the person through underwriting, and wait weeks or months for the policy to be issued, if at all, even if the commission was 100%. With the new quick issue products the agent can sell the policy on the phone, quickly send the customer an email for their digital signature, let the carriers computer underwrite the customer in a matter of seconds, approve the application and allow the agent to tell the client they are approved, all in that one phone call!

You may wonder how insurance companies can issue such competitive policies in just minutes with electronic signatures when for years they’ve had to gather wet signatures so the company can order medical records from physicians, access the MIB, run credit reports, and potentially do inspection reports to verify information on the application. The answer is databases. Electronic databases allow this information to be accessed immediately, without the paper chase we have been accustomed to.

Underwriting can be simplified dramatically with electronic signatures. The MIB and credit bureaus accept digital signatures. Additionally insurance companies can now access some of the same pharmaceutical databases that pharmacies use when dispensing prescriptions. Some of the original intentions of the pharmaceutical databases were to prevent people from going from doctor to doctor for drug prescriptions, preventing addiction or resale of pharmaceutical drugs. The multiple scrips are discovered at the pharmacy level. It also helps prevent people from getting a prescription from one doctor and innocently getting another prescription from another doctor that is incompatible with the first prescription. Lives are being saved by these databases and they are used by insurance companies to speed the underwriting of life insurance.

Doctors are licensed in every state and a doctor’s name, address, and specialty can be verified by on-line quickly. For example a person who lists a specialist as their primary physician might warrant further investigation if the physician is an oncologist (cancer doctor) and the person said no to the cancer question on the application. The validity of the information on the application would definitely be brought into question if the pharmaceutical database shows a cancer drug was recently dispensed to this same applicant. On the other hand if a general physician is typed on the computer and the pharmaceutical database shows high blood pressure pills have been diagnosed for several years a policy might be able to be issued.

Databases can quickly be accessed through the digital medium that verify the validity of the home address listed on the application, whether the phone number listed on the application is in use and how long that phone line has existed. In many states the existence of a marriage certificate can be verified on-line. Criminal records are in the public domain and can be quickly verified on-line. MVR records in most states can be accessed instantly on-line. If the customer pays by credit card or bank draft there is more assuredness of the applicants identity.

Modern carriers use T1 point-to-point circuits to connect these various databases and underwrite the application in seconds while you wait. Customers who pass the basic screening get their policy immediately. Some customers will be routed out of the on-line system and have to answer further questions via an email or paper follow up system. For example most insurance agents know that an applicant cannot be declined or rated due to information in a applicants MIB file. Member companies must do further research if a positive MIB screen occurs. A carrier may ask the customer more questions if something on the application does not match the information they are seeing on the MIB, and then either approve, rate, or decline coverage. A carrier could even order medical records if they choose, however most carriers in the quick issue market do not because customers who are expecting an instant issue lose interest if weeks must go by for medical records to be ordered and received.

Most carriers currently limit their exposure on on-line quick issue products to $150,000-$250,000 of coverage. This market is currently underserved by agents who are all moving upscale in search of higher premiums and commission dollars. Digital signatures allow agents to profitably sell to the middle income market again.

Due to the complexity of setting up these systems some carriers are depending on Brokerage General Agencies or Financial Institutions to invest in the programming required for on-line insurance platforms. The carriers then act as provider of the product, letting the agent recruiting be done by the BGA’s, and the underwriting be done with preset guidelines and computer programs. Those BGA’s that invest in on-line platforms will benefit as more of the middle market gravitates to easy to acquire no-exam products from the tedius process of traditional underwriting.

The T1’s, digital hubs, and digital signatures continue working for the agent after the sale, allowing commissions to be deposited directly in the agent’s account immediately. A digitally signed direct deposit form does the trick. Now an agent can collect commissions within days instead of the weeks or months it can take for traditional underwriting. Commission annualization is now available with some quick issue carriers. Now an agent can make a sale on Monday over the phone, and have enough money deposited into his account Friday to pay for groceries. Instead of being a waste of time that small sale is now a good source of commission income!


Life Insurance companies accepting digital signatures is good news for agents, carriers, and most importantly, their customers.

