| NEW! Life Quotes Outside Agent Program |
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- Earn immediate income working fresh life leads and writing applications:
$23/hr of actual talk time, plus 30% of actual net commission received
- The ultimate in convenience and flexibility: Sell from your own home of
office, sell part-time or full-time
- Our #1-rated, 30-company quote system makes it easy to make sales even when
health histories exist
- No Cost to Join! All training and setup is FREE!
- No lead costs to you! All leads come from our website visitors and inbound
phone calls
- Plus, you get a dedicated Sales Manager here ongoing to assist you with
advice and assistance from us whenever you need it
- We do all of the case management work for you, which means that you stay
paperless at all times!
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| Why are you contracting with outside agents to write life insurance applications on your own leads? |
| Several reasons. First of all, we are experiencing increased growth in leads and using independents who
know how to sell is a faster way for us to meet and handle this demand than hiring more inside sales reps. Second,
we want phone coverage on our network for those after-hours when we're not here. Offering flex hours to
independents seems to make sense. |
| Who will own the leads that I'll be working? |
| The Agreement between us will specify that all leads and customers lists that you come into contact with
under this program shall remain the sole property of Life Quotes, Inc. and that you agree to never directly or
indirectly solicit or cause to be solicited by others for any other product or service of any kind at any time. |
| How many fresh life leads per day are you now generating as a firm? |
| Approximately 1,000 at present. |
| What equipment will I need from my end to access the Life Quotes network? |
| You'll need a working computer, a telephone and broadband access to the Internet. Because of the fast
pace of the dialer and the high amount of keyboard work involved, we also recommend that you use a headset to keep
your hands free. Required: Windows XP, MS Explorer 7 or 8, 2 GB of RAM memory. Sorry, we cannot support Apple
computers at this time. |
| What security measures will I have to have in place at my end? |
| You must agree go use our scripts and procedures on all calls. All calls will be recorded and
quality-controlled. Since you will be handling highly sensitive and protected personal medical information, you
are responsible for properly safeguarding all such information at your end at all times to federally-required
HIPAA standards. |
| Tell me how your main phone system works. |
| Our main phone system allows you to login and to call website leads that have been deposited in your
Dashboard account. We require that you call each lead immediately upon being notified by e-mail that there is a
fresh lead. Fresh leads come into our system 24x7 and each user of our quote system has agreed to be called, so
you are free to work any hours, but we do ask that you notify your team leader of your work schedule weekly in
advance. If no conversation of 60 seconds or longer has taken place within first 3 days, the lead will be removed
from your account and re-allocated to another agent. Mastering our quote and phone system takes about 2 hours of
training, less if you have prior call center experience. |
| What are the peak selling days and hours? |
| Monday through Thursday, 10 AM to 5 PM Central Time are peak selling times. But evenings, Saturdays and
Sunday evenings can be great as well. Our current in-house agent force of 30 agents works 9 to 6 Central Time. |
| How will I know what to say to these people? |
| We'll teach you our selling system from A-Z, which includes how to login to our dialer, how to use our
quote engine and application completion system and how to use our scripts and procedures. It's all written down
and we've used this same system to sell 265,000 term life policies in recent years. It works! We'll also assign
and experienced Sales Team Leader to you for personalized coaching and assistance whenever you need it. Because
all of our calls are recorded in the case file not history of each account, you and your team leader are free to
click open and listen to your calls at any time. It takes an experienced life agent about 2-5 hours of training
and practice to master our systems. |
| How long are wait times between calls on your main telephone network system? |
| Depending upon the states that you hold licenses in and the time of day, those wait times can be anywhere
from 1 to 10 minutes. While you are waiting for inbound calls, you are urged to make one-click outbound calls to
the leads we've deposited in your Dashboard account. Most of your orders and money-made will happen by making
outbound follow-up calls to your fresh life leads. Wait times are much shorter, of course, during our busiest
times of 10 to 3 Central time, Monday through Thursday. But, having said that, accepting only inbound calls during
our after-hours is well worth the waits because the quality of the callers is so high. |
| How long does it take to write a life application on the Life Quotes system? |
| About 25 minutes. |
| As an independent contractor free to set my own working days and hours, what is the base pay and
incentive pay under this program? |
