What should a new life agent look for in a CRM? Eight questions to ask before you pay for anything

Every CRM demo looks good. Here's the list agents on the floor use to see through one. Ask these, in order, and watch which ones get a straight answer.

1. Can I go from a lead to a submitted application without leaving the screen? If the answer involves 'and then you open the carrier portal', count the clicks.
2. Is the dialer part of the system or a bolt-on? A bolt-on dialer means the call, the note and the disposition live in two places and one of them will be wrong.
3. Is texting registered under my business? Unregistered texting gets filtered by the carriers. Ask who registers you and how long it takes.
4. What happens to my numbers at volume? Ask about number rotation, area-code matching and spam-score monitoring. If the salesperson doesn't know what a flagged number is, they've never dialed.
5. Does it know what insurance is? Beneficiary, draft date, graded benefit, policy status, renewal date. If you'd have to build those fields yourself, it's a general CRM with an insurance logo.
6. Can I export everything? Leads, notes, recordings, policies. A CRM that makes leaving hard is telling you something.
7. What does it cost at my volume? Per seat, per line, per text, per minute. Ask for the bill of a real agent at your size, not the starting price.
8. Will I still be using it in week six? Ask for a trial long enough to find out, and actually dial from it during the trial.

Yes, we make one, and yes, we think it answers these well. But the list is the list. Post the question that saved you from a bad purchase.