Quality Leads and Follow up systems are Key to Internet Life Sales

By Karl Sorton
www.efinancial.net
Karl is the brokerage manager at Efinancial.net. He has been in the insurance industry for over 20 years. Karl has also worked at Eterm, and Insurance Only in addition to running his own successful brokerage. He has experience generating, selling and using life insurance leads.

The growing popularity of shopping via the Internet has caused many experienced life agents to feel like the computer is their competition! Carriers with the best term life rates are finally admitting that 40-55% of term life sales are made from internet leads. The good news is that quality internet leads are available at reasonable cost to agents who are ready to sell insurance over the phone. The best news is that quality Customer Relationship Software is now available that makes internet life sales and follow up easier than ever.

How are internet leads generated? There are many different ways to generate leads over the internet. Some are driven by search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Type “Term Life Insurance” or “Life Insurance” in Google or Yahoo and you’ll see who the players are in search engine leads. Some leads are created when a person responds to an opt-in email campaign. Leads can also be generated after a person has purchased or expressed interest in another product. For example a person may express interest in a mortgage on-line and after they fill out their information for the mortgage quote a page comes up that asks if they are interested in a quote on term life insurance. Banners on web pages also link people to insurance web sites.

What type of internet leads are there? Once a consumer is driven to a web site a successful lead acquisition generally falls into one of two categories, either an application request (AR) or a quote request (QR). An application request is generated when the consumer inputs their contact information and hits a button that says “request application” Since the person requested an application the closing ration on AR’s is higher than on other leads types. A quote request is often generated from the same web page as an application request. With a quote request the customer provides their contact information and hits a button to request a quote. After getting their quote they either abandon the page, hit a button to request additional information, or hit a button to request an application.

What do application requests (AR’s) cost? - Application requests frequently cost $75 to $300. They are frequently priced at a percentage of the premium quoted on the internet, around 10%-15% and sometimes more. For example if the premium quoted on the internet was $1000 the cost of the lead would usually be $100-$150. The placement ratio on these types of leads is frequently 40%-60%. Working application requests requires far fewer phone calls to generate sales, however you will burn through a lot of cash quickly to generate the applications. If your follow up system is untested or you are new to working internet leads you’ll want to steer clear of application requests until you have experience with the follow up and placement process of selling insurance over the internet.

What do quote requests (QR’s) cost? – Quote requests usually cost between $10- $35 and sometimes more. The price usually depends on the age of the prospect. They are often priced lower for younger people where the premiums are low and higher for people over age 30 or 45 where the premiums are higher. For example leads on people under age 30 may be just $12 each. Leads on prospects with a minimum age of 30 may cost about $25 and people with an age of 45 and above may cost about $35. The closing ratio on quote requests usually ranges from 7%-22%. Closing ratio can be measured in many ways in internet tracking lingo. For purposes of this article closing ratio means how many placed and paid cases per hundred leads. A closing ratio of 14% means 14 placed/paid cases per 100 leads. Quote requests require more salesmanship and calls to close the sale than application requests do. If you are on a limited budget or are new to selling insurance over the phone and through the mail you should start with quote requests.

What kind of leads should an agent buy? Most agents working in small offices work quote requests. Many experienced agents stick with quote requests and never graduate to application requests. Agents who prosper with QR’s like the low cost and ready availability of QR leads. Some agents who have worked both AR’s and QR’s prefer the quote requests as they keep their sales skills sharp. When working application requests it is easy to let sales skills get rusty as taking an application request is often just a matter of taking an order. The type of leads you purchase will also depend on your budget. Think of it this way; with application requests you make a little money on a lot of capital. With quote requests you make a lot of money on a little capital. Most agents choose quote requests for the higher potential return and lower costs along the way.

What return should I expect? Since the average placement ratio on 100 QR leads is about 14 cases and the average premium is about $700 you should place about $9800 of premium on an investment of about $2500 assuming you buy age 30 and above quote requests. That equates to a margin of $7300 on your $2500 investment and investment of your time. You will have expenses that will have to come out of that $7300. After all is said and done you should see a profit of $6000 or more on your 100 lead QR effort. As you get better at closing and upselling, your placement ratio and profit should increase! If a $2 to $3 return on every dollar invested in leads sounds good to you then internet leads are for you!