| $23 per hour of actual talk time plus 30% of our Net Commission Received. We'll send you a check, talk
time and paid commission ledger every 2 weeks. |
| So Life Quotes' personnel will do all of the case management chores and follow-up for me once the
submission is made? |
| Yes! You can remain paperless and focused on sales because we'll do all of the case management and policy
delivery chores for you. All updates to the customer (at least weekly) are sent in your name (with your phone
number shown) and we'll also send a cc to you so that you are kept abreast of any declines, rate-ups or normal
progress reports. |
| After I write an application and enter it in the system, what are my responsibilities? Will I be notified
if a submission is stalled for any reason? |
| Once you write an application and set a paramed date, time and place that's convenient to the applicant,
we'll then give you a simple reminder 72 hrs. before the paramed exam time so that you can call and reconnect with
the customer and re-confirm the paramed. Falloff at this point is the single largest reason for customer falloff
and so we are very dedicated to seeing that every applicant completes their paramed exam. In order to keep
rate-ups and declines to a minimum, we'll also perform a high level of quality control on each submission to make
sure that the information that was given to the paramed matches that which was given to you. If we spot a
mis-match, we'll immediately contact you with the explanation and ask for your help. |
| In this model, is it true that I don't have to print the application and get it signed? |
| Yes, that's correct. In our model, the application that you enter online is then electronically
transmitted to the paramed firm, who will print it out and have is signed and dated. Your responsibility is to use
our scripts and procedures, to give advice that's compatible with our business model, to write complete
applications and to make the required 72 hr. phone call before the set paramed date to remind our customer of the
upcoming appointment. None of this involves the printing of any paper at your end and all information that you
will need or want will be always ready for you at any time in real-time on your Life Quotes Dashboard. |
| As an Outside Agent, will I become appointed with each of the Life Quotes companies? |
Yes, as you write cases over time. We'll handle the appointments as you write applications, except in
states that require pre-appointments. Remember, you will have to meet the appointment requirements of each of our
companies as you write business in order to receive commissions on paid policies. We will seek to get you
appointed at the time of your first application with each company.
Consider it a positive that we sell insurance from our 60-agent call center here in Darien and that we've sold
255,000 policies through this system. This tells you that the system works and that it was designed completely
from the ground up from the agent and broker's perspective. |
| Will you give me and my staff training to get started? |
| Absolutely! All Life Quotes OutsideAgent members can attend regularly scheduled WebEx training sessions
on how to use our system from A to Z. These sessions, which are fun and interactive, last 1-2 hours. More
personalized training is always available if you need it. We'll also explain our case management system and give
you valuable marketing and sales pointers. After that, you can always call us toll-free and get assistance. |
| I've never sold term life insurance before. Should I pursue this opportunity with you? |
| Honestly, No. This program is designed only for experienced term life agents and brokers. We do not have
the training resources to teach you the life insurance business under this program, nor can we risk any new leads
under this program. We only recommend this system for people who have 3 or more years of life insurance sales
experience and who sold 15 or more life policies last year. |
| Where can I see a copy of the Life Quotes OutsideAgent commission schedule? |
| The Commission Schedule is attached here and is always accessible from your account with us. Note that it
pays you a hefty 30% of our net commission received, which means that selling annual premiums helps cash flow for
both of us. |
| I'm thinking of getting more state licenses at my own expense in order to make more money on your system,
can you advise me? |
| Yes and we encourage that. Because of our national advertising and our inbound affiliate relationships,
our national fresh life led flow exactly mirrors the population of each state. This means that the top 5 states of
CA, TX, NY,FL & IL account for fully 39% of our leads and sales! So we'd strongly urge you to consider getting
licenses in those states so that you can make phone sales to residents of those states. The next 5 states in terms
of population are PA, OH, MI, NJ and GA. If you got yourself licensed in the Top Ten states, you could then handle
57% of the U.S. population on our system. The top 30 states account for 94% of the U.S. population and would allow
you to handle 94% of the people on our network. If you have any questions about insurance producer licensing,
contact Catherine Michaels here at 1-800-556-9393, ext. 236. Catherine can refer you to websites that will allow
you to apply to several states at once. |
| I'm already appointed with or under other GA's or MGA's. Will working with you affect those appointments?
