Elite Life Agency is unique relative to other insurance sales opportunities for the following reasons.

1. World Class Training

At Elite Life Agency, we are known industry-wide as the place to go for the best final expense training. Aspiring, new, and experienced agents alike who value and appreciate quality training will find a home at Elite Life Agency.

Specifically, we offer an unparalleled training package for all our new final expense agents, including:

World Class 1-on-1 Mentorship. Each new agent is paired with a tenured final expense mentor, with years of face-to-face or telesales and managerial/coaching experience. Your coach will train you on selling, handling objections, and getting comfortable with underwriting your clients.

Live 30-Minute Daily Huddles. You’ll have daily opportunities to meet in small groups to train on your sales script and better enhance your execution of the fundamentals.

Superior Classroom Training. You’ll have access to 40+ hours of successful sales calls to review while you onboard, as well as helpful classroom modules to better your understanding of the sales and underwriting process.

Literally no agency comes close to how we coach and develop our new agents.

2. Belief In The Independent Model Of Insurance Sales

For our Broker program, we teach agents to sell multiple insurance carriers as opposed to a single carrier.

More carriers means more options, providing us better opportunities to help our clients with better premium rates and underwriting standards.

For our Career program where we provide no-cost leads (more details below), we start agents between 1 and 3 carriers.

3. Producer-Oriented, Not Recruitment-Oriented

Bottom line, ELA is NOT an insurance MLM.

Our passion is in training you on the craft of SELLING insurance, and not recruiting agents.

Not to say we do not support agents recruiting (we do, agents need experience selling first), but our focus is on developing you into an insurance sales machine above all else.

4. Designed For The Entrepreneurial Agent

Elite Life Agency is not right for everyone. To succeed, you must possess higher levels of self-responsibility and self-discipline than the average agent. You MUST be a self-starter. This is NOT a babysitting, micromanaging agency. You truly run your own insurance sales business and are treated as an independent business owner.

5. Top Commissions

Since ELA is not an MLM agency with 10 people between you and the top of the company feeding off your production, ELA is able to extend more commission to its agents than the vast majority of its competition (continue reading to get specific commission levels for various final expense products).

This means agents are actually paid VERY good commissions relative to most agencies with the ability to grow commission rates with production history. Commission levels discussed in detail more below.

6. Top Quality Leads

ELA has relationships with top-quality lead vendors, connecting you to lead providers already proven to work.

Our preference are for vendors that sell you EXCLUSIVE and FRESH leads, not old and resold. This means fresher leads with more interest in buying.

7. A Fair And Balanced Agent-Agency Relationship

ELA founder Mark Winning knows exactly what it’s like as an agent. And the last thing he wants is to screw you over like so many other agencies do.

As an agent with ELA, we promise to do the following:

• Release upon request 

As long as you do not owe chargeback money.

• Fully vested 100% from the first day.

You own your own book of business and continue to get paid into the future no matter your long-term working arrangements with ELA.

• You are paid directly from the insurance company.

8. Support For BOTH Face-To-Face And Telesales Agents

Whether you want to sell face-to-face or over the phone, Elite Life Agency can help! We have many agents successfully selling in both and can teach you the inner workings of which ever you choose is best-suited for your goals.

First, if you are a NEWLY licensed insurance agent, we welcome you to consider joining ELA. In fact, we have always focused on recruiting and training new agents into top producers. Experienced agents are welcome, too =)

Other than that, pedigree, resumes, and work history DO NOT MATTER.

All we care about is the following:

• Coachability

• Humility

• Focus

• An appetite for action

• Ability and willingness to invest in leads

• A can-do attitude

• Not a whiner/complainer

• Passion for helping people

• Significant work-ethic

If you possess these traits, it’s likely Elite Life Agency is a perfect fit, no matter your work history.

At Elite Life Agency, there are 2 main ways to begin your start as an Elite Agent:

Join as a Broker Agent, or,

Join as a Career Agent

Let’s take a moment to describe the difference!

Broker Agents:

• Are responsible for buying their own leads.

• Can sell part-time or full-time.

• Have access to our world-class 1-on-1 mentorship program.

• Can specialize in either face-to-face in-person final expense sales, or over-the-phone, remote final expense telesales.

Career Agents:

• Receive fresh and exclusive, high-intent leads at NO cost for 8 weeks to build their bank roll. This helps the new agent confidently “go Broker” after 8 weeks with a large pool of cash reserves to afford purchasing their own leads.

• Can only join if they’re full-time (no-part timers accepted).

