Life Agent

Looking for a career 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 committed to client service (and can handle plenty of rejection), insurance sales could well be for you.

The dirty little secret of capitalism is that many — if not most — white-collar jobs require little more than showing up and going through the motions. Not so for insurance sales. It’s the ultimate commission gig, its practitioners fully dependent on their customers’ premium payments. Convert more prospects, get correspondingly richer.

Slow-Going...At First
Like retail, customer service, and similar lines of work with high attrition rates, insurance sales typically doesn’t pay all that well at the onset of one’s career. However, unlike those other occupations, the longer you stick around in insurance, the easier and more remunerative it gets, thanks to referrals and residuals.

It’s sticking around that’s the hard part. A 2010 study by the Life Insurance and Market Research Association claimed that the median salary for second-year agents 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 agents have quit by then.

But Plenty Of Opportunity
If you’re serious about selling life insurance for a living, here’s one positive. It’s a job-seeker’s market. Major insurers have watched their workforces dwindle from their late 20th century zeniths. Some agencies going from having tens of thousands of agents on the payroll to having merely a couple of thousand.

Be Prepared For Rejection
The actual execution of the job of life insurance 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 shadowed the established agents in the office long enough, you make your first sale.

Hitting The Books
The job can be thankless, at least until that first 70% commission check clears. The best agents are the ones with the most and most respected designations – Chartered Life Underwriter; Fellow, Life Management Institute; Certified Insurance Counselor. Dozens of hours of study and instruction, followed by an exam, separate the less committed and less ambitious life insurance agents from the ones truly devoted to the career. Combine flawless ethics with real-world education – and a healthy dose of that persistence that’s a prerequisite for the job – and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t flourish.

What NOT To Do
While there might be a code of conduct that registered agents are obligated to honor, occasionally it brushes up against the limits of common decency. There indeed is such a thing as bad publicity. And that even insurance agents who’ve managed to make a career out of the business can fall victim to negativity.

The Bottom Line
If entrepreneurship is your goal, there is plenty of opportunity for someone seeking a career in insurance sales. That said, it'll be tough going, especially at first. Agents have to have a thick skin and handle rejection. After all, they're all selling the same products, for the most part. So if client service and building relationships isn't your thing, you might want to pass.