Never Ever Become a Life Insurance Agent
But did you know that the career life agency is setting you up for failure. I will even bet you that you can’t make it four years even if you have some money you can get your hands on. How about I bet you that you only have a 10% chance of survival? Better yet, change that chance of success to 6%, I’m betting that 94 out of 100 newly recruited agents will not see their 4th insurance anniversary.
Don’t call me Dr Doom; I’ve done over 25 years of homework and intense analysis to be right. Now ask the insurance agent and the career insurance agency who is at fault for the failure. The agency will always blame it on the agent; the agent will blame the career insurance agency. Whose fault is it? 50% percent of the time it is the agency and the new insurance agent’s fault combined. The agent should not have applied for the position, and the recruiter should not have hired him. These new recruits are “order takers”, they can complete a sales application form, but this is a far distance from selling an recruiting skills.
The rest of the time, I would put the blame almost entirely on the career agency system. Good thing I’m no longer an insurance agent. Career agencies would like to gag me and hang me from the nearest tree for bringing to light the truth.
What really irks me? Almost all the career life insurance agencies use a similar plan with recruiting agents and handling them during their rookie years. How can any agent succeed with the statistics stacked so high against him, and the agency unwilling to take blame or make changes?
Let’s look first at the hiring system. Career agencies hire new agents two ways. The first is a good size ad in the local Sunday newspaper promising lots of income and plenty of benefits. The other is a recruiter hired by the career agency to attend job fairs and similar events to talk to college seniors. Chances are the college insurance recruiter may have never sold an insurance policy. With the agency running the classified ad, the sales manager is good at selling, but does not have a successful recruiting track record,
It does not matter much which way hooked you into responding, your chances are terrible. Does it really hurt the insurance company if you fail? You can get my opinion and analysis in an upcoming report “Agents stock the insurance company freezer”.