• Have access to our world-class 1-on-1 mentorship program.

• Can ONLY specialize in face-to-face in-person sales (we do NOT offer free leads to agents who want to exclusively sell over the phone)

In short, Broker Agents buy their own leads; Career Agents have their leads provided at no cost for FREE for 8 weeks at a restricted commission level before going full Broker Agent at higher commissions.

Should I Go Broker Or Career?

To help you determine which track is best to start, here’s our advice:

Apply as a Broker Agent ONLY if you have sufficient capital reserves. I’d recommend going broker as long as you have $750-$1250 weekly for several weeks as a full-time agent or $500 to $750 weekly as a part-time agent. This money can be cash-on-hand or access to credit. In my experience, it’s better to bypass low commissions to maximize your earnings right from the get-go if you are financially capable of doing so.

Apply as a Career Agent ONLY if you simply don’t have the money to buy leads. Yes, your commission is lower to begin with, but you avoid the normal cost of doing business. Plus, the 8-week free lead program gives you time to save money from your effort to eventually go full broker at our higher commission levels with cash-on-hand to support your lead investment.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to find numerous examples of final expense success stories and testimonials.

Standard On-Boarding Process: From the time you submit carrier contracting, our goal is to have you “Sales Ready” within 7 to 10 days.

You’ll have access to every imaginable resource to help you learn the craft of selling insurance, including 1-on-1 coaching with top final expense agent mentors, classroom modules, daily huddles to practice your script, and underwriting training classes to teach you how to underwrite effectively and confidently.

How Does Compensation Work?

When you sell an insurance policy, most of our carriers pay you several days after the policy is approved. Some will wait until the first draft is collected to pay your commission. Generally, expect to get paid on average within a few days to a few weeks after the sale.

How Does Commission Advancing Work?

“Advancing” is another word for a loan. When you sell an insurance policy, you are advanced money with the assumption the policy does not lapse.

Typically, your major carriers advance 75% of your entire first year commission. Some advance 50%, while only a handful pay “as-earned,” or only when the premium is collected for that month’s commission.

If a policy lapses, then you owe the part of the advance that was not collected. For example, if the insurance company collected 3 months of commissions and you were advanced 75% (9 months) of your first year commission, then you owe back 6 months as a chargeback.

The good news is that you do not have to immediately pay back a chargeback. Most companies give you enough time to either (a) write a new policy to cover the chargeback, or (b) cut a check to cover the advance.

What Are ELA’s Final Expense Agent Commission Levels And How Do They Work?

Elite Life Agency prides itself on offering strong commission levels to both new and experienced agents WITHOUT the need to recruit like most insurance MLMs.

Generally, agents new to final expense buying leads start around 100% first-year commission, with experienced agents starting between 110% to 120% first-year commission. Renewals pay in the 4% to 7% range between years 2 through 10.

For top-level producers, we have the ability to increase commissions up to 130% based on hitting production goals. And for those interested in agency building, we have commission levels up to 140% based on production goals.

If you are in our Career program where leads are provided at no-cost, commissions range 40% to 80% for face-to-face Career agents, depending on production and monthly sales incentives.

How Do Leads Work With ELA?

Leads are the lifeblood of your insurance sales business and are an absolute requirement for you to invest in joining Elite Life Agency.

Without leads an agent has no business and no way to succeed.

Here’s a breakdown for Broker agents who plan to buy leads partnering with ELA:

• How many leads should I get? For part-time agents, we recommend 15 to 30. For full time, 25 to 50+. The large range depends on lead type and whether not you’re selling face-to-face or over the phone.

• What can I expect to pay for leads? Roughly, we ask full-time ELA agents to commit to investing $750 to $1250 weekly in one of our lead recommendations. Part-time agents should expect to invest $500 to $750 weekly. Can’t or don’t want to buy leads? Consider joining our Career program where we provide fresh leads at no cost (available full-time for agents interested in face-to-face final expense sales ONLY (not available for agents who exclusively want to do telesales).

• What type of leads does ELA recommend? We have access to quality third-party vendors that offer fresh and exclusive direct mail leads as well as Facebook leads, and free marketing strategies like seminar marketing.

• How long does it take to become profitable? Most agents who do well will see success within the first week or two, selling enough policies to cover their investment and profit. It is HIGHLY likely you’ll experience profitability between the first 4 and 6 weeks of selling, which is why for new agents we ask you to give this business at LEAST a month to determine if it’s right for you or not.

