Helen Dale Surpasses $200 Million of In Force Life Insurance Business
Insurance companies normally reserve major media releases for financial results and management changes, not the accomplishments of an individual agent. But this was different. In its 120-year history, the North American Company for Life and Health Insurance had seen only two of its agents exceed $200 million of life insurance in force. Helen Dale was the second -- and the first female agent at that level.
Successful female agents are nothing new in the insurance industry, of course, and for producers in high-end markets, even the $200 million milestone isn't that uncommon. Helen's achievement, however, is remarkable for its sheer unlikelihood. Who could imagine a 59-year-old grandmother in rural southern Minnesota selling (and retaining) $200 million of life insurance while working out of her home and almost entirely on her own, with no full-time staff?
Insurance recruiters since the dawn of time have told prospective agents that only two personal attributes are required for success in sales: a relentless work ethic and a sincere desire to serve customers' best interests. That was all Helen Dale had to start with, and it's all she's needed to build an exemplary 30-year professional career, from which she has no plans to retire anytime soon.
A Matter of Survival
By 1976, the "women's liberation" movement was at full gallop. Gloria Steinem was making waves with Ms. magazine. Billy Jean King had conquered Bobby Riggs in the nationally televised "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match three years earlier. The movement even had an unofficial anthem, "I Am Woman," that had topped the pop music charts and launched singer Helen Reddy's career.
Another Helen had different issues to face. Helen Dale was recently divorced and struggling to raise three young children on her own. With only two years of college education and work experience limited to clerical jobs, she had to find a different line of work. Her annual salary as a school secretary was only $6,700. "It was either UPS or insurance -- those were my choices," Helen remembers. "I needed to make enough money to keep our family afloat. I wanted to get into the man's world, because that was the only place where there was money. I think women are doing better now."
Helen had gotten a taste of the insurance business working for nine years as a secretary for C. D. Nelson, the State Farm district manager in her hometown of Mankato, 75 miles southwest of the Twin Cities. He had closed the office and retired in 1974. On his advice, Helen chose insurance over the UPS job and became a debit agent for Prudential, going door-to-door collecting monthly premiums.
"Being a new agent, I got the poorest area," Helen says. "But I love meeting people and their families, and I did a lot of business. I was always selling, watching for opportunities and needs, all the basics. I'd just talk to the people and give them ideas as I would see them every month. It wouldn't take too long before they would say, 'Remember what you told me about accumulating some money? Maybe I should start doing that.' A lot of people I worked with, starting out, didn't have a lot of money."
Helen didn't have much herself. Her car was a $200 junker with a driver's-side door that wouldn't open. "I weighed about 90 pounds back then, so I rolled down the window and scooted in and out of the car through the window. I did that for two years," she says, laughing. "I got pretty efficient at it." In the summer, she'd make her rounds on a mo-ped with a basket in the back.
She qualified for the company's sales conference in her first year. As with any single mother, though, her long work hours made it hard on her children as well -- daughters Lea (now 40) and Laura (35) and son Jeff (39). Helen compensated a little for that by bringing them along to her first convention. "The kids carried the flag in the opening ceremonies," she says. "After I was divorced, we'd have family meetings once a week, where I shared with the kids what I needed to do to make a living for us, and what they needed to do to help. I always told them they paid a price for what I did because I was gone a lot, especially in the first couple of years. So they always went with me to conventions and shared in all the accolades because they were a part of it."
A Second Life
In 1983, Helen married her husband Don Rachut, whom she had met at the local high school during her secretarial days; Don was a school counselor. It marked the beginning of a new stage in her life as she continued to work her debit territory and raise her children. She and Don had a child of their own, daughter Rica, in October 1988. That same fall, Helen made a cold call that would change her career. One of the local Native American tribes needed group insurance and agreed to have Helen present a proposal to the tribal council.
"They were just at the point where they were thinking they ought to do something for their casino employees," Helen recalls. "I made the appointment and it happened to land two weeks after Rica was born." It was the first time Helen left Rica at home -- and the last. "Rica cried all day while I was gone. After that she came with me on appointments.
"I picked up that business and it just went from there. They got to know me and I got to know them."
Helen handles benefit plans for two local tribes, which are organized like corporations, with adults holding equal membership stakes in tribal business ventures -- including casinos that draw substantial business from the Twin Cities. She counts almost 700 tribal members as direct clients, most owning permanent life insurance. Helen has written life coverage on as many as four generations of some families. Three years ago, she and another agent did a group enrollment with 320 applications in four days, all written face-to-face with the applicants.
All the individual business has mushroomed from a simple instance of being alert to a client need. "About three years after writing the group term on employees, we moved on to the needs of the member-owners and put group term life on each one to pay off any loans outstanding at death," she says. "We put the case out to different companies. Transamerica was very interested in working with Indian tribes at the time, and bent over backwards to give us the absolute best deal they could.
"Then we put in a supplemental universal life plan on a simplified application. Many took advantage of that."
