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Life Insurance Agents?!?!!?!?

I have a job interview tomorow with Liberty National Life Insurance company. Anways, I will be getting interviewed for the customer service/sales postition. I wanted to know a little bit more about it. Is it hard to sale life insurance to people? How much would a agent make on average a month? (commission based) Just any advice will be very helpful! Thanks so much and have a good night!

Public Comments

1. Life insurance is a different type of sale. Unlike an automobile, power tools, or ice cream you are trying to sell a product that people need and not necessarily want. Therefore, it is necessary to appeal to a different set of feelings. If you allow yourself the time to develop the skill for selling life insurance, and you are outstanding at marketing/branding yourself, it is not hard at all. The part that most people find difficult it the dedication and perseverance it takes to develop those skills and marketing abilities. Sometimes people get it right away, sometimes it takes years to develop, and most quit before they reach that point. If you decide to pursue a career in life insurance sales, I would suggest you find a good mentor who is willing to help you learn how to generate leads, turn them into customers, and ultimately turn them into clients.
2. 90-100% of new life insurance salespersons fail at it. Only 0-10% are successful. I believe this means that it is hard and most new life insurance salespersons cannot do it. However, I have been told (but do not believe) that anyone can do it and all the failures were lazy and simply decided not to work hard at it. This may be true of some of them, but not 90-100%. I believe that more than 0-10% try hard, so some of the failures most be due to inability.
3. I'm not an agent, but those types of jobs are offered to me all the time. The commissions can be very good, if you can find people who will buy from you. If you are a good salesperson and have the personality, large network, and work ethic than go for it, but most people do not. Usually with a lot of companies there is a training period. During this training period you will probably sell to relatives and people that you know while not earning the commissions from those sales yet because you are still training and may not have a license. The sales and commissions of your family and friends will likely go to the people training you because they have a license to sell the products. Once you are past the training period and have your licenses then you've already exhausted all of your easiest customers. Now it is your job to find other people who may need to purchase life insurance products. This is the reason that you will get interviews for this type of position more than any other. Then you have to consider the state of the economy right now. There are not too many people around that have any disposable income so they are not likely to purchase those types of products. And the people who do have disposable income are usually well off and probably already have those types of products so they are also not likely to purchase from you. Most people with steady jobs usually have a 401k and/or life policies through work. This is an easier and cheaper way to purchase as this is paid with pre-taxed earnings as opposed to you trying to sell to people with less money and charging them more for the product.
4. Customer Service, and Sales, are two COMPLETELY different jobs. The first is paid wages, the second is straight commission. It's damn hard. 95% of new agents 'wash out' and can't make enough to cover the cost to get licensed. Of the 5% who make it the first year, if you're putting in 60 -- 80 hour weeks, you'll probably drag home about $50,000. They hire EVERYONE for a straight commission job, because 19 out of every 20 people, who PASS the licensing test, don't stick it out.