• I can’t afford the weekly lead investment, are there other options? Can’t or don’t want to buy leads? Consider joining our Career program where we provide fresh leads at no cost (available full-time face-to-face agents only).

For Career agents, we provide fresh and exclusive digital leads generated from various social media platforms.

Fundwise: How Does It Work?

We have partnered with Fundwise to help agents interested in securing lines of credit to finance their insurance lead programs.

Fundwise is a lender-matching platform dedicated to getting you the best credit lines available to you. Fundwise takes 60 seconds to apply, and applying has zero affect on your credit to see how much you can get.

There are some basic requirements you need to meet to make Fundwise worth doing. You need:

• 650+ credit score. Anything less than that is usually declined.

• No recent late payments or derogatory marks on credit report.

• 2 years of credit history with $3k+ limits on one or more credit cards

Learn more about Fundwise here and to begin the application process. Please note that I am an affiliate for Fundwise, and receive a commission on any line of credit you’re approved on.

Final expense is a simplified issue whole life insurance product designed to pay money to an insured’s beneficiary to cover final expenses like burial and cremation costs.

Further, whole life insurance provides peace of mind to our clients in the following ways:

• Policies never cancel due to age or health as long as premiums are paid.

• Premiums remain level, never increasing due to age or any arbitrary reason.

• If the client medically qualifies, coverage may start fully from the first premium payment for the entire coverage amount. If not, there are likely policies that will partially cover the client from the policy issue date. Or, worse case, provide guaranteed issue coverage with no health questions.

Also, “simplified issue” refers to how our insurance carriers underwrite the final expense product.

With final expense, there are:

• No medical exams,

• specimen collections, or,

• detailed medical information.

Instead, a simple Medical Information Bureau check and Prescription check is done electronically at the time of sale, with our favored insurance carriers providing an instant decision of approval or decline.

The benefit to your client is easier-issuing coverage without the frustrating weeks – if not months – of waiting for a decision as with fully underwritten policies.

This means your client gets coverage fast (and you get paid fast).

Our target market for final expense, Medicare, and annuities is the Senior Citizen demographic. Roughly, this refers to people 50 and older who have low to moderate levels of income.

The vast majority of our market is either:

• Disabled and cannot work, or,

• Retired and chooses not to work.

We love this demographic because of its long-term fundamental strengths, and believe there exists decades of sales opportunity for agents who commit to it.

Some benefits of the Senior Citizen market include:

• 11,000 people turn 65 each DAY between 2020 and 2030.

• The 65 and older population will increase 50% from 2020 to 2040 (from approximately 50 million to 75 million).

• Social Security pays our prospects no matter what the economy does, providing sales opportunities to prospects with less income sensitivity compared to working people.

• Medicare supplemental insurance companies invest millions upon millions of dollars to promote purchasing Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement policies, which conditions Medicare recipients into thinking buying an additional Medicare policy is a must-have purchase.

• Social Security and Medicare are political third rails. Few politicians will risk their careers attempting to reform either program as voters in older age brackets will vote them out if either program is even threatened.

Since ELA is an independent broker, we offer a variety of insurance carriers for agents to select from. In most cases, agents start with 3 carriers or less and expand their product selection over time. You can see a (nearly) complete list of all the carriers we represent here.

Believe it or not, little to none! In fact, some agents’ sales results have only improved since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Here's a few reasons why pandemics, recessions, and Depressions have less impact in our market than others:

Guaranteed Income. Almost all our clients receive Social Security income payments. The US Government has never been late paying Social Security at any time since its inception nearly 100 years ago. And this means when the economy goes bad and workers lose their jobs, our prospects continue to get paid, on time and without reduction. This translates into a business model with less swings up and down and more consistency.

Gaps In Medicare Coverage. When a senior turns 65 and starts Medicare, most feel additional coverage is necessary to fill the gaps in their coverage. And naturally, being older and closer to life’s end, there is more concern (especially as we’ve seen during the pandemic) about having quality health insurance coverage than in earlier years.

Business Model Flexibility. For final expense and Medicare, we can successfully sell either face-to-face or over the phone. If there is some sort of lockdown or restrictions face-to-face, it is within reason to sell over the phone with similar success.

Here’s how training works at Elite Life Agency:

• Experienced Mentor To 1-on-1 Train You: All new agents get access to our in-house, experienced final expense mentors. All have years of experience selling final expense in-person or over-the-phone. You’ll meet with your mentor 2 times daily for the first week for intensive sales training, then once a week as you start working leads. Beyond that, you’ll meet once a week for regular accountability and coaching opportunities to keep you focused and growing.

