Life Insurance Sales Income
Your life insurance sales income depends mostly on your skills, talent and work ethic. When you sell life insurance you are essentially your own boss. You may have to attend company meetings from time to time and at first you may have a manager to answer to, but after your initial training period you set your own schedule, work your own hours, and take your money-making ambitions as far as you can and want to. Don't like working nights? You can become an agent who specializes in working with businesses, most of whom wish to meet during the day; then you can have your nights free to do whatever you wish. Do you enjoy playing racquetball or golf? Join a club and use your playtime to network with other people who may need your services and thus mix your business with pleasure. Does your daughter have an important school field trip coming up? Take that day off and be a chaperon. It's your birthday? You don't have to work that day if you don't want to. As a life insurance agent you'll get to do a fair share of traveling, too. You won't be stuck in a cubicle all day. Or, if you want to, you can work from home and have prospects and clients come to you for meetings. And writing life insurance can be very satisfying personally. Some life insurance agents, when asked what they do, reply, "I help people." Life insurance is a powerful financial tool and it has made the difference in countless lives when death has struck down a friend, spouse, or loved one. However--with greater freedom and greater financial possibilities come greater need for responsibility and greater risk. The life insurance industry has a mind-boggling 98% turn-over ratio, meaning 98% of all people who become agents quit or are fired in their first year. (Basically if you got fired you really fired yourself.) It is very difficult business at first and only a minority of agents make it past their third year in the business. Until you have built up a strong and flowing network of constant referrals, residuals, and repeat buyers you have to push yourself very hard and go above and beyond what the average person as a mere employee with a set schedule does. If you don't like working nights you still might well have to for some months until you have established your business-to-business practice. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment of insurance sales agents is expected to increase by 13 percent over the 2006-16 period, which is about as fast as average for all occupations. Future demand for insurance sales agents depends largely on the volume of sales of insurance and other financial products...Employment of agents will not keep up with the rising level of insurance sales, however. Many insurance carriers are trying to contain costs and are shedding their captive agents—those agents working directly for insurance carriers. Instead carriers are relying more on independent agents or direct marketing through the mail, by phone, or on the Internet. In many ways, the Internet should not greatly threaten agents' jobs as was widely thought. The automation of policy and claims processing is allowing insurance agents to take on more clients. Most clients value their relationship with their agent and still prefer discussing their policies directly with their agents, rather than through a computer." The average life insurance agent who has been in business longer than three years makes an annual income, including residuals, that is about the same as the typical middle class employee, although again he does it with more freedom. However, smart, driven, and well-educated agents can make six-figure incomes and become multimillionaires
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