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Update News
for December 2014
Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:
Merry Christmas
Reviewing the Fundamentals Behind Term4Sale
More Proof Agents Don't Read These Bulletins
Don't Let Your Zip Codes Get Away
ROP Factors - New Data Format
These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.
It is fitting and appropriate that the celebration of Thanksgiving is close to and precedes the celebration of Christmas. For those of us who celebrate Christmas, the holiday is really "kicked off" by Thanksgiving, and it's all about getting ready for Christmas from that day forward.
Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus, is in itself a celebration of thanks. It can be summed up nicely by saying, "Thanks be to God for the gift of His Son Jesus".
For the Christian, why is Jesus so important? What makes him different from any other man that has been born? I would invite you to visit a website I established in 2011: www.jehovahisjesus.com
It's difficult to fully appreciate Christmas if you don't understand who it is that is being celebrated.
For those who already know, I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas. For those who don't know, I hope that you enjoy the holiday.
During November I received an email from one of our subscribers. I thought I would share that and my response with everyone else. I wrote the response intending to share it with everyone and so I gave it more time and thought than I would have otherwise. I am making the references to the subscriber and companies anonymous, simply as this is not the first time that I have had comments like these, and not the first company that I have had such comments about.
Here is the email that I received:
How do you find contact information for a company? The contact information for companies is found in the company information option in Compulife. There are several ways to display this, but the easiest if the "A.M. Best button" which appears next to the life insurance company's name in the single product display window. That will give you the home office address, phone numbers, links to website, additional A.M. Best information, etc. It is the extent that we go to in order to assist our customers in making contact with life companies. Beyond that Compulife does not want to be involved in the process of agents being appointed by life companies and/or their sale of a life company's products.
Here was my response to the email:
It is the longstanding policy of Compulife to include the life insurance products of any and all life insurance companies who sell their products to the public, regardless of how that product is sold to the public. That is why we say, at www.term4sale.com:
We go on to say, in the agent listings:
It would be foolish to tinker with a winning formula which has us consistently ranking very high in the google search engine. Consider what you see here:
and for a sense of the site's traffic volume, also consider this:
It has taken years to get those kinds of results. Compulife could never have afforded to buy/pay for that kind of position or rank or traffic.
We remain fully and completely committed to the concept that if we offer the rates for every product that we can get our hands on, and make our software the most exhaustive source of term life information and pricing in the market, then the world will beat a path to our doorstep. This year we have seen more traffic than in any year before. And our rankings continue to climb. Once again, check out:
Try some of those key word searches in google yourself. See where www.term4sale.com is currently ranking. I just ran "life insurance quotes" and we popped up in the 7th position, not the 10th (remember, the first three are people paid to be there). Try it yourself. Where do we appear? Look at the company around us. These are multi-million dollar companies and there's good old www.term4sale.com, a small outfit by comparison, but with the most attractive message on the listings: Instant term life insurance quotes and comparisons from the rates of over 100 life insurance companies; completely free and unbiased. Term4Sale does not sell
Do you realize that no one else on that page can say that? If they did, the insurance regulators would be on them like ugly on an ape. We are the ONLY company on the page that can truthfully make that claim, because it's true. And that carries weight with the media and folks who routinely recommend www.term4sale.com to their readers.
Back to your question. Do I expect you to recommend XYZ Life if you cannot get appointed by them? Of course not. Not every agent can sell for every company. Here is what we say about that at www.term4sale.com:
We also say:
That is why COMPULIFE believes you need professional advice and guidance in order to sort out the relative importance of those other factors.
So what I would expect you to do is advise the consumer that you don't sell for XYZ Life, and then make a case for a product that is similiar in cost. Will you win every sale, probably not? But if you emphasize the importance of the fact that you represent multiple companies, and that that is superior to dealing with an agent that is appointed exclusively with one company, then I think you will win your fair share of those deals. While XYZ Life may be best today, what about the next time the customer needs a policy? You are an asset that is worth a few more dollars. And if you don't get the sale please remember that this is a consumer who contacted you from www.term4sale.com, and a potential sale that you would not have had any shot at otherwise.
XYZ Life is not the only company in our software that is not be available for sale through brokers. But it is worth noting that over time a number of companies have amended their distribution systems to include the brokers who use Compulife. For example, at one time ABC Life did not offer contracts to any brokers and they were very competitive in Compulife. We were routinely receiving complaints from subscribers who could not sell the company's policies.
