The Top 10 Mistakes Life Insurance Call Centers Make & How Brokers Alliance Avoids Committing Them

1. They over-rely on carrier drop tickets.

While drop ticket applications can offer convenience and efficiency in certain situations, over-reliance on them as a primary sales strategy may lead to missed opportunities, compliance risks, and reduced client engagement. Since there’s little to no interaction with the client, their health status isn’t assessed, which can make the underwriting process unnecessarily lengthy and complicated.

Brokers Alliance offers resources that incorporate direct client interactions, comprehensive product offerings, and diligent compliance practices. This is essential for long-term success as a life insurance agent to combat the disconnect when writing drop tickets.

2. They often write fully underwritten business.

Writing fully underwritten business unconsciously is bad for cash flow as it will create long turnaround times. Applicants should only go through a fully underwritten process as a last resort considering their health status and issues.
At Brokers Alliance, we have a myriad of life products that come with a variety of underwriting types such as instant decision, accelerated, and traditional. Depending on the face amount, type of product, age, health, and financial goals of your client, you will need to pivot when deciding what underwriting process best fits their needs.

3. They Don’t Offer Instant Decision Carriers to Agents.

Not having instant decision carriers can  drastically impact  your workflow. Healthy clients are forced to complete unnecessary health exams, which then leads to delaying your commissions and the client’s coverage—it’s a domino effect, causing them to become irritated with the sales process.

Brokers Alliance offers an assortment of instant decision carriers that specialize in different areas such as types of living benefits offered, child rider availability, age, face amount range, and health/lifestyle conditions accepted. They’ll immediately approve your clients and have them protected in less time than it takes for them to commute to work. The best part is that some of these carriers offer online platforms that are client-friendly allowing them to apply for coverage with little to no help from you, allowing you to sit back and relax as your commissions keep coming in.

4. Trying to get contracted with every carrier for every agent.

This is a slow, bad, and often unnecessary process. Brokers Alliance can pinpoint exactly which carriers best cater to the clientele you work with to streamline your business and avoid juggling numerous carriers when you only need a select few. If you eventually want to expand the number of products you offer or start delving into new client markets, we’re more than happy to help you get contracted with more carriers as long as it makes sense with your business goals. Additionally, doing this helps agents to become familiar with the products offered by these select carriers and the underwriting guidelines.
Our contracting is handled through one platform named SureLC. It’s a comprehensive contracting dashboard in which all the downlines’ information will be stored in one spot where all contracting can be done.

5. Change their compensation plans more than once a year.

This leads to high turnover, creates an uncertain environment, and makes it difficult for agents to adapt and learn the new pay grade system and incentives. Brokers Alliance reviews compensation plans for agents only once a year, establishing stability and trust with agents.
We also offer a tool named myAdvisor Grids on myAdvisor Cloud, where every carrier compensation level will be presented to the agency owner and their downlines. Here the agency owner can dictate how much their downlines will be paid, based on the amount of guidance they needed during the sale and their experience.

6. They do not know how to pivot to a different product when a client "forgot" to mention a health condition.

Clients can often forget or omit that they have or have had a health condition in the past that might make them ineligible to be covered by a product they were applying for. Call centers don’t know how to direct them to a new product, and by not being able to do so, will lose that business opportunity.

At Brokers Alliance, we cover all the bases when looking for options your clients qualify for. We have many forms that can pinpoint which type of condition your client has, their history with it, and the treatment they have undergone. This allows us to find the exact product that works for them, giving them the best rates. However, should an event arise where they do forget to tell you, simply give us a call and we’d be more than happy to assist you in directing your client to a product that best aligns with their health history.

7. Offer tech solutions to help facilitate a sale.

Life insurance isn’t a tangible concept, which is why it’s the most challenging of all insurance lines to sell. Call centers won’t offer you tools to help paint the picture for your clients. That’s where Brokers Alliance comes in. We offer an array of software solutions that can show them things like the buying power of the death benefit they have/want to apply for, why IULs are best for retirement, an all-in-one quoter, and so much more! It can inclusively help do the grunt work when it’s necessary to pivot to a new product when your client gets rejected for a reason like a health condition they forgot to mention, as stated in the section above. The best part is that they’re all housed on our proprietary dashboard named myAdvisor Cloud, which even includes a consumer marketing section for both traditional and digital materials!

8. Not well versed in product knowledge, only know how to sell low-cost term life.

This can lead to many issues, including inaccurately insuring your clients. Without a proper assessment of their needs and the lack of product knowledge. This will lead to clients having gaps in their coverage. Brokers Alliance has Agent Relationship Managers who are rigorously trained in all carriers and the solutions they offer to give you the best support possible. Even in the most complex of cases, we can always find a solution.

This also goes into a topic mentioned earlier about contracting, agents only get contracted with the carriers necessary for their practice. This allows  them to focus on what products those carriers offer, learn all of the requirements needed for an application, familiar with all of the processes, and be able to quickly go from quote to policy delivery in no time.

9. No prior relationship with the client can make the caller nervous when asking for personal information.

This could be perceived as a red flag to the client, indicating the caller is inexperienced or a potential scammer. The client will be inclined to hang up the phone, causing you to lose money. Brokers Alliance has multiple scripts that can be used to help you and your agency better establish your conversation flow and sound more confident on the phone, leaving no room for uncertainty.

10. Don’t offer training or workshops to better an agent’s career/business.

These call centers take the easy way out and leave all the heavy lifting to you. Brokers Alliance makes it its mission to facilitate your workflow to better your practice for both you and your clients. We host weekly webinars on products, sales concepts, and case studies, provide cutting-edge technology to inform and persuade your clients during your sales pitch, and provide case management solutions. That way, you can focus on what matters most, the relationships you form with your clients!