Final Expense Sales By Phone – Does It Work?
Many new final expense agents will ask, «Can I sell final expense by phone?»
The goal of this article is to answer the question about selling final expense by phone, and provide some details as to why it’s a disadvantage for most new agents to do versus working face-to-face.
As time goes on, more final expense carriers are simplifying the process of taking applications entirely over the phone; the carriers will do an electronic application or voice-signature application that does not require any sort of ink or face-to-face interaction with the prospect.
Seniors in many cases are very wary about giving their personal information over the phone to a stranger. Closing rates when agents sell by phone tend to be lower, while business tends to not last as long on the books compared to face-to-face sales.
Call Centers
There are few independent agents that successfully sell final expense over the phone. The call center environment does a better job on average selling over the phone. Call centers are more of a boiler room type of operation. You really don’t see a lot of independent agents in this business succeed over the phone unless they have already a natural market or an existing book of business which they already have a relationship with.
One of the biggest downsides to working over the phone is that the closing ratio is measurably less than what an agent would close face-to-face with a live prospect.
Typically, a hard-working agent that conducts presentations in person with the prospect will close 25% of his leads; the successful telesales agent will be lucky to get a 10% to 15% close ratio on the leads that he purchases.
The bottom line is that the telesales agent has to work a lot harder than the in-home agent just to get a similar income goal.
For the guy who goes out and works fresh leads without prior relationships it’s a lot harder. The truth in this business is that if you want to get involved in final expense, you want to do what the Top 10 percent of agents are doing. Perhaps less than a half a percent of the top 10 percent agents are working the phone.
Ninety-nine percent of the top agents of the Top 10 percent are doing face-to-face sales. I think for a beginning agent unless they have got serious financial capability and have really strong telephone salesmanship should focus on going face-to-face versus the phone.