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If it’s one complaint I often hear from agents who work the final expense market its retention. After all policy retention will affect your commission, carrier contracting, and your time. If you’re paid an advance it can be daunting. Therefore, let’s discuss how to improve that aspect of the market.

Have you heard this one? “…don’t worry about chargebacks in final expense, it’s all about the numbers…you’ll have so many applications and policies in the pipeline you won’t even notice.” While that might be true if you’re submitting and placing 10-15 applications week in and week out, for the average agent doing half that amount (5-7 applications) it can feel like you are never getting ahead. Sending half your week chasing down NSF’s just to get policies back on the books.

One of the most prevalent questions I receive from final expense agents is “…how do deal with lost sales opportunities and Free Looks cancelations.” Most of it is matching your prospect with the wrong carrier and the wrong product quoting too high a face amount with too high of a premium. It’s a simple answer…not so simple solution.

I know this answer sounds different from what you may have been taught “don’t leave money on the table” but, it’s just the opposite. After all, leaving without a completed life insurance application is leaving all the money on the table. The same is true for Free Look cancelations; what’s the point if the client cancels their policy after the first draft. It’s a waste of time for everyone.

Final expense will continue to be a very strong market providing leads and sales for years to come. The ever-increasing cost of final expenses continue to rise meaning premiums will continue to increase as well.

There are certain inherit traits to working the final expense market– the feeling of chasing business due to defaulted premium payments and no shows for appointments. The busier you are any chargebacks will melt away.

Reaching out to clients sometimes leads a mistake in account numbers provided at the time you took the application. This happens more often than you might think. I’ve lost count on how people gave me the wrong account number to their credit union checking or savings. It can be as simple as adding a “dash” that kicks back the account to the carrier.

“no shows” can be mitigated by never booking appointments longer than two days out. Even doing this still generates no-shows. It’s for this reason I book FE appointments in blocks of three with and extra 45 minutes between blocks. However, even with this habit I will schedule 6 to 7 appointments a day knowing I’ll most likely sit with half.

It’s for all of the above reasons I started looking at the Mortgage Protection Market. The sales process was very similar. It was a one-call close meaning, once I delivered my presentation my expectation was a decision and completed application.

I also found that 20% to 30% of the time I used a final expense product to complete the sale. Some people just couldn’t qualify for a term product to cover the whole mortgage, so I pivoted to covering monthly mortgage payments for a given time.

When I decide to mix in Mortgage Protection leads, the “no-shows” began to disappear and no one defaulted on their premium payments. As part of my fact-finding in running these leads I added the question of what they had setup for Final Expenses. Surprisingly, most had nothing, so more often then not I sold two policies for the breadwinner. Term to cover the mortgage and simple issue whole life to cover final expenses.

Working both markets reduced the number of Final Expense leads I needed every week from 30 to 20 when I added 10 Mortgage Protection leads every week. Using this weekly standing lead order mix gives me the opportunity to stay busy every week and keeps me at an average of $20k a month in sales.

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There are many reasons to sell Final Expense life insurance products. If you talk with those agents who are successful at it, it would cover several pages of reasons. Here we'll talk about the four most important:

1. The products used to sell final expense are simple for clients to understand and can be simple for agents to get issued. The primary products are simplified issued whole life. Meaning, there are no physical exams, often no height/weight restrictions, and are very forgiving on conditions.