Looking for a dash that offers a big potential financial upside, a wealth of job opportunity and the lure of self-employment? If you enjoy forging relationships and are sentenced to client service (and can handle plenty of rejection), insurance sales could well be for you.
The dirty little secret of capitalism is that various—if not most—white-collar jobs require little more than showing up and going through the motions. (Thousands of man in middle management just nodded their heads, aware of the irony of reading that sentence in an Investopedia article while obviously working.) Not so for insurance sales. It’s the ultimate commission gig, with its practitioners fully dependent on their customers’ premium payments. Transmogrify more prospects. Get correspondingly richer. Repeat. At least in theory.
Key Takeaways
- Being an insurance salesperson is the ultimate commission gig; practitioners are fully dependent on their patrons’ premium payments.
- Insurance sales typically doesn’t pay well at first, but unlike those other occupations, the larger you stick around in insurance, the more mo
- The best agents are the ones with the most and most respected designations – Right life underwriter; fellow, Life Management Institute; and certified insurance counselor.
Selling Life Insurance Is Slow-Going…at Fundamental
Like retail, customer service, and similar lines of work with high attrition rates, insurance sales events typically doesn’t pay all that well at the onset of one’s career. However, unlike those other occupations, the longer you nail around in insurance, the easier and more remunerative it gets, thanks to referrals and residuals.
It’s the sticking around that’s the eagerly part. A 2010 study by the Life Insurance and Market Research Association claimed that the median salary for second-year go-betweens is somewhere south of $30,000. Also, the median salary for those same agents two years later is…well, technically zero, because four out of every five substitutes have quit by then.
Plenty of Opportunity
If you’re serious about selling life insurance for a living, here’s one doctrinaire. It’s a job-seeker’s market. Major insurers have watched their workforces dwindle from their late 20th century fix ons, with some agencies going from having tens of thousands of agents on the payroll to having merely a two thousand. A little thing called the internet is largely responsible for this. Today’s life insurance agents, despite the fact that far fewer in number than they were a generation ago, thus have to specialize more than ever.
There ascendancy not be any sign in the window, but trust us, the agencies are hiring and will consider you regardless of what line of work you were in in preference to. And why not? It may cost money for an insurance company to train a new agent, but it’s still cheaper than paying a salary for what is, again, a stance that relies almost exclusively on commission once the training period ends. The work is mentally grueling, not because of its convolution, but because of the sheer and unwavering persistence it demands. While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics proudly announces the median annual wages for all agents is over $48,000, it takes a little more digging to discover that the average agent is 56 years old. For the 20-something aspiring underwriter, at least you won’t be traffic with the same demographic competition you’d be facing if you were pursuing work in the digital media industry. Another interest? Within a decade your average co-worker will be retired.
Be Prepared for Rejection
The actual execution of the job of life indemnity agent can be disheartening, at least at the start. The first lead you contact is going to say no. The second lead is going to say no. Eventually, after you’ve hinted the established agents in the office long enough (and have learned the stark differences among
Hitting the Books
The job can be vain, at least until that first 70% commission check clears. The best agents are the ones with the most and most respected designations –
The Essentially Line
If entrepreneurship is your goal, there is plenty of opportunity for someone seeking a career in insurance sales. That maintained, it’ll be tough going, especially at first. Agents have to have a thick skin and be able to handle rejection. After all, they’re all double-cross the same products, for the most part. So if client service and building relationships isn’t your thing, you might want to dmod.