SPREADING LIFE WEALTH AMONG EMPLOYEES
by George Nordhaus
Dave Warren of Dodge, Warren and Peters, Torrance, California has a whole new insight into how to get many people in the agency involved in making the Life and employee benefit sale.
The agency pays a flat 40% commission for new sales, and 30% for renewal commissions. That commission level is the same for P/C sales as it is for Life and employee benefits.
The only people in the agency who receive renewal commissions are licensed agents. Those same agents, responsible for the count (P/C, or Life/employee benefits), also receive the bulk of the new 30% sales commission.
Here's the kicker: If the new sale is brought to the agency by anyone else -- for example, P/C agent brings a Life benefits sale, a Life benefits agent brings a P/C sale, or a customer service representative brings either of the above-they get the extra 10% on new sales. Everybody in the agency gets 10% for any kind of new sale they motivate-whether it is 'their' particular sale or not.
Does this spread-the-wealth system work? You bet! Not a month goes by that several checks for that 10% 'finders fee' are written to several employees of this 54-person organization.
Would you believe that 25 of those 54 staff are full-time producers? That's got to be a record . . . or a darn good average. It takes a while to set a program like this into place, but for Dodge, Warren, and Peters, the effort has been worthwhile.