It eventually dawned on ABC that they were sending business up the street, and that the independent broker was a very cost efficient way to boost their business. As a result of that decision, ABC was able to expand their business from one state to the majority of states in the country. Compulife, and the brokers who use it are not the enemy of companies that sell competitive term life insurance. The brokers who use Compulife are an enormously effective and inexpensive way for a company to market their products.
So if we did remove XYZ Life, they would not be hearing from brokers like you, and there is likely no chance they might reconsider their strategy in the future.
You commented that you thought XYZ Life was hostile to individual agents. I think that is unfair. XYZ Life has been very helpful in providing information to Compulife and a significant number of agents who do sell for XYZ Life also use our software. Some are part of the banking systems and financial institutions that are appointed by XYZ Life. They are also important customers and everyone needs to remember that a Compulife customer has different reasons and purposes for using our software. Our job, as I see it, is to remain neutral and independent.
And finally, if Compulife began to remove products from www.term4sale.com simply because some of our subscribers can't sell those products, where would it end?
As you know, within the software that we provide to you, you do have the ability to remove the products that you don't like and/or don't sell. That holds true as well for the web quoting option which Compulife provides to subscribers for their own websites. We don't expect you to quote products that you can't sell on your own website.
But www.term4sale.com is not your website, it is Compulife's website. That website has relied heavily upon the media and independent financial gurus for promotioin to the general public. Those who refer consumers to www.term4sale.com do so because they believe that it is what it claims to be, the most objective and unbiased source of term life insurance products and prices available anywhere on the internet.
I trust that all this makes sense. While it may not be a perfect solution for you, it is part of a balance we have tried to achieve, and which I think we have successfully found. After all, there must be some reason we are entering our 33rd year of business.
I'm sorry that XYZ Life may be somewhat short sighted in their marketing plans and objectives. Perhaps they are not in a position to handle the additional volume if they chose to widen the number of brokers that they allow to sell their products. I would encourage you to be patient and give the company time, while at the same time being persistent in letting them know you can help them sell their products. They are likely to re-evaluate the situation if they keep getting calls from brokers using Compulife.
The more important consideration for you is whether the net number of sales that you do make, of the total number of consumers who contact you from www.term4sale.com, warrants the additional investment that you may be making in listings at the site. Frankly, if you are not able to generate sufficient revenue to cover your time and costs, and to also provide you with an acceptable level of profit, then you might need to re-examine your level of participation.
We have been making changes to the listings at www.term4sale.com and the biggest change is that we are now giving our personal use subscribers 3 free zip code listings to www.term4sale.com, not 2. But here's what we previously told you in regard to that:
It was no surprise when only a handful of subscribers bothered to pick up on this opportunity. You can still get your third zip free zip code, you just can't bump anyone with it at this point. You will need to select a zip code that is available (doesn't have three in it). You can get lists of zip codes here:
Invoices for term4sale.com zip code renewals have gone out during November and those need to be paid by the end of December. These can now be paid on line by clicking on the colorful payment button that appears in the PDF invoice. So for the significant number who like to leave these to the last minute, you can still get your payments in while we are enjoying the holidays at the end of the year.
If for tax reasons you wish to pay for those in January, please let us know in advance.
Zip codes that are not paid for by the end of the first full week of January will be removed from the database and made available to other subscribers in the second week of January. We will turn on the newly available zip codes, in our Zip Code Analyzer, at a pre-announced date which we will give to you in the January Update News. That will give all our subscribers, who want a chance to pick up some of the better zip codes that have been let go, an opportunity to buy or trade for those zip codes.
During November we began the work of transferring over the ROP tables to the new ROP data entry system, and to the new ROP data format. Things are accelerating and we expect that in January we will release a new GOWIN.EXE which will be relying upon the new ROP tables.
As we mentioned in the previous bulletin, we will continue to support the old ROP factors for a brief transitional time. This means that Compulife Internet Engine Users will not have to do an upgrade until we elect to abandon the old ROPF rate format. We are going to try and bundle that upgrade with a few other items, and so you can anticipate this to occur in or about April 2015.
As we also mentioned, we will be moving the renewal premiums from individual products into a new renewal premium table, which will be used for products that share the same renewals. This will cut down on duplication. We think we have found a way to do this that will not affect the majority of Internet engine users simply as our internet engine does not require renewal information unless you are using the Pick 12 spreadsheet option (most do not).
That means during the course of extracting and removing renewals, the individuals products will continue to work with the OLD engines, and we can complete that data transition without requiring you to obtain a new engine.
Ultimately we don't want to burden our internet engine users with too much transitional work during 2015. The fewer the number of engine upgrades the easier it is for us all.