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Cover - Erie Insurance Agent Career Review

Erie Insurance Agent Career Review

By David Duford - January 03, 2023 - 5 Mins Read

Are you thinking about selling insurance with the Erie Insurance Sales Career?

If so, check out the article below.

I will explain how a career selling insurance with Erie Insurance works as well as offer some advice that I think new and aspiring agents should consider.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

PS: If you would like to learn more about insurance sales opportunities other than Erie Insurance, we’ve posted tons of insurance career reviews on this page.

NOTE: Are you interested in selling insurance as a business? Yes, then check out my Free Insurance Agent Resource Guide to find out more.

Overview

About Erie Insurance

Erie Insurance was founded in 1925 as an automobile insurer, Erie Insurance Exchange. It was established by H.O. Hirt and O.G. Crawford, two salesmen for the Pennsylvania Indemnity Exchange who decided to create their own insurance company.

Erie Insurance operates in twelve states including Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

The company is headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania, and has 26 offices across the country.

Products Sold And Market Focus

Erie Insurance offers auto, home, commercial, and life insurance through a network of independent agents.

Some other types of insurance from Erie include:

    • renters insurance,

    • condo and mobile home insurance,

    • umbrella insurance,

    • insurance for classic cars,

    • identity theft recovery,

    • business insurance, and more.

The company offers a discount for bundling homeowners and auto insurances.

Erie’s life insurance includes term, whole and universal policies. Term life insurance is available for terms of 5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 years.

Some of Erie’s whole life insurance policies allow policyholders to add an accelerated death benefit for terminal or critical illnesses.

In addition, the company offers various extra protections for free as well as a range of optional coverages for custom policies.

Erie sells insurance products exclusively to customers in the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest. Individuals who live outside of these areas can’t purchase insurance from Erie. Life insurance products are not available in New York.

How Leads Work

Erie’s website doesn’t provide information on how its agents find prospects.

If you are a new agent working for Erie Insurance, you will most likely have to start by cold calling for prospects or work with friends and family for referrals and sales opportunities.

It’s up to every individual agent to increase their pay portfolio. If sales are high, management will usually provide leads as compensation for your work.

How Getting Paid Works

Like most insurance companies, Erie doesn’t publish its commissions. However, as an independent insurance agent, you can expect to be paid a small salary with a commission and a possible bonus.

The company offers several educational resources and toolkits to help agents manage their websites, social media presence, and marketing.

Is It A Scam, MLM, Pyramid Scheme?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfQiJ8Db6xo&t=21s

Erie Insurance is not a scam. It is one of the highest-rated insurance companies operating in the United States. It holds an A+ rating from both BBB and A.M. Best. It is rated 12th largest auto insurer, 11th largest home insurer, and 12th largest business insurer in the US.

Erie is a Fortune 500 company. It has received numerous honors and awards in areas like ethics, flexible work options, healthy employee lifestyles, and workplace diversity.

Erie Insurance is not a multi-level marketing (MLM) business opportunity or pyramid scheme. The company doesn’t have multiple layers of agents, mentors, and trainers and is not suitable for agents who are primarily looking to recruit.

My Thoughts

Now you know a little more about how a career selling insurance with Erie Insurance works, I’d like to provide my experience and knowledge as an insurance agent since 2011 and as an insurance agency owner since 2014.

What follows below isn’t necessarily advice or critique specific to Erie Insurance. Instead, it’s general advice that I think all new and aspiring agents should consider before deciding to join a particular insurance agency.

Specialization VS Customization

One of the first things you need to decide is whether you want to be a generalist or specialist in insurance sales.

Let me explain what that means.

A generalist is somebody who sells multiple products immediately as a new agent. For example, they sell car insurance, homeowners insurance, renter’s insurance, and any other type of insurance the moment they step foot in the business.

A specialist, on the other hand, only operates with one particular product. For example, in my agency, most of my agents start with final expense life insurance and nothing else.

That might limit our available options, but that’s okay because our marketing strategy puts us in front of prospects that are only interested in that particular product.

The biggest problem that I have with generalist-type agents is the lack of focus that originates from trying to be everything to everybody.

When you don’t have a depth of understanding and expertise in one particular strategy as a new agent, you’ll feel an overwhelming sense of confusion.

Honestly, it’s hard to be good at multiple things at once. 

There are very few elite athletes that master multiple sports. Typically they only excel at one sport because that’s where they’ve spent most of their time and saw the greatest results.

Likewise, I think this analogy plays well with us agents. Specialization allows us to focus and surpass generalists in terms of expertise and ability to recommend the best solution to our clients.

Also, limited options and, in some ways, “less to learn” means agents can feel more confident in getting started, seeing prospects, and writing insurance policies.

For generalist-type agents, the pressure of being expected to know everything about multiple products can be overwhelming. In my experience, it leads to confusion and ultimately results in more agents who don’t sell anything whatsoever.

And that benefits neither you nor your prospect.

So carefully consider whether or not you want to be a generalist or specialist before you join any insurance agency.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading my article on how an insurance sales career works with Erie Insurance.

I hope my advice provided some perspective on how a career with Erie Insurance works and helped you decide how you would like to move forward in your career.

If you’re a new or aspiring insurance agent, I highly recommend that you check out my Free Insurance Agent Resource Guide. You’ll find more tips and advice about how the insurance sales business works and answers to questions that you may not have even known you had.

If you’d like to find out more about how my agency—Duford Insurance Group—helps new and experienced agents become top producers in both final expense and Medicare, there’s more information on my FAQ page.

As always, thanks for reading!

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