IN THE FIELD DOCTOR INSURANCE 2/8/2019
and Thursdays. She went into the office Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And she studied all weekend. “I was working 30 hours a week and in school 30-40 hours a week,” she said. “If you’re going to be a success, you have to be all in. You can’t dabble.” Fleischner’s parents moved from Colorado to North Carolina while she was in college. So she faced the decision on where to move after graduation. She knew that she wanted to stay in the insurance business, but didn’t want to be a captive agent. She found a job with a Denver-area insurance agency that would provide her with training and would allow her to keep her clients if she decided to strike out on her own. But a family tragedy helped solidify Fleischner’s commitment to the DI market. Soon after Fleischner moved to Colorado, her parents traveled there from North Carolina to attend her sister’s wedding. Fleischner’s mother became ill and could not return home. Fleischner spent the next year and a half as her mother’s caregiver, accompanying her to and from the hospital and overseeing her needs. Her mother eventually died while waiting for a double lung transplant. DI soon became her passion, for two reasons. “One, because I saw the way it worked,” she said. “The other thing was, I was so young when I started in the industry and I realized early on that I can talk to anybody about disability insurance, whether they’re single or married, whereas with life insurance, you really had to wait until people had dependents. So I thought I had a larger prospect base by focusing on DI.” A week after her mother died, Fleischner’s boss committed suicide. “After that, my personal and professional lives were falling apart,” she said. “So I decided to go out on my own.” “I only want to work with the people who I can help, who I get excited to talk to every day,” she said. “If I could envision my favorite clients, they would be young doctors. So that’s where I really started niching myself. Then, as my clients started to move all over the country, they would refer me to others. Now, 25 years later, I’m licensed in all 50 states. I’m all over the place, all over the country.” 26
“I only want to work with the people who I can help, who I get excited to talk to every day.” Finding The Right Prospects
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“It’s hard to sell to blue collar, gray collar prospects because the premiums are disproportionate to what they‘re taking home,” she said. “So if you’re working with people who don’t have any discretionary income, they probably need DI because they can’t get by if they lose their income. But they can’t afford the premium. If you are going to be successful in the disability marketplace, you need to work with people who have the income level that they can afford the premiums.” Fleischner’s husband, Jeff, joined her in the practice after he was looking for a change from his career as an attorney dealing with workers’ compensation and personal injury cases. “He does a lot of the back-end detail work, behind-thescenes kinds of things,” she said. “And we have some staff people but we outsource a lot of stuff.” The Fleischners have two teenage sons and three border collies. A good bit of their time is spent walking the border collies. “We walk them 6½ miles every single day. Ten months of the year, we walk them 1½ hours a day,” she said. The family also enjoys world travel, having visited Europe and Japan, and is planning a trip to Africa this summer. All insurance advisors should offer DI as part of their product mix, Fleischner said. “If they’re not offering it as part of a plan, they’re doing their clients a disservice,” she said. “There’s a lot of business out there. Right now, sales are flat but there’s a tremendous opportunity in that field.”
When she was first starting in the business in St. Louis, Fleischner obtained some clients from Washington University Medical Center. From there, she asked for referrals. When she moved back to Colorado and began taking her mother to appointments at University of Colorado Hospital, she also made appointments with medical residents to discuss DI. “Once I had a foothold with a few, I would ask for the names Susan Rupe is maneditor for of their colleagues and I would meet mul- aging Insurance N ewsN et . tiple physicians,” she said. Her DI business She formerly served began to snowball. as communications Fleischner has come a long way from director for an insurthe days when she prospected through ance agents’ association and was an awardwinning newspaper reporter and editor. cold calling and direct mail. Her business Contact her at Susan.Rupe@innfeedback.com. is fueled almost exclusively by referrals. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan. “My clients become my ambassadors and refer me to their colleagues,” she said. “A lot of my clients are now in positions of authority and recommend me to others. I am also asked to speak to resident groups, Do you know someone who would and I am featured in some of my clients’ make a compelling profile story? blogs and podcasts where they promote Shoot us a quick email telling us who https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwBVWSgwZwHCkDRjdkhhtZgQZdJ?projector=1&messagePartId=0.0 me by social media.” it is and why you think so. Send it to Selling DI is a matter of marketing to editor@insurancenewsnet.com, and the right prospects, Fleischner said. put PROFILE in the subject line.
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » April 2019
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