Avian Life Brokerage

[quackattack99]

I have been selling final expense and med supps, part time, now for awhile. I have not written a ton of business, but enough to keep me interested to the point that I know there is money to be made selling insurance. I live in a pretty isolated area. So, for me to break into it full time, I would have to quit my full time job, and just decide to travel to where the business is. I came across this company. They are a virtual life brokerage (sounds like mainly term). There is is $500 up front fee, which is a huge red flag for me. But, they start you at 60% percent AP, and increase you to 85%, based on production. All leads are provided for free....well, they say the initial $500 is for leads and initial training. As some of you know, I have been bouncing around for awhile now, and I really need to head in one direction. I have read all the negative feedback about phone sales on the forum, and believe what I read. But, this may allow me to transition into more of a fulltime gig, without all of the travel. Just wondering if anyone has heard of Avian and, if so, what the feedback is? Thanks

 

[benefits365]

First, call centers aren't the satan spawn that you may have heard. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as my grandfather used to say.
And no, I wouldn't invest money in this company you reference. They are going to be making money off of your sales, not off of your checkbook. Tread very carefully.
Also, without knowing too much about their product, the contract levels you reference aren't too lucrative at all for the life insurance market.

 

[bigjake]

Quack,
Have you looked into the Mon Life leads? They arent the best, but certainly not the worst. Flat $300 to get started and they mail, to your specs, to a list of 1000 in your area. You pick ages, income, etc. They are your leads. They only ask you place $100/lead in AP with them. 10 responses=1000 AP. and they do it again for you, deducting the cost from commissions. They also pay an advance so you can get DM leads started in less than 30 days and start making money. I am not recruiting for them; but I tried it, and its heck of lot better than other leads I have tried. The first mailing was not anything to brag about, but I am finally getting some sales. Their comp beats 60 too, depending on your agency agreement and state.

 

[quackattack99]

Quack,
Have you looked into the Mon Life leads? They arent the best, but certainly not the worst. Flat $300 to get started and they mail, to your specs, to a list of 1000 in your area. You pick ages, income, etc. They are your leads. They only ask you place $100/lead in AP with them. 10 responses=1000 AP. and they do it again for you, deducting the cost from commissions. They also pay an advance so you can get DM leads started in less than 30 days and start making money. I am not recruiting for them; but I tried it, and its heck of lot better than other leads I have tried. The first mailing was not anything to brag about, but I am finally getting some sales. Their comp beats 60 too, depending on your agency agreement and state.

Thanks, yes I have done a couple of 1000 mail piece drops with Monu. First drop had a 1.2% return, second a .7 return. I did write some policies, but only one with Monu. Still had to drive about 2 and a half hours away just to get to the leads. That is tough when you are doing this PT. That is the only reason I was interested in the virtual, work from home office, position being offered by this company. The moral of the story is that I need to either commit to doing this fulltime, and plan on traveling (which I really don't mind), or do telesales.

 

[bigjake]

Equitable has a telephone app and so does ING. But the EQ is competitive on Preferred and somewhat on standard. You DONT have to be with the client. ING I think requires you do. CAUTION: EQ's leads suck. I have had not one sale out of any they sent, some are free and some they charge for. They also got a neat cancer plan. I think you can sell it over phone too. They have very few questions and no underwriting to speak of.

 

[AVIAN LB]

Good afternoon! I am came across this post and if you'll permit me, I'd like to reply on behalf of the company, AVIAN Life Brokerage. I am an equity partner of the firm and authorized to post on the firm's behalf.

Regarding the comments, please allow me to explain our commission structure, as well as our lead system and the required refundable deposit. First, thank you whoever said that call centers are not "satan-spawned". Certainly, we are not. In fact, our call center model is precisely for agents tired of the old and very costly grind of running out on field appointments and/or/all-of-the-above cold calling, cold prospecting, etc., etc. We pride ourselves, as it's been said, on being one of the founding and pioneering members of the modern insurance marketplace. Truth is, there is a much better way than the old style of insurance selling and I believe we've perfected it, as we'd be happy to explain and demonstrate to any qualified agent looking for a much better mousetrap.

