It's a tough business Tiger. You have to be ready to make virtually no money when you start out, and you have to be willing to turn yourself into a marketing machine. I've worked in and around Financial Services all my life, so if you want to talk, pm me.

I've known a few people who've gone into insurance sales and one friend mentioned that the insurance company wants the salespersons contacts (family, friends, etc) more than the salesperson. Once you go through all your network, it becomes much more difficult to be successful and the typical tenure is short.

I think we've had a GA member or two try it. Their first hand experience might provide better insight.

Good luck.

Tim, I've sold both Life and Health, and my experiences were mixed. I won't tell you it's horrible, nor will I tell you it's fantastic. It depends heavily on YOU, but unfortunately it doesn't depend on you so much in the positive ways that they mention. It's always marketed to new agents as coming down to their drive, hard-working attitude, and desire to help people. Yeah, not so much.

What it more often comes down to is your ability to be very pushy without quite alienating people. It very often means knowingly talking someone into buying something they can only barely afford and won't need for a long time. It means having to 'up-sell' more than they really need to get a better commission/better numbers, and then having to convince yourself "well, now they're extra covered," or some other nonsense.

Everything Mark and Vic said is true based on my experiences. It's also not really a good option if you're looking for a career. Most of the promises are based on staying with a company ten or more years and being 'vested'. Yeah, that is great if you can do it, but in all honesty in the two years I worked in the industry (a year in health, a year in life, give or take a few months) I met hundreds of agents, and only about ten or twelve who had actually been doing it for ten years or longer. With only about two or three exceptions they no longer in the field at that point but were working in various administrative capacities.

Even if you're good at it and do well there's no guarantee you'll like it. I did 'well' for the most part, and a lot about it suited me very nicely. Nevertheless, I grew to more or less hate it. I knew someone else who was doing phenomenally and really was on track to be knocking back the kind of money they promise. She still only lasted about 4 years before she got completely burned out and abruptly quit (and she was still at the peak of her success).

Of course that's if you want to be an actual selling insurance agent. If you're considering a non-sales related position in the insurance industry then that might be fine. On the other hand, I also have a friend who's been doing that for the last three years or so, and while it's very stable he assures me that it's also extremely boring and tedious.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I just really want to discourage you from going into it under the assumption that you'll get ahead based on hard work while helping people and building a long-term career. That really isn't at all accurate based on my experiences and those of the people I met.

Better reasons to go into selling insurance would be a desire for a flexible, dynamic work environment in which you get to meet all types of people, and want to do something fast-paced for a short period of time.

I really don't regret my experiences overall, indeed in many ways it suited me very well. It was definitely not a career type job. It's also not the sort of thing I'd have wanted to be doing if I weren't young and single.

good luck and take care,

Kevin