August 2008

By Linda Rosencrance

It’s true. Randy Murray, known far and wide as Mr. Life Insurance, is back.

After not working for several years, Murray realized retirement wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He missed the action of the life insurance business so much that he decided to jump back in with both feet.

So now he’s actively building another company incorporating everything he had learned in his 35 or so years in the industry. But this time around he wants an organization where everyone benefits from his or her individual effort as well as from the efforts of everyone in the agency. This time Murray wants partners.

Murray’s new company, TheAmericanInsuranceInstitute.com, is built on the foundation of one idea – making over 500 life insurance agents millionaires.

“This time around I want to help these individuals to be on track to be millionaires after just three years,” he said. “People who show they are sincere regardless of their past education, accomplishments, unfortunate financial problems, or length of time in the business will be invited to participate and to become partners.”

For some 10 years, Murray was “the man” in the life insurance industry. He was the number one marketer of life insurance products in the United States and maybe even the world. In fact, during any given year in the 1990s, his agency sold more life insurance than did 99% of the individual life insurance companies.

Now a published author, and a widely recognized business and marketing consultant, Murray began his distinguished career in the life insurance industry in 1969 while a senior at the University of Georgia.

From his humble beginnings knocking on neighborhood doors he single handedly built up one of the most profitable life insurance businesses in America. During his first six weeks he led production with his first company Colonial Life and Accident Insurance Company and over the next 30 years he led every company he was associated with in production.

During the 1990s, Murray was the most sought after consultant in the life insurance sector. In 1995, the United States Life Insurance Company of New York hired Murray as a consultant to teach its agents how to sell life insurance using his marketing program. And in just four years he helped the company increase its business from $8 million to $48 million in first year premiums.

Even though Murray was paid over $1 million in consulting fees to teach other agents his methods, he’s now sharing that same identical information with new agents and brokers in his organization, www.theamericaninsuranceinstitute.com, for free.

By his mid-30s, Murray began working on a project he knew would revolutionize the life insurance industry. Murray understood that there had to be a better, more productive way to sell life insurance than just cold calling or working referred leads.

Until 1983 there was only one type of advertising for the life insurance industry and that was brand advertising. Examples of that type of marketing included slogans like Prudential Insurance Co.’s “Own a Piece of the Rock,” or Allstate Insurance Co.’s, “You’re in Good Hands.”

While that type of advertising was a terrific way for life insurance companies to achieve brand recognition, it didn’t cause many people to pick up the telephone and call an agent to buy life insurance.

But Murray figured out just what to do to get customers to call him to buy life insurance. Through trial and error, Murray devised the Affordable Life Brochure and with it an entire marketing program.

Murray’s idea was quite simple: Create a brochure that was easy to read and understand as well as colorful. Because the brochure advertised the monthly rates for various life insurance policies, it allowed people to make informed decisions to buy policies based on their financial situations.

You see, Murray knew that no matter what reasons prospective clients gave for not buying life insurance, the real reason was they just couldn’t afford it. Murray also knew that when you advertised the cost of any product, whether it’s jelly beans or life insurance, if people responded after seeing the cost then they were ready to buy.

Murray’s simple brochure changed the way life insurance had been marketed for over 200 years. For the first time, a life insurance agent could advertise his products and people would call him to buy those products.

In the past 15 years, more than 1,000,000 polices have been sold as a direct result of the Affordable Life Brochure. And the incomes of over 1,000 agents and brokers, who have distributed the brochures in neighborhoods across the country, have risen from just enough to support their living expenses to well over six figures.

Now Murray wants to help others enjoy the same success.