Regarding commissions, it's true that we describe our range of commissions as being between 60-85%. However, the agents we start at 60% are typically those very new to the industry requiring extra help. Clearly, to be expected for a new agent and we hold those extra points only as long as that agent needs extra attention. As soon as he/she is online with our average agent, we move the commission level up promptly to our true base level of 70%. Again, starting level to all agents with a basic, working insurance IQ is 70%. From there, commission increase happen very quickly based on 3 factors. We care about consistent weekly written production, acceptable placement and agency required persistency/retention. We pride ourselves on being a firm that does not "give back many cases", meaning we do not take many chargebacks. We are an exceptional training organization and therefore getting a producer in line with our requirements is very simple and straight-forward, as long as they are following the model. Assuming they are, average agent commission level is 85%.

On the question of the hour I'm sure... Why do we have a one-time refundable deposit. Again, very simple. We provide ALL of the leads forever. We pay for ALL non-resident licensing costs (we sell in multiple states), we pay the cost of the agent's E&O, we have a health plan that agents can participate in that we sponsor and even pay the full cost of, depending on production and we have options available to agents for retirement programs. Most of our leads are direct mail and if you understand the costs involved in direct mail, you know the average cost of a first class mailer, 1,000 piece quantity is approximately $480. Essentially, all we ask for is the cost of a single mail drop to hold as a refundable lead deposit. We give it back at $2,500 of placed production. That's the only money ever asked for, which we think is incredibly fair and we were not the originators of that system for insuring our initial cost of leads. I think the primary reason for the deposit, understanding the costs of lead generation, is obvious. But, it also helps us in 2 other ways. Plain fact, we do not want flaky agents. We do not want to invest the time and energy to train an agent and share our entire system for that agent to later decide to work another program. I believe we have the best system going, but of course this can happen. The other concern is lead-bandits. Bottom line, we don't charge for ongoing leads. When you have a complete system like ours, you provide everything that we provide AND you provide all of the leads outside of a strangle-hold captive arrangement, certainly we are vulnerable to someone trying to come in, get leads from us and to try to take them and write them elsewhere. Personally, I think that's the craziest thing an agent can do, but clearly that happens also. In short, we want committed, honest and accountable agent partners. That deposit held at the onset simply secures our agreement and helps cover our backside a bit. Again, certainly understandable to anyone who's worked in and around our industry for any length of time, I believe. The alternative? You buy your own leads, as I see being discussed. Here's the issue, though. We ask for a one-time refundable deposit and guarantee leads to you EVERY week, as long as you're producing. When you buy your own leads, there's no guarantee of success. And, can you afford to keep the leads going consistently week in and week out whether cases are paying quickly or not. Rule #1 in insurance... Consistent prospects equals consistent production. And, that's all we're trying to help accomplish for you with a just a basic security precaution protecting us. Fact is, you can certainly get a higher level commission contract, but you have to buy your own leads. Are you one of the few producers out there with a reliable source for leads where you can consistently invest and recover week in and week out and have those few extra points actually pay off for you? Not many agents can say so. Or, of course you can cold-prospect for leads and we all know how easy THAT is to make profitable. Our program provides a solid program for a serious agent and some basic security for our firm.

Thank you for reviewing my response and feel free to reply if there are additional questions I can answer.

 

[bigjake]

Well Quack, I think they want you baaaaddd!

That is one of longest posts on here. I didn't know Clancy went into virtual insurance.

 

[jdeasy]

What a load of crap. Anyone falling for this line of BS deserves to work for an outfit like this.

Good afternoon! I am came across this post and if you'll permit me, I'd like to reply on behalf of the company, AVIAN Life Brokerage. I am an equity partner of the firm and authorized to post on the firm's behalf.

