This article is going to delve into an aspect of selling that seems very obvious but unless it is approached with a positive and productive approach, it can mean the end to an otherwise promising sales career.

You must have appointments to sell. Period. If you don’t have these appointments, your career is going nowhere.

Insurance sales is hard work. Many agents think you need to have great products to sell. So they focus on the carrier and those products which they think will dazzle prospects. What they fail to realize is this; you can sell a good appointment a bad plan but you can’t sell a bad appointment a good plan.

Many insurance companies believe that training is the magic component to sales success. So they create mandatory sales curriculums which you must complete in order to work for them. What they fail to realize is that a trained monkey at a zoo won’t get any bananas if there is no one there to offer him any.

Great products and great training are important. But if that was all it took to ensure your success, then many more agents would have sales success. No, you need those things but after you get them you can still fail. You need people to see on a daily and weekly basis in order to make it in this business. You need appointments.

Lets look at why appointments are the lifeline to a successful sales career;

1) You only make money when you sell a product – You are paid to sell. You can only sell when you are meeting with a prospect who has an interest in and the ability to afford your product.

2) You can only sell a product to a prospect – Having great products in your briefcase won’t make you any money. Those products have to come out of your bag, get shown to a prospect and purchased by them.

3) You can only see a prospect when you set an appointment – you need to arrange to meet with prospects. In insurance lingo we call that an appointment. The more you go on, the greater your chances of closing on them and earning some money.

No appointments = no prospects =no money to agent.

My suggestion to you is to focus your thinking time on how to get appointments so that you can sit with prospects and sell your products.