What are the other advantages of Internet Leads? Internet leads are readily available, require none of your time designing an ad campaign, and you can work the leads from the comfort of your home or office. You no longer have to drive around town, put on your best clothes, make sure the car is clean, and all the other assorted issues that surround traditional face to face selling. If you add up the cost of gas, wear and tear on your car, extra clothing expense, and compare the economics of internet leads you’ll almost certainly conclude that they make sense.

You’ll need to get a some items in order before starting you internet lead campaign. First, you need to pick a brokerage house with access to the most competitive term carriers and strong back office support. Secondly you need software designed for this business to maximize the return on your leads. Good CRM software will help you eliminate the headache of tracking leads on paper. The software will also send DRIP emails to your customers and over a period of time some will call in and buy. The best brokerage houses have low cost web sites available that you can brand with your name and picture, enhancing your image when selling over the phone and it’s the perfect place to send your customers that are on your DRIP email list.

Take some time to plan an internet campaign and the computer will be your friend, not your competition!

Life Insurance Leads - Competitive or Exclusive?

If you clicked found this article, chances are you are a life insurance agent, or someone who has purchased life insurance leads before. When purchasing internet generated leads there is 2 types out, competitive or exclusive. Both types have benefits, but the question you should ask is, which will benefit you? Hopefully this breakdown will help you make smart decisions regarding your leads

Competitive Life Insurance Leads-
Competitive life leads are leads which are sold off to multiple agents, multiple times. If you are purchasing a competitive lead, you are getting someone’s life insurance request, that between 1 and 4 agents have also received. If the consumer checked other types of insurance, maybe even more.

The quality of competitive leads is a common reason for purchasing. Competitive lead generators are successful for a reason, agents always rave about reaching potential buyers, and the number of bogus leads is far less than exclusive. The reason for an increase in the contact ratio is a longer more strenuous process, usually more than a few pages for the consumer. The flighty lead will generally leave the site without completing the request. Agents end up receiving a lot of information on a potential life insurance customer.

The price of competitive leads is the main reason agents purchase this type of life lead. Competitive leads tend to be slightly cheaper than exclusive.
Competitive leads do not give the consumer any online rates. Agents sometimes like to be the first person to give out rates over the phone. Especially captive agents, or those contracted with only a few carriers tend to do better with this type of lead.

Exclusive Life Insurance Leads-
The main benefit of an exclusive Life Lead is that you are the only person receiving this lead. The lead, which generally contains less data than a competitive lead is sent to only one agent. This agent then has the ability to call back this lead at their leisure. You likely will not have to worry about losing your sale to the guy up the street.

The quality of exclusive life insurance leads is often suspect. However leads will contain all relevant contact information and life insurance request data like term length, amount smoker status, birthdate, height, weight, etc. Quality among lead generators vary between sites regardless of exclusivity. Mostly it depends on where a website is advertised. Look for the best quality to come off of search engines, where someone is actively looking for quotes.

Exclusive leads use a shorter form, and require less personal information. Generally speaking there is a certain number of people just looking to get quotes, using fake information. However, most exclusive lead generators will show quotes for carriers, and a potential lead will feel more comfortable submitting to a site that has something to offer, and doesn’t just sell off their data multiple times.

Most competitive sites do not say that they are selling it off many times. To a consumer getting “4 free quotes” doesn’t equate to having 4 insurance salesmen call, often thinking that one agent will call with 4 rate quotes.

So there is 2 ways to go. Purchase competitive leads, and see if you can be the first agent to call, make a solid sale and hope that the next 4 agents, can’t beat your rate. Or, call on people who may be slightly less interested, but interested nonetheless and get a few bogus leads mixed in there. From what I have heard around the industry the rule of thumb on exclusive leads is the something like 30% of the leads are just bad data, where competitive is more like 15%. Can you make up that 15% difference selling to leads that are yours alone.

Your best bet is to try some of both and see which work best for you. Cost-wise, exclusive leads probably start at around 10$, while exclusives can be more like $15. If you are a good closer, competitive might be your best bet. You get more leads for the money, regardless of how many agents are calling. If you are more of a relationship seller, you may have more luck with the exclusive leads, knowing that the contact isn’t going to be talking to a bunch of other agents right after you.