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| You'll have to check with each company home office regarding their own rules on appointments and
hierarchies as each company has different rules regarding this. If you are a high volume producer and you have
outside life business that you could move, call our CEO Robert Bland at 1-800-556-9393, ext. 101 to discuss how we
might work together to increase your compensation. |
| When I log into your phone system, will I be handling outbound or inbound calls? |
| It depends upon the time of day you work. Out phone system handles both kinds of calls at once during the
hours of 9 AM to 6 PM Central time Monday through Friday. Outside of those times, you'd be given inbound calls and
you'd have the freedom to make follow-up calls with one-click to those leads we've deposited in your Dashboard
account. It might sound confusing at first, but it's not. We'll work with you to develop a schedule that makes
good money sense for both of us, and you are free to change that schedule at any time. All we ask is that you make
and keep your schedule with your Team Leader here in weekly blocks ahead of Monday so that we can do proper
planning. Our lead distribution model is to allocate or assign 10 fresh leads per day to somebody who commits to
working 8 hours per day p or about 1.3 fresh leads per hour worked if you are going to do this part-time. So to
keep everybody happy and make sure all inbound leads are properly serviced without every being put on hold, we
have to do lots of planning before the start of each week. |
| Are there any minimum performance requirements that I must meet under this program? |
| Yes. Because we spend millions of upfront dollars in national marketing (TV, radio, direct mail,
affiliate and online), we cannot afford to waste any of our unique leads and each must get properly serviced
according to our scripts and procedures. Consistency is especially important and accounts for a large part of how
we were successful in selling 265,000 policies under this program already. So, under this program where we are
letting outside agents access and handle our leads, we require that you write no less than 1 application per hour
of talk time and we require that 70% or more of your applications actually make it through the submission point in
order to stay in the program. These are easy targets for an experienced life agent and we can tell you that our
in-house call center agents average 1.25 applications per hour of actual talk time, so our minimums for outsiders
are reasonable and, more important, realistic. |
| How many in-house call center agents do you have and do they have any "advantage" in lead allocation vs.
us Outside Agents under this program? |
| We currently have 40 in-house agents and they have no advantage whatsoever under this program because our
main lead allocation system distributes fresh leads and issues automatic initial quotes without knowing whether
the agent works here or is an outside agent. It could be argued that the outside, independent contractor agents
actually have an advantage because they are free to work whatever days and hours they want and for as long as they
want, which is a work option not open to our in-house agents. |
| Tell me about the initial quote and requote processes in your model. |
| You experienced life agents are going to love this!! In our model, each website shopper (defined as
somebody who has entered up to 40 pieces of data about themselves and is online quoting or has called in to ask
for quotes) is allocated instantly to an agent. Initial quotes are then automatically e-mailed and sent via U.S.
mail to the shopper in the name of the designated agent. Those quote letters show the agent's name, e-mail,
address and phone number. Those initial quotes are then also sent once per week for 90 days, then once per month
forever as long as you are working with us. Of course, they stop once an application is written. But he nice part
is that they continue automatically in your name even if you can't ever reach the person by phone. Lots of our
sales (and yours, too) will be generated from the efforts of our requote system. |
| Why is Life Quotes appointing Outside Agents at this time? |
| Our new life lead flow dictates that we expand our capability to handle more calls and leads and so we
want to appoint a few highly-selected outside agents to assist us in servicing our customers, which gives us a
chance to expand our service hours without adding more hours to our home office staffs. |
| As an appointed Outside Agent, will I have an e-mail and voice mail account at Life Quotes? |
| Yes. You'll have the same tools, access to management and trainers that we give to our in-house agents.
On Fridays we conduct continuing sales, education and system training to our in-house agents for 1-2 hours and you
are always invited to dial in to listen, ask questions and participate in those sessions. |
| Will I be working unique leads or leads that have been sold multiple times? |
| Our leads are all unique to us via our own website or an inbound call (the highest quality lead of all).
