People typically get into a sales career in order to accomplish some personal goals; high income, recognition, freedom, lifestyle of the rich and famous, etc. Sales can truly be a great career if a good agent can find a good company to work for.

Yet if sales has the potential to be such a great career, why do so many agents have to leave their sales jobs? Agents transfer companies often. When you check the available ads you will find many insurance companies constantly looking for new agents. On the outside it would appear that these agents cannot do business, don’t work hard enough, have not had enough training, etc. The companies tend to just look for new agents instead of addressing why the currently hired agents are not successful.

I do believe there can be a variety of reasons why agents have not found the success they could have and do deserve in sales. See if any of these resonate within you;

1) Agents don’t understand that selling insurance is a business – In a business the bottom line is profits; if you fail to make a profit, you fail to prosper. Agents must look at the commission structure they are offered to make sure the commission they earn will give them a return on the investment they must make in order to secure a sale (gas to get to appointments, cell phone for calls, marketing materials, etc). It’s not about what commission you are promised; it’s about how much profit you have left after spending money to do sales.

2) Agents trust the lead sources insurance companies give to them- For a new agent they can sometimes be very gullible when it comes to leads. Give them a page with names on it, tell agents that ” on average our agents set 3 appointments for every 10 names we give them” and agents start counting their sales. But not all leads are equal. A cold lead is one where the person has not asked for your product so when you contact them the chances of them saying yes can be as low as 1%. Agents need to work leads where people have requested info.

3) Agents cannot handle the freedom of setting their own schedules – Kills many people use to 9 to 5 jobs. You must be disciplined to get up and work.

4) Companies hire agents to do their advertising for them – Many times companies only advertisement is the agent contacting the public. Makes an agents job very hard.

Success is highly possible in a sales career. You must work hard and work for a company that truly understands how to market their services to this business savvy community of consumers.