My experience of dealing with a direct mailer campaign is information I obtained from my previous brokerage firm. You can verify how effective these mailer campaigns are by emailing companies like Target Leads and others. Mailing the 67+ demographic will get you roughly a 1% response rate and mailing T65s will get you roughly a 3% respond rate. The information that spending money on these campaigns will return what your original investment from comes from my office manager and Chris Westfall also confirmed for me that that information is fairly accurate. This is why I listed commissions rates for both MA policies and Medigap policies so that you can do the math yourself.
I call seniors stuck up only because of the perception that the general public has of insurance agents. Ignorant was probably a better term to use. The majority of the general public hates insurance companies, hate sales people, hates telemarketers, hates pharmaceutical companies, and envies wealthy people. The perception that we must overcome with people is already an uphill battle and from my time on this form, I can't say that I don't blame the general public for their perception of us because for many agents that perception is accurate.
Your welcome for my training videos and I do agree that they are very good which is why I shared them with you. I genuinely enjoy helping other people and I have a passion for it. If you share this passion and have great sales ability, you should do fine in this industry. I just want to point out some of the problems in our industry upfront before you invest your time and money into this profession to only later discover these problems and you decide to leave the industry having lost your time and money. We all need to weigh the pros and cons of everything we do in life to decide if the venture is worth it or not and I know many agents here are seasoned professionals that have been doing this for over 10 years and have an established book of business.
Yes I don't know much about real estate other than what I've learned from watching Bryan Cassella talking about the southern California real estate market and I agree the $12,000 figure is off from the average home value of $120,000 to $150,000. I just typed that to show the comparison of the financial gain from 1 sale in real estate to 1 sale in Medicare insurance. If you're also selling life insurance in addition to Medicare insurance, you can definitely increase the income you can make and you will have an easier time to earn a higher income. David Duford warns new agents to not learn two different industries at the same time however. There is much to learn and David recommends to new agents that you pick one industry and learn and master that industry first before you enter into other industries.
The demographic of insurance agents is that way because of CMS imposed regulations in our industry that happened in 2009. Chris Westfall cites the statistic that from 2009 to 2014 42,000 insurance agents left our industry of Medicare. Anyone who is honest about the Medicare insurance industry acknowledges it is tough because commissions are small (but residual) and the excessive regulations that CMS has on us. 34% of Medicare beneficiaries have Medicare Advantage plans and 28% of seniors have Medigap plans. The CMS regulations are on Medicare Advantage and Part D drug plans, but not Medigap plans. Many agents only sell Medigap to avoid the horrendous MA and PDP regulations, but you must understand if you sell Medigap only that your market in Medicare is only 28%. Many seniors simply don't have the money to afford a Medigap plan because of their poor performing 401K plans and bad money management from their working days. We are dealing with a large majority of consumers who are on a very fixed income and Medicare Part B takes a large chunk of seniors' Social Security retirement checks. If you ever want to press a senior's hot button talk about how much money Medicare takes from their SSI checks, most LOVE to whine and complain about this.
I hope that whatever I was able to say did help you and I'm not trying to discourage anyone from joining our industry, but 42,000 insurance agents left from 2009 to 2014 for a reason and it's best that you understand why that is. I do believe that the majority of us in the sales world have a bad reputation from the mainstream media as people who are greedy and take advantage of consumers for personal gain. The best sales people who make a lot of money due so because they have a passion for helping others and if you possess that passion and play your cards correctly, you will do great in this industry.
Have a blessed day and good luck to you in your ventures. Help as many people as you can and you will be rewarded in the long run. Just make sure you follow all the CMS rules so you don't get your license suspended or revoked. I find it amazing that people want help but then complain when someone offers too much help (lengthy posts). I don't understand the logic of that. I heard that the average person has the attention span of a goldfish (17 seconds).
Are they hiring court reporters anywhere in your area?
