Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
With that said, be aware of what you are getting yourself into. Life insurance sales can be extremely difficult. The business model these companies use is to recruit new agents and pressure them to sell insurance to their friends and family while you try to build a book of business. Many don't meet the minimum sales goals after a few months and are terminated, after which the manager or established agents take over the policies the newbie sold and earn the renewal commissions on any business that sticks. They in turn will try to sell other insurance products to those people, and to the ones who let their policies lapse because the new agent they tried to help didn't make it.
Also check if the salary they give you is a salary, or a draw on future commissions. It may start as salary and then change to a draw, which if you don't sell enough means you may find yourself eventually working without a weekly paycheck.
Carefully consider if you can stomach cold calling people you don't know to try to sell insurance. If you don't have the personality for it it is very unpleasant and is a requirement.
Ask what kind of agency support you can expect. Will they provide you with qualified leads ( the word qualified is key), will you be expected to pay for your own expenses such as postage, paper, etc? Ask what percentage of new agents are still working there after 6 months, 1 year, 3 years.
Some people do quite well, but they are not the majority. I got sucked into this when I was young and badly in need of a job, and it turned out to be financially ruinous for me. I'm not necessarily saying not to do this, but do go in with the facts.
MetLife and the like hire new sales folks to get access to the new person's network. Who would you first sell to? Family, classmates. Once you have exhausted that list you are financially stranded.
Primericans love to write "fake" ratings at places like Glass Door, etc. They also love to cycle through all popular forums spreading their exaggerations. One need only review their annual reports (available online) to see that over the past 6 years (2010-2016), over 1,375,000 people have signed up then left the "Opportunity" they offer. Data like that says a lot more than any opinions ever could. The 5% at the top feed off the 95% at the bottom. And that 95% is the relentless revolving door of new recruits that come and go each year. In fact, a large number of their insurance policies sold is actually made to new recruits. Recruits are clients and clients are recruits.
Primericas biggest lie is their big earners list. Its actually not only cumulative back to 1977, but cumulative by level. A $1M earner will then also be counted at the $50k and $100k. Its in fine print but most just look at the pretty numbers which are highly distorted by the cumulative effect. When you rework the numbers without accumulation, only about 5,980 reps have ever earned more than $50k LESS EXPENSES in 38 years, and many never repeated those numbers since.
Dated a guy once who was totally brainwashed with Primerica. He attended their "motivation" conference during our reign and sent me a video of it. Anyway, I swear it appeared to resemble a cult-like scene. Totally weird. However, this guy was totally convinced that this was his ticket to getting rich. Only a pretty desperate individual would want to work for them.
A lot of these insurance companies will hire anyone with a pulse. Most often, what happens is the recruit sells insurance to their friends and family who buy it out of pity, then they hit a dead end, quit and cut their losses. It is a win no matter what for the insurance company and almost always a big loss for the recruit.
I agree with all who criticized life insurance sales.I was in real estate back in 2007 (yea, real smart with Recession I know; sarcsm.) They were coming to the realtors to try suck us into insurance. But real estate is very similar. I left that shortly. You just can't live on commission work unless either your family has already an established business and you just ride the coattails, or you're a serious sales shark like Jordan Belfort (Wolf/Wall St.).
I paid the $99, swallowed the Koolaid, then shat on the floor...if you have a massive network of friends/family that you can swindle into the various insurances than you are off to a good start.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