• Interactive Training Website. We have a training website that houses every conceivable training resource you’d ever need to master final expense, Medicare, and annuity sales. Scripts, classroom training modules, live sales call analysis recordings, carrier cheat sheets, quoters, and on and on. If anything, there are TOO MUCH training resources.

• Daily Live Training Conferences. We host daily training calls on all sorts of different subjects including script role-playing, live sales call analysis, carrier training, new agent onboarding, agency building, etc.

• Field training opportunities. We have a network of agents nationally that are willing to take new agents on 1-day ride-alongs to learn more and observe how the business is done.

• In-person boot camps. We host boot camps in various parts of the country on final expense, annuities, Medicare, and telesales.

As a Duford Insurance Group agent, you have access to a wide variety of insurance products besides final expense!

We offer the following insurance products for our agents to sell:

• Term Life (10-, 20- and 30-year level term, no-exam and fully underwritten)

• Whole Life (No-exam, paid-up, and dividend-paying policies)

• Indexed Universal LifeAnnuities (MYGAs, Fixed Indexed Annuities)

• Medicare Policies (Medicare Advantage & Medicare Supplement)

• ACA (Health insurance for clients under 65)

• Ancillary Products (Hospital indemnity plans, cancer plans, dental/vision/hearing plans)

Basically, we have access to any kind of plan you could ever want to sell outside of final expense!

VERY IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that the vast majority of agents should singularly focus on JUST final expense for the first 6 to 12 months before considering cross selling other products. Too much product too soon leads to overwhelm and confusion, and overwhelmed, confused agents don’t succeed!

Literally, everything and anything. We do not recruit on work experience, instead focusing on character first and foremost.

Yes! You do need to get licensed to sell insurance.

All you need is a life insurance license, although it’s recommended to test for the health and accident license, too.

Click this link to get more specific directions on how to get your insurance license, and where to get pre-licensing started.

NOTE: Get $150 off of your pre-licensing exam for life and health here.

Expect this process of licensing to take 2 to 3 weeks for the average person.

What Are The Expected Costs Of Licensing?

Expect to invest somewhere between $200 to $400 to become a licensed insurance agent.

This number consists of paying for pre-licensing, testing, finger-printing, and background checking.

Any Other Costs?

Yes, potentially for Broker Agents: If you are selling over the phone, expect to buy a few additional non-resident state licenses. Approximate cost will be $100 to $200.

We hate to say it, but understand most insurance agents fail within their first 12 months of getting started. So average incomes aren’t that great.

However, for those that follow our system and work hard, we believe a first-year income of $50,000 to $75,000 is possible selling final expense, with the definite possibility of earning $100,000 to $200,000 in income in either the second or third year of selling final expense.

For Medicare sales, since the product is renewal-driven, the first few years pays less income than final expense. However, with consistent sales for the first 5 years, many times Medicare commissions far exceed final expense commissions.

For example, it is conceivable for an agent to have 1,000 Medicare Advantage clients in 3 to 5 years, which would pay $270,000 each year FOR LIFE, as long as the clients stay on the books.

What Can A Top Producing Agent Make In The First 12 Months? Long-term?

We’ve had top agents write $300,000 to $500,000 in their first full 12 months in the final expense business.

Long-term, coupling either agency-building or selling Medicare Advantage, it’s possible to earn incomes even higher.

NO, this is NOT a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme. You NEVER have to:

• Recruit other agents

• Sell your friends and family, or

• Attend annoying Kool-aid rah-rah conferences.

If anything, the Duford Insurance Group is the “anti-MLM” agency.

While mentoring you to sell final expense in-person or over the phone is our passion and primary directive, Duford Insurance Group offers long-term opportunity outside of mastering final expense, if you so choose to pursue it.

Here are a few examples of long-term opportunities we offer our agents outside of final expense:

• Cross-Selling Annuities. You’ll have access as a new agent to our annuity sales training that will teach you to uncover large 4- and 5-figure commission opportunities in your final expense leads.

• Cross-Selling Medicare Or Under-65 Health Insurance. We have a well-developed Medicare sales and marketing program we can get you involved with if you’re looking to build a lucrative lifetime residual income. We recommend six to twelve months worth of consistent success selling final expense before entering the Medicare space.

• Management Opportunities. Elite Life Agency has huge growth goals! We plan to actively recruit successful agents from within to mentor/manager roles with income earning opportunities in the $150,000 to $250,000+ range.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for long-term growth potential, either through building your own team or cross-selling renewal driven products, Duford Insurance Group is where you want to be!