A lot of agents use both, saying that both work well for them, selling both with success. So maybe its not the lead, it’s the agent.

For more information on Life Insurance Leads visit Efinancial.net/leads, For life insurance agent services like carrier contracts, or lead sales software visit Efinancial.net

Efinancial Releases Life Agent Sales Software

For Immediate Release

NEWLY RELEASED SOFTWARE DELIVERS AGENTS FAST AND EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR SELLING LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES

Efinancial Launches New Version of ALISS Automated Sales Software to Improve Customer Relationships, Reduce Sales Cycle Time and Increase Policy Matching Satisfaction
BELLEVUE, Wash. – Feb. 28, 2006 – Efinancial, an online life insurance brokerage firm (www.efinancial.net), today announced the launch of a new version of its Internet-based life insurance sales software. Released this month, Efinancial’s Automated Life Insurance Sales System (ALISS) is a 100 percent online solution that offers insurance agents a faster and more effective method for matching customers to the best policies available, expediting the overall process and improving agent service and satisfaction.

“ALISS is the most complete life insurance contact management system on the market today,” said Brian Fife, chief executive officer of Zebraquote, a term life insurance provider. “The leverage you gain in efficiency and speed is staggering. ALISS has been an integral part of the growth and increased revenue our business has achieved.”

According to a recent report by Forrester Research and Flamingo International, the percentage of life insurance policies is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years, significantly increasing from the 18 percent recorded in 2005. Efinancial’s ALISS software enables life insurance sales leads to be carefully managed as they flow through the sales cycle, delivering important documents and actionable advice on next steps integral to quickly closing the deal. Today, Efinancial has more than 1,000 agents from single-person operations to large commercial banks that benefit from the company’s sophisticated and easy-to-use ALISS system.

“One of the most significant challenges for life insurance agents today is the time-consuming tasks associated with selling a single policy,” said CEO of Efinancial Michael Rowell. “ALISS eliminates these tasks and allows agents to sell more policies than ever before.”

Based on real feedback from agents that use the system on a daily basis, Efinancial added important new features to further simplify the entire life insurance sales process. Unlike competitive solutions, the latest version of ALISS creates an almost paperless process, including the automation of application completion, medical exam scheduling, and real time status on the underwriting process, as well as fast online quote retrieval from all carrier-quote engines. In addition, ALISS helps sales agents stay on top of a lead by emailing scheduled updates and reminders, and setting up follow-up emails. In fact, upon completion, ALISS provides agents with the application, cover letter and mail label, which are print ready for increased timesavings.

ALISS is available at www.efinancial.net at no cost for agents with carrier contracting and requires only a nominal $150.00 set-up fee.

About Efinancial
Founded in 2001 and based in Bellevue, Wash., Efinancial, formerly 4brokers.com, is a full service, internet-based life insurance brokerage. Efinancial delivers the most advanced processing system available today to help insurance consumers expedite life insurance requests and stay informed on the status of their insurance purchase. Used by more than 2,500 contracted insurance agents today, Efinancial provides agents with top commissions, exclusive lead programs and innovative technology for saving time and money. For more information about the company and its product, please visit www.efinancial.net.

Efinancial Contracting page

Check out the carriers we work with. Most likely we can beat your current brokerages comp. Call us to find out more. http://www.efinancial.net/life_prod.aspx

Check out the new ALISS demo

http://www.efinancial.net/demologin.aspx

sample lead from efinancial

http://www.4leads.com/CompareLeadSample.aspx

do not call list

By: Jason Cozzetti
Insurance Professional
EFinancial

Hey guys, this article should be a good resource. It pertains to everyone in this industry particularly when you’re cold calling from resources outside of the leads we provide. Rest assured that when calling on leads you have received from us that they come from 100% permission based advertising campaigns with well known and respected sites such as MSN, Yahoo, & Google. Our leads have requested to be contacted via telephone by an agent so they can obtain a more accurate and personalized Life Insurance quote. In order for them to become a Lead in our system they must enter in their personal medical history, the type of plan they are shopping for, and their complete contact information including the best time to be contacted. When you talk to other resources about their lead programs you may want to ask them how they are generating their leads and if they are permission based campaigns. Again I can’t stress this enough. Just numbers from a spam list that you bought from “Sally the Spammer” or cold calling out of the phone book can now get you a $10,000 fine.