Regarding the comments, please allow me to explain our commission structure, as well as our lead system and the required refundable deposit. First, thank you whoever said that call centers are not "satan-spawned". Certainly, we are not. In fact, our call center model is precisely for agents tired of the old and very costly grind of running out on field appointments and/or/all-of-the-above cold calling, cold prospecting, etc., etc. We pride ourselves, as it's been said, on being one of the founding and pioneering members of the modern insurance marketplace. Truth is, there is a much better way than the old style of insurance selling and I believe we've perfected it, as we'd be happy to explain and demonstrate to any qualified agent looking for a much better mousetrap.

Regarding commissions, it's true that we describe our range of commissions as being between 60-85%. However, the agents we start at 60% are typically those very new to the industry requiring extra help. Clearly, to be expected for a new agent and we hold those extra points only as long as that agent needs extra attention. As soon as he/she is online with our average agent, we move the commission level up promptly to our true base level of 70%. Again, starting level to all agents with a basic, working insurance IQ is 70%. From there, commission increase happen very quickly based on 3 factors. We care about consistent weekly written production, acceptable placement and agency required persistency/retention. We pride ourselves on being a firm that does not "give back many cases", meaning we do not take many chargebacks. We are an exceptional training organization and therefore getting a producer in line with our requirements is very simple and straight-forward, as long as they are following the model. Assuming they are, average agent commission level is 85%.

On the question of the hour I'm sure... Why do we have a one-time refundable deposit. Again, very simple. We provide ALL of the leads forever. We pay for ALL non-resident licensing costs (we sell in multiple states), we pay the cost of the agent's E&O, we have a health plan that agents can participate in that we sponsor and even pay the full cost of, depending on production and we have options available to agents for retirement programs. Most of our leads are direct mail and if you understand the costs involved in direct mail, you know the average cost of a first class mailer, 1,000 piece quantity is approximately $480. Essentially, all we ask for is the cost of a single mail drop to hold as a refundable lead deposit. We give it back at $2,500 of placed production. That's the only money ever asked for, which we think is incredibly fair and we were not the originators of that system for insuring our initial cost of leads. I think the primary reason for the deposit, understanding the costs of lead generation, is obvious. But, it also helps us in 2 other ways. Plain fact, we do not want flaky agents. We do not want to invest the time and energy to train an agent and share our entire system for that agent to later decide to work another program. I believe we have the best system going, but of course this can happen. The other concern is lead-bandits. Bottom line, we don't charge for ongoing leads. When you have a complete system like ours, you provide everything that we provide AND you provide all of the leads outside of a strangle-hold captive arrangement, certainly we are vulnerable to someone trying to come in, get leads from us and to try to take them and write them elsewhere. Personally, I think that's the craziest thing an agent can do, but clearly that happens also. In short, we want committed, honest and accountable agent partners. That deposit held at the onset simply secures our agreement and helps cover our backside a bit. Again, certainly understandable to anyone who's worked in and around our industry for any length of time, I believe. The alternative? You buy your own leads, as I see being discussed. Here's the issue, though. We ask for a one-time refundable deposit and guarantee leads to you EVERY week, as long as you're producing. When you buy your own leads, there's no guarantee of success. And, can you afford to keep the leads going consistently week in and week out whether cases are paying quickly or not. Rule #1 in insurance... Consistent prospects equals consistent production. And, that's all we're trying to help accomplish for you with a just a basic security precaution protecting us. Fact is, you can certainly get a higher level commission contract, but you have to buy your own leads. Are you one of the few producers out there with a reliable source for leads where you can consistently invest and recover week in and week out and have those few extra points actually pay off for you? Not many agents can say so. Or, of course you can cold-prospect for leads and we all know how easy THAT is to make profitable. Our program provides a solid program for a serious agent and some basic security for our firm.

Thank you for reviewing my response and feel free to reply if there are additional questions I can answer.

 

[WinoBlues]

What a load of crap. Anyone falling for this line of BS deserves to work for an outfit like this.

Did you read the whole thing? I dozed off after the first paragraph.

 

[jdeasy]

Did you read the whole thing? I dozed off after the first paragraph.

Yep, whole thing. Another regurgitated take on the failed telemarketing FE scheme.


Failed for the producing agent that is, it's obviously a gold mine for the people at the top.