Generally speaking, we do not buy multiple-sold leads. Our leads are also very highly detailed (please visit
www.lifequotes.com and click into our main life quote request form and study it) And as every experienced life
agent knows, unique leads are the most expensive. In the last ten years, we've spend $105 million acquiring high
quality life insurance leads. It's because of the high cost of these high quality leads that we insist that every
verbal and written contact happen according to our approved scripts and procedures without deviation. |
| As an Outside Agent, will I be required to adhere to your scripts and procedures on all calls and e-mails
to prospects and customers? |
| Yes. We have a very precise business model that all of our agents must follow. All of your calls, for
example, will be recorded and quality-controlled and call-graded. It's this kind of detail and consistency that
has led to our success and we only want to contract with people who know, understand, appreciate and respect our
model. |
| Could I fly to Chicago at my own expense and spend some time in your Darien headquarters to work in your
call center to see and hear how your high volume agents actually work their leads? |
| Sure! Just give Erin Hannigan (ext. 204) advance notice of the days you'll be here and we'll welcome you
with open arms. Many of our in-house agents write 75 or more applications per month and we'll be happy to have you
meet and sit with them to see how they do it. |
| How long does it take to get started? |
| The current application and acceptance and training process takes about 2 weeks. In the future, we hope
to speed this up. |
| How does the hourly talk time payment system work? |
| As an independent business person, you handle leads on our phone system and be paid $23 per hour for
actual talk time as an independent contractor who is free to choose your own working days and hours. These checks
go out every 2 weeks. Actual talk time means the time that you are actually talking on our phone system (which is
recorded at all times) and does not ever include dialing time, idle time or wait times. Conversations with
prospects and customers off our phone system are not allowed nor paid for at any time. |
| If I bring on my own clients, can I get paid the BrokerageClub commissions? |
| Yes, as long as you have a duly-executed BrokerageClub contract. No lead or household-connected lead that
we provide will be paid at BrokerageClub commission levels and, under the BrokerageClub Agreement, you have to
warrant that such lead is not ours and did not come into your life through us in any way. All leads and household
matches connected to same will have commissions paid at Outside Agent levels at all times. |
| What kind of computer do I need for this? |
- Must have Windows XP
- Must use Internet Explorer version 7 or 8
- Have at least 2 GB of RAM
- We cannot support Apple computers
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| Can I use my cellphone to login to your phone system? |
| Not recommended because the high rate of dropped calls. This practice will cost you and us too many
customers. |
| Can my employees work these calls too? |
| No. Only duly authorized, licensed and appointed agents with E&O insurance under us can work our leads.
Our scripts and procedures must be used at all times. |
| What kind of training do you offer? |
| Typically 4 hours: 2 to familiarize you with our quote engine and order-fulfillment systems (called Agent
Dashbaord) and another 2 hours to teach you how to accept and make one-click calls on our phone system. By the 2nd
session you should have leads already building in your Dashboard. |
| Why would you do this when you already have a team of in-house agents to work your leads? |
| We currently have more life leads than our 30 agents can effectively quote and advise. We have a contract
to handle all the life insurance for GEICO and inbound business from other sources is hopping, so we need more
agents to work our leads in key states and on those days and hours when we're not here. |
| Do I need to become appointed with every carrier? |
| No, you'll get only those appointments as you need them, as you write applications. We'll pay all
appointment costs. 2 states require pre-appointments. |
| What exactly does net commission received mean? |
| Net commission received is the actual monthly base commission we receive from a company, minus any
commissions that are charged back by the company for any reason. Example, if we receive $1,000 and you have a 30%
payout contract, you'd get $300, etc. Under this plan, you will a) want to have as few chargebacks (reversed
sales) as possible, b) want to sell as many annual pay policies as possible and c) avoid selling the low
commission 10 year plans. |
| What's an example of a commission chargeback? |
| Let's say a policy gets delivered and paid for in full, but the customer then changes their mind on
the-free look period or the company effects a chargeback for any other reason. IN that case, the returned premium
will result in a return commission or negative commission. The chargeback amount is the amount that the company
took back from us on our monthly commission statement. Under the Outside Agent plan for independent agents, you
will a) want as few chargebacks (reversed sales) as possible, b) want to sell as many annual pay policies as
possible and c) avoid selling the low commission 10 year plans. |
| Can I get my training at your Darien, IL office? |
| Yes, you can visit us for training during one of our normally-scheduled sessions and you can follow-along
with us during any such session. Call Erin Hannigan at extg. 204 at least 3 days in advance. |