You may have heard a lot of talk about permission based advertising. Yet with the FCC trying harder and harder to protect people’s privacy it becomes extremely important to become compliant in our industry, right now! It may change the way many of you run your business overnight. I wanted to take a moment to clarify the term “Permission Base advertising”, basically this means a prospect has either clicked on a banner ad or pop up ad that they have seen on the internet and have been redirected to a web site that requires them to enter in a multitude of personal facts and ultimately click on a button that states “Yes I want to be contacted by an insurance professional”. The time, date and the prospects IP address are recorded and saved into a database at the instant they click that button, just in case there is ever any concern from a prospect claiming they never requested to be contacted. If this is the situation then the regulations below do not pertain as they want you to contact them. If the prospects you are contacting are generated in some other fashion, i.e. spam lists, cold calling, etc., you may want to take the new rules of calling (found below) into consideration, because you never know what could happen.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted new rules that went into force on 10/1/2003. This prohibits interstate and intrastate telephone solicitation calls to any residential phone numbers on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) national do not call registry. Under the new FCC rule, solicitors are prohibited from making calls unless one of these three exceptions applies.
• Calls to the individuals with whom you have established relationships that has not been terminated.
• Calls made with the individuals prior written consent.
• Calls made to the individuals are personal friends or members of your family.

Remember that in all states if any of your clients or prospects tells you that they do not want to receive unsolicited phone calls, mail, or emails from you then you must maintain this information in your agency file labeled “Do Not Call”. If you have any questions about the information above please call us so we can go over this in more detail with you.

Selling Life Insurance using the Internet

By: Jason Cozzetti
Insurance Professional
EFinancial Sales via the Internet

When going into the Insurance Industry you must have one characteristic that can’t be lost, Persistence! Once you lose this you may as well hang up your headset as it will most likely lead to serious debt or even bankruptcy. We deal with one of the most intangible products in the world, life insurance. So what you have to do is differentiate yourself from the competition and the list of other people calling your prospects. Having a good approach and a proper mindset when calling on your leads is good way to make a living. When you combine that with one of the hottest contact management systems in the world it spells out early retirement. I have been selling life insurance since I got out of college in 1998 when I went to work at MassMutual. As all of you know that is a very traditional company and couldn’t be more of an opposite from what I was about to venture into. In September of 2000 a friend of mine from the agency called me and said he had an idea that would answer our prayers, which was an endless amount of leads. The trick to it was all leads were called and sold on the phone and not in person anymore. “No problem” I told him, I would love to help!” while closing up the yellow pages searching for my next prospect. Six months later after making countless sales over the phone with him, I finally figured it out. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that during those months we experienced more failure than you could ever imagine while learning this new concept. During that time we slowly figured out where we lost the applicants. It was not me anymore, it was the way we went about quoting the prospect to getting the application filled out and scheduling the medical in a timely fashion. That process alone can kill a lot of time. Not only are those aspects important but there was also other misc. details that fell through the cracks. Things like labels for the applications going in the mail, follow up calls, reminder emails, underwriting updates, and notes from past conversations with the applicant. All these things combined were enough to make me jump out the window and take a 9-5 cushy desk job. At this point we had put way to much time in this industry to just give up, so we improvised. All those things I mentioned above that ruined our days we built into a streamlined sales automation system called ALISS. This stands for Automated Life Insurance Sales System. We figured that the only way to make money in this business was to do volume, and that is what this system will allow you to do. Large amounts of volume coupled with a speedy process are the keys to success when selling life insurance on the phone! Anyone that tells you otherwise is either crazy or has endless amounts of money to lose. We have just broken the ice for any type of agent or brokerage in the field who wants to save a lot of time and money. This system has more bells and whistles to put into this article so if you have 10 minutes during the week, give us a call and we will be more than happy to explain what it could do for your business.