Life Insurance Salesman

In March 1969 I was a 22-year-old DJ in clubs in Stockholm. My grandpa had been sending me weekly letters saying, “Come home to London and be an accountant”; the next week, “Come home, be a solicitor”.

This was the swinging '60s. I had hair down to my shoulders, I lived in an unheated flat in Grevgatan, where I slept in the long Afghan fur coat that I wore all day long, and I had just shown The Doors around the delights of the city. Suffice to say the idea of becoming an accountant didn’t fill me with excitement.

 I received yet another letter. This time he’d written, “Come home and be a life insurance salesman.” Clearly he was getting desperate.

I knew my time in Sweden was coming to an end so I set myself up with an interview with a new company called Abbey Life, based in Oxford Circus at the time.

After an intensive interview and training session lasting five minutes, the manager, a small man in three-inch Cuban heels and a black Beatle wig, thrust a rate book, a dozen application forms and a 10-page sales script into my hands. “Learn this presentation word for word and come back at 9am tomorrow with your first sale.”

“But who do I sell to?” I asked.

He took me to the window and we looked down at the crowds below. He pointed at them. “Them! You sell to them! You will never run out of people,” he said.

I borrowed 50p for a taxi home and hailed one outside the door. “Where to guv?” the young driver asked.

“Just keep driving,” I said.

I began to read from the script: “Recently I’ve been showing a new savings plan to many successful businessmen like yourself,” I began.

After driving round and round Mayfair for 20 minutes, I somehow had got to the last page and said,

“If you’d just okay it where the cross is”.

“Thank you very much,” said the taxi driver as he signed up for a £20 a month policy. “How much do I owe you for the taxi?” I asked. “Have it on me,” he said.

I didn’t know the average salesman only sold five policies a month and I soon broke all sales records selling 30 or more policies every month to everyone from Lords to dustmen. If they moved I signed them up! Tube train guards, waiters, scaffolders, lawyers, doctors, bankers, everyone I met. Every night I was in the Speakeasy or Revolution clubs selling life insurance to rock stars.

Unfortunately, I became a compulsive gambler at Charlie Chester’s casino in Archer Street and forgot to go to work for a year. I finally hit rock bottom on March 21, 1971 and went to GA (Gamblers Anonymous) to put my life back together one day at a time.

In 1982 I started having breakfast sales meetings every day at Claridge’s. It got me out of bed every day and I soon discovered people find it very difficult to say no to you when they’ve got ‘your’ food in their mouth! It’s the greatest hotel in the world (when I die I don’t want to go to heaven, I want to go to Claridge’s).

If you are a tractor salesman you spend your life talking to farmers and if you are a drug salesman you talk to pharmacists but if you are a life insurance salesman you can talk to anybody, anywhere! And so I’ve spent my life talking to everyone from presidents to parking wardens, from film stars to fruiterers.

I am still a life insurance salesman. Retire? Never! I love what I do and have so much fun so why would I ever want to stop doing something I love doing? It’s been the most incredible roller coaster ride. I love life! I love selling! I love selling life!

I’ve booked my table at Claridge’s to December 12, 2046. I will be 100 and one days old. I might think about slowing down a little then. When I die I want to die running at full tilt, totally burnt out and empty.

Talking to Strangers: The Adventures of a Life Insurance Salesman by Peter Rosengard