selling insurance?

[desert monk]

Anyone here have experience as an insurance salesman? I have a friend who has been doing this for years, I have thought about trying it out sometime. Apparently it's easier as opposed to real estate or other more cutthroat sales jobs. Any info?

 

[WoodPeckr]

My father did it, he sold life insurance. First 20 yrs were OK, Last 10 were bad to brutal, drove him to drink. He worked for one of the biggest companies. Last 10 yrs had increasing pressure to sell more and more even if clients didn't want or need it, they were pushed to sell extra policies. Lots of cutthroat sales among the agents even within the company, not to mention competing companies.

That was over 20 yrs ago. Not sure if it's any different now.

 

[Rockslinger]

A friend of mine tried to recruit me to sell life insurance. In his case, it is a pyramid setup. You try to recruit as many agent as you can and then they try to recruit as many agents as they can. You get a slice of the commission earned by every agent you recruit. Pretty good for the guy at the top of the pyramid.

Selling insurance is a well picked over field. So, every potential customer has probably already bought a policy that he may not even like in hindsight. On the other hand, the star sales agents do make a handsome living (north of $300,000 annually).

Oh, also a lot of these "intermediary" jobs are vanishing as customers become more asute and buy directly from the service or goods providers. Travel agents is an example, as they are being replaced by the Internet. I can see the same thing happening to insurance agents as people realize that you don't really need an agent to sell you term life, house or auto insurance.

 

[Mia.Colpa]

What kind of insurance? Car/home, life, etc... I first hand saw a friend of mine start selling car/home insurance without absolutely no knowledge of the industry. It takes a lot of hard work, long hours, and tremendous patience to build up your customer base. Friends will only go so far, in fact friends will be your worst nightmare, don't rely on them, they go where it's cheapest usually and for some reason they don't feel you're qualified enough to sell the product because your new, weird, but true. Also, it depends if you are selling an exclusive product, or if you are an independent agent. Lots of questions, but don't underestimate the tiring, long hours, if you want to be successful.