Helen positioned herself to respond to that need when she became a fully independent agent in 1991. "That's when I started to actually reach my potential and know what I could do," Helen says. "Once I got out in the real world, I found out there are companies that do wonderful things for their customers." She had taught herself how to sell as a debit agent, so it was a natural progression for her to sell larger amounts to more clients as an independent producer.
"You learn from your clients," she adds. "They'll tell you what they need, if you'll listen." Helen places business with a number of companies, but her primary life carriers are North American and Illinois Mutual, and she handles annuities through four or five other major firms. She writes smaller amounts of disability income and long-term care insurance and also is a Series 6 and 63 registered representative, placing the majority of her clients' mutual fund assets with the Putnam funds.
No Place Like Home
The adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," describes Helen's attitude toward running her business. Her methodology has changed little in 30 years. She's never had an office outside her home and never has employed a full-time assistant. Her children have helped out on occasion and she hires temporary employees for filing and computer systems work. Don, who retired in 1988 and is 24 years older than Helen, is a self-appointed "go-fer" and household manager, freeing up Helen's time for sales and client service.
In prospect interviews, she uses a yellow legal pad and a simple, generic three-page fact-finder to collect the individual's family and financial data and focus on objectives. More often than not, she closes the sale in one session. "People trust me to do the best I can for them," she says. "It's all a matter of trust, and working back and forth. I calculate how much they need, they tell me what they can afford, and then the type of insurance I sell them depends on those two factors.
"People who understand the product of life insurance, buy it. Most people I write do not buy term. Term is renting an apartment; permanent is buying a home. I've used that analogy a million times."
In a typical week, Helen will alternate between client interviews one day (up to four in a day) and catching up on paperwork the next. She doesn't flinch at working long hours, even in adverse circumstances. Back in her Prudential debit days, she suffered a broken tailbone and was laid up for several weeks, but kept in touch with her customers over the phone and made sales. She did the same thing six years ago after undergoing knee-replacement surgery on both knees.
"I've got a lot of drive," she admits. "I work hard. I work best under pressure. I'm definitely a Type A personality." To depressurize on weekends, Helen usually retreats to a home she and Don own on Lake Tetonka, east of Mankato, near the farm where Helen grew up.
Most of Helen's life sales involve estate planning needs and in many cases the client creates an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) to keep the death benefit out of his or her estate. "For the high-income clients, the ILIT is the way to go. It's an excellent tool," she says. "But you always have to be careful about the ages. If the clients are too young, you have to hold off on the ILIT until they're older, because they may change their minds on what they want to happen, or they may want access to the money."
Years ago, a client suggested an idea that she wanted Helen to help her with, about setting up insurance on her in-laws to provide retirement income for her at their death. "She called it her retirement plan," Helen says. "It was cheaper for her to do that than try to accumulate money. People don't live forever. Her in-laws were willing to take the medical exams; they weren't paying for the policy, she was.
"The idea works quite well, depending on the insureds' ages and health. I've used it lots of times."
No Written Goals
Her business card is elegantly simple, with her name, address, phone number, and agent's license number in black ink on white. The only ornamentation is the logo of the Million Dollar Round Table. Helen admits, however, that she's attended only one MDRT meeting despite qualifying many times. Her basic objective each year is to do enough business to qualify for a company convention or two, but she doesn't track her progress or write down goals of any kind.
This helps explain her reaction when North American recognized her for the $200 million milestone at the company's convention for top producers this past spring in Aruba. "They asked Don and I to come up on stage, and everybody in the room stood up and clapped, but I didn't see them do it -- I was too busy shaking people's hands and talking to Don," Helen says. "Later one of the agents came up to me and said, 'Did you know that of all the awards given out here, nobody got a standing ovation but you?' That thrilled me because those were my peers."
Service Above All
As important as sales are, Helen's experience proves that service to the client takes priority -- and can sometimes lead to unexpectedly big sales anyway. Illinois Mutual once had her follow up on a small orphan policy owned by the proprietors of a local bar. "I asked them for a listing of their assets, and they brought out a whiskey box full of loose papers," Helen remembers. "There were stock certificates, bonds, everything you can think of. Some of the stuff hadn't even been opened. They wanted to know what all of it was worth. It took me a year to handle that case, figuring out what they had. It turned out they had about $680,000 in various investments, plus about $200,000 in certificates of deposit.
"We did an ILIT and took care of their heirs, and invested a lot, and just did a ton of business with them, one thing after another."
A very different episode brought out the deep sense of responsibility Helen carries for her clients. A client was leaving town on vacation and asked Helen if she would be available for her teenage daughters to call on if they needed anything. No problem, Helen replied. "At 2:30 in the morning I got a call from one of the daughters, who was ill. I drove out there, a bit of a drive out in the country, and stayed with her through the night. When I got home Don said, 'Is this part of your job description for an insurance agent?'"
It may not be in every agent's job description, but she's keeping it in hers. "Sometimes it's almost more than you can handle, to have everyone's problems put on your shoulders," she says. "But that's really what happens. It's a responsibility, and it can be tough. But I wouldn't change it for anything. I love what I do."
