Commissions ?

robertrr

Expert
44
Please help me understand this. If I use XXX Insurance marketing and they get me contracted with XXX Carrier and they say my commission is 115% lets say I sell a plan to Mr XXX and he will be paying $90 a month What would I get out of this? How does my upline XXX Insurance marketing make money on the deal?

The reason I ask is I'm still undecided what FMO I'm going with. I think I would be better off If someone was holding my hand, which is why I was looking for an actual brick & mortar FMO in my local area. Anyway I found this so called company not so far from me. I spoke with the manager and they said I could be set up as a GA and receive 40% if Im on my own and taking care of all my leads, or 30% if I use their office and leads. I did notice on the commission sheet that the percentage varied depending what carrier was used for FE. Nothing is more than 50% Am I missing something here? Is the 90%-115% what a GA selling FE should get?

Thanks,
RRR
 
Lol just run man. They are really far down on the totem pole or they are just really screwing people. LH would be better for you in this situation lol.
 
RRR...you've been a member of this Forum for over 3 years. Have you not been paying attention?

If you want your hand held, you should still be able to get 100% commission. So that $90 per month sale will bring you $1080 your first year. Anything less should be unacceptable to you.
 
Hand holding should only cost you no more than 10% off basic FE comp on the street (100-120%) depending on carrier. Any less and there is too many layers of management for an agent to survive on in the FE business.

Good luck to you and my advice would be to find an MGA and contract direct with them. Most MGAs actually work for a living and good ones sell the same products you sell and are more helpfull in your training.
 
He gave me an example the other day and it was something like this..

XXX - XXX- XXX and Agent (me) gets $310

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Twilight...what is a MGA? that the same as FMO?

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Steve....I was away for a couple years.
 
FMO/IMO are marketing organizations that have only 3-5 carriers that they receive their top contracts with. If they offer more carriers, they most likely are under another FMO/IMO at slightly lower contracts because they don't do enough production with a carrier to get the top commission. There are only a handfull of FMO/IMOs that have the highest contracts with every carrier and they could care less about you the agent trying to make a buck.

An MGA (IMHO) has a higher comp than an agent but not the highest comp a carrier offers. Total MGA production is higher than an agent to allow for recruiting and generally the MGA team all personally produce and have had success in selling.

Our agency is an MGA and we actively teach an agent how to target market your client/prospects and with selling those products.

There are many other good MGA's on this forum that actually work for a living. I suggest talking with all of them and find one you can believe in and that fits your business model. After all, this is a business and you should always get a variety of opinion.
 
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RRR...you've been a member of this Forum for over 3 years. Have you not been paying attention?

If you want your hand held, you should still be able to get 100% commission. So that $90 per month sale will bring you $1080 your first year. Anything less should be unacceptable to you.

For years I was on a 60% commission while being required to go to the office 5 days a week and purchase $30 leads. The education that I received there set me up to be where I am at today.

When I look back on that, it was the best thing that happened to me, as far as business is concerned.

Sometimes the education that one gets is worth the price they have to pay!

We ALL should be required to pay our dues!
 
For years I was on a 60% commission while being required to go to the office 5 days a week and purchase $30 leads. The education that I received there set me up to be where I am at today.

When I look back on that, it was the best thing that happened to me, as far as business is concerned.

Sometimes the education that one gets is worth the price they have to pay!

We ALL should be required to pay our dues!

I started years ago on a 50% contract and ALL my cases required blood and urine. My leads were $21/each at that time. There was a manager named Ben T that taught me just about everything I knew at the time and I probably wouldn't be around this business today if it wern't for the hand holding he provided. Allowing me ride with him and then him coming with me to my appts. was invaluble. Then we would go back to the NYL office and talk about what I did right/wrong and showed me what I needed to say and do to step my game up to the next level. That's how I learned this biz, and I'm lucky I received that kinda help. He taught me NOT how to survive but how to THRIVE in this dog-eat-dog insurance game.

I've seen agents on 110%-130% contracts drop like flies left and right over my years. It's not all about contract size or else I would not have witnessed all that I have in that regard. That's one of the lessons I learned long ago.

Funny how MOST forum members would LAUGH at us Doug, if we were new forum members saying we just started in the insurance game at 50-60% contracts with "XYZ company". They would ridicule us and tell us how stupid we were.
 
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It would help agent newly licensed understand that this business is akin to the old apprenticeship and guild model of learning and mentorship (which I argue is well past-due in returning writ large in many industries).

We all had to "pay our dues" in some form or fashion to make it.
 
I started captive with AmGen and didn't last long as a captive. I quit there and wasn't going to do insurance.

I had met Phillip Hudgens, the founder of NAA, when he was working for Goodyear.

he encouraged me to give insurance another try so I started with them at 65% contracts and $14 leads. I got in with NAA at a time when they were building a foundation on production and I got with a management team that were great producers and teachers.

Over my first couple of years there they changed their focus from production to recruiting and that's the main reason I left them.

I still use today much of the stuff I learned from Phillip and my direct upline.

I found out later they were starting new agents at 55%. I don't know they started me at 65%. That was certainly more than I was worth because I didn't hardly know anything and what I did know came from AmGen and that was more bad news than good.
 
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