No. While recruiting is great, it does not make sense until you’ve developed “street cred.”

We recommend 6 to 12 months of consistent success selling insurance before recruiting.

Newly recruited agents require your attention and wisdom, and if you cannot provide it, they will understandably leave.

However, if you have existing experience selling insurance when you join DIG, then recruiting is OK.

Both final expense and Medicare products pay a renewal/residual income. This is income that’s paid to you well after your first year commissions are paid.

This is nice as you are paid on work you completed sometimes years ago.However, understand that while both products pay a renewal income, final expense is NOT geared towards significant renewal income, while Medicare Advantage IS.

What happens with most agents is that they start selling insurance with final expense, then around a year in, start cross-selling Medicare Advantage.

This provides the best of both worlds, with a high first-year commission selling final expense, along with a long-term renewal income stream developed from selling Medicare Advantage.

We want you working as much as possible.

Selling our products is primarily a game of numbers, meaning the more time in the field with prospects, the more likely you’ll make sales.

Nevertheless, this is YOUR insurance sales business, so you have full discretion over how many hours daily and days weekly you want to work.

Our recommendations are for full-time agents new to final expense to work 5 to 6 days with a few of those days late nights, and part-time agents to work multiple days during the week and all-day Saturday.

Yes, but only for the broker program. Career agents MUST be full-time.

Part-time DEFINITELY works, but you need to have a FULL-TIME mentality to make it work optimally.

Yes AND no. Read below for details…No, we do NOT charge a training or joining fee to become a Elite Life Agency agent.

HOWEVER… if you are joining to sell final expense ***As A Broker***, we require most (not all) agents to pay a refundable deposit fee towards leads. This deposit is refunded as long as you:

(a) buy leads within 30 days of joining DIG, or,

(b) sell a policy through Elite Life Agency within 30 days of paying the deposit.

IMPORTANT: Career agents do NOT have to pay the lead deposit above!

Experienced agents with a recent history of buying leads are an exception to this requirement.

Here’s why we require this refundable deposit, just for our Broker agents only:

• Final expense REQUIRES you to buy leads. If you are uninterested or cannot buy leads, our agency is NOT a good fit, and we’d rather not waste our time training you if you cannot take what you learn and apply it.

• Putting your money where your mouth is is both a risk and a motivator. Truth is, when you have something to lose, you try harder and take action faster. And these are the key components new agents need to succeed – a lead of faith in themselves AND the ability to decisively take action without delay.

How Many Sales Presentations Weekly Should I Do?

We recommend full-time face-to-face agents strive for 15 COMPLETED appointments weekly, and telesales agents strive for 20 COMPLETED appointments weekly. Part-time agents should start with cutting those numbers in half.

What’s The Average Closing Ratio?

For each completed presentation, we expect 50% to buy. Some agents only sell 40%, which is typically workable. The best agents consistently sell 65% to 70% of completed presentations.

Return On Investment Goal?

Our goal for our final expense agents is to return a minimum of $3 in commission for every dollar spent on marketing.

Optimally, we want to see a 4:1 return on investment or better. In other words, if you invest $50,000 into your final expense lead generation, we want you to commission between $150,000 to $200,000, giving you a net income of $100,000 to $200,000.

What’s The Average Case Size?

The average final expense case pays a monthly premium of $50. Agents who implement DIG’s sales strategies have seen average case sizes higher in the $65-$75 per month range.

What’s The Average Commission Per Case?

Generally, between $700 and $1000, depending on what type of product sold.

Quality Of Business?

If you follow our sales training advice while offering multiple insurance products, we expect 80% or more of your final expense and Medicare clients to stay on the books after the first year.

Bottom line, they buy a LOT of leads, and run a LOT of appointments. Our highest income-earning agents regularly buy 80 to 120 leads WEEKLY, running 30 to 40 appointments weekly. We’ll teach you how to get there =).

Once you review how Elite Life Agency works, follow these directions:

Are you a new or aspiring insurance agent considering joining ELA?

• Click the button below to get started. Make sure to complete the ENTIRE survey requirements to be considered.

• Have more questions about joining Elite Life Agency? In addition to a private forum where you can ask any questions you’d like about joining Elite Life Agency, there’s 30+ hours of recorded sales and marketing training, numerous sales scripts, and more.

Are you an experienced agent not necessarily interested in our Mentorship program?

• Please email us here apply@elitelifeagency.com. Explain your background and experience in detail. We’ll follow up with details on alternative onboarding if we think it’s a good fit.