E Applications vs Paper Applications
Depending on your age and your computer savvy, you may or may not have embraced E Apps yet. Paper Apps will probably always have their place as a fail-safe should the computer not be working….but E Apps are here…and they are here to stay, so you might as well get on board and embrace the technology.
Here are a few of the advantages of E Apps:
- You can sell to people all over the country as long as you are licensed in the state of choice.
- You cannot leave anything critical blank. Who of us has not forgot to get a signature or failed to put in the date on a form? That problem is eliminated with E Apps.
- Some clients prefer to do business over the phone and don’t want someone coming to their house. E Apps allows them to get what they want without have an agent come over.
- It allows you to save gas and time. You can do several E Apps in the time it would take you to drive somewhere and do a paper app.
- One carrier I work with does a Pre-App that I complete with the client over the phone. It takes about 10 minutes for me to get the basic info on the client. I then schedule a time for the company to call him back. They do the follow up with getting the bank info, asking the medical questions, and scheduling the physical. I just have to follow up to make sure the call and the physical were completed.
Here are a few of the limitations of E Apps:
- Some E Apps can be very buggy when they first come out. I did an E App for a major carrier and it took two and half hours to finish it. Fortunately, the client was a friend and very understanding. I would advise you to do an E App for the first time on someone you know that will be patient, just in case. If you can do an app on yourself, even better.
- You lose the personal touch. There is nothing better than sitting face to face with a client if you want to build a long term relationship. If they are local, you can still hand deliver the policies once they are approved, which you should do if possible.
- You are limited to products that are currently available for E Apps. Not every carrier is up to speed here and so you are very limited with what you can currently offer. In highly competitive situations where you know they are going to be talking to other reps you may be at a disadvantage to someone who is local and is able to shop with more carriers than you have available.
Electronic records are here to stay, so you might as well jump in and get with the program. It is not without some pain and suffering in the process…but the end result is that you can definitely expand your boundaries and reach clients that you might otherwise be unable to talk to. It may not be your routine every day, but it certainly is something to consider adding to your arsenal for those rainy days or those days that you are not feeling well, but still want to write some business.
Shalom!
Dan Skognes