Insurance Forum

[jsmiii]

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Hello everyone. I've just found this forum this morning. I appreciate all of the donated knowledge. I'm 25 years old with a background in real estate. I lived in Destin, FL for the previous 5 years and have now moved to Birmingham, AL. I was lucky enough to be in Destin at the right time and made a lot of money in commissions as well as flipping properties. As we all know, that source of income is now pretty much dried up. I feel very confident in my selling abilities and I'm looking for a change of career. I'm very interested in insurance. I feel like I have above average people skills and I never meet a stranger. I guess what I'm looking for from this post is some specific advice. What kind of insurance should I sell? What company has the most to offer for a new agent? What can I expect? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Mr. Bill]

Welcome! You will find that the "standard response" to your question is Pick Your Beverage, and plan to spend a couple of days reading forum posts. It's pretty much all right here. Want to sell Aflac? Do a search on Aflac. World Financial Group? Yep, it's all here.

Good luck, and best of success!

[Markingriffin]

Originally Posted by jsmiii

Hello everyone. I've just found this forum this morning. I appreciate all of the donated knowledge. I'm 25 years old with a background in real estate. I lived in Destin, FL for the previous 5 years and have now moved to Birmingham, AL. I was lucky enough to be in Destin at the right time and made a lot of money in commissions as well as flipping properties. As we all know, that source of income is now pretty much dried up. I feel very confident in my selling abilities and I'm looking for a change of career. I'm very interested in insurance. I feel like I have above average people skills and I never meet a stranger. I guess what I'm looking for from this post is some specific advice. What kind of insurance should I sell? What company has the most to offer for a new agent? What can I expect? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forum. We are glad to have you on here.

It would take a long to answer you question. You can do a search on the forum and find a lot of different answers to your questions.

[jsmiii]

Thanks for the help...I'm meeting with New York Life and MetLife tomorrow. I've got some reading to do!

[insuranceexec]

Originally Posted by jsmiii

Thanks for the help...I'm meeting with New York Life and MetLife tomorrow. I've got some reading to do!

Welcome to the forum; We are glad to have you here.

[al3]

In my area, very hard-hit by the economy and the impending implosion of the state government, in the past year I've seen just over a dozen ex-RE and ex-mortgage guys and gals get a CA license and either join an existing agency, or sign up with Aflac, or go independent.

So far only two of them are doing well enough to have stayed in the biz. The problem with RE and mortgage people is that they come from a culture where basically the business came to them, they didn't have to do a huge amount of daily prospecting.

You could sit an open house for a listing agent and pick up a couple of prospective buyers each Sunday. Or if you were a loan broker, you only need a small cadre of REs to refer to you... and it was relatively easy to find and market to the RE sector.

A lot of these people have little experience in cold calling and doing a lot of B2B or F2F networking or door-knocking.

I believe that if you don't like prospecting (or are no good at it) it is a lot harder to be successful in the insurance business.

I don't care what line you sell and for which carrier. If you can spend one third to one half of each day making cold-calls to get leads, or calling semi-warm purchased leads, your odds for success are mediocre at best.

I believe that this biz is often (not always) 50% prospecting, 25% sales ability, and 25% product knowledge. It makes no difference how good you are at the second two, if you can't do the prospecting well, this is going to be a difficult road for you to travel.

So before you ask what you should sell or whom you should sell for, make sure you have the abilities needed no matter no matter what it is that you decide to sell.

[Markingriffin]

Originally Posted by al3

In my area, very hard-hit by the economy and the impending implosion of the state government, in the past year I've seen just over a dozen ex-RE and ex-mortgage guys and gals get a CA license and either join an existing agency, or sign up with Aflac, or go independent.

So far only two of them are doing well enough to have stayed in the biz. The problem with RE and mortgage people is that they come from a culture where basically the business came to them, they didn't have to do a huge amount of daily prospecting.

You could sit an open house for a listing agent and pick up a couple of prospective buyers each Sunday. Or if you were a loan broker, you only need a small cadre of REs to refer to you... and it was relatively easy to find and market to the RE sector.

A lot of these people have little experience in cold calling and doing a lot of B2B or F2F networking or door-knocking.

I believe that if you don't like prospecting (or are no good at it) it is a lot harder to be successful in the insurance business.

I don't care what line you sell and for which carrier. If you can spend one third to one half of each day making cold-calls to get leads, or calling semi-warm purchased leads, your odds for success are mediocre at best.

I believe that this biz is often (not always) 50% prospecting, 25% sales ability, and 25% product knowledge. It makes no difference how good you are at the second two, if you can't do the prospecting well, this is going to be a difficult road for you to travel.

So before you ask what you should sell or whom you should sell for, make sure you have the abilities needed no matter no matter what it is that you decide to sell.

WOW!! I agree with you 100%.

If you can prospect, then you will make it in this business long term.