Why You Should Never Become a Life Insurance Agent

The insurance industry is big. It is also very lucrative—if you get into the right area of sales. Life insurance is definitely not the right one.

I was roped into the gold-plated promises of money and “being my own boss.” Who wouldn’t love to make their own hours and be promised huge amounts of easy money?

Even the recruiting Process is a sales tactic.

It was an easy job. Pull the leads, cold call the leads, go to the businesses, try to talk the decision makers into buying your product and boom—money.

At least that’s what they promised me. I can sell anything and I know it, so I was beyond confident.

Every lead provided to me was a bust. Nobody wanted the products, which isn’t my fault. If someone doesn’t want to buy something, even after all of your sales schmoozing, you can’t force them to buy it. My bosses didn’t agree with that though. Bosses? I thought you said you were your own boss! Yeah, I thought I was too.

My superiors told me it was my fault that I hadn’t sold any product, which is outrageous, because I did everything I could and followed their “tried and true” system to sales. I can’t help it if someone doesn’t want to buy a product and I am not going to shove a product down someone’s throat. That’s not how I make a sale. That's not the relationship I want with my customers.

I was also promised to be paid until I made my first sale so that my finances wouldn’t fall through. That was a huge LIE. They denied me any pay for three weeks. I spent my own money, gas, and time to make absolutely nothing for three whole weeks. I’d finally had enough.

It is not worth it!

One day, on one of my routes that consisted of nothing but terrible, fake, and failures of leads pulled from their system, I said “Screw it! What am I doing?” I was wasting all of my resources, desperately trying to make money to provide a better life for myself—the better life they promised me by working for them.

I turned around mid-route and quit. I went home and enjoyed my afternoon, knowing that I was worth more than being lied to and wasting my time for people who only cared for themselves.

My supervisor texted me that night asking how my day went, probably because she was able to monitor everything I did via her laptop. She asked how my day was. She knew because she could see that I quit my route midway through.

I answered her, “Unfortunate.” She proceeded to ask why and I told her all their leads were trash every single time and that I am not making any money. You know, in the nicest way possible to someone who lied to me.

She said, “Okay, send in your resignation letter.” And that was that.

This woman was someone I spent two weeks training with. We shared the same ideals, interests, even religious beliefs. We planned to go to the gym together. We had lunch together. She did a complete 180 and turned her back on me the minute I expressed struggle.

To sum it up, I am so happy I left the life insurance industry. I wish I’d never wasted my time to join in the first place, but we live and learn and the universe sends us better. My advice to you if you are reading this article because you are considering joining the industry: don’t. Especially if they only pay commission. You will be cheated. You will most likely fail, too, unless you get very lucky and your customers are just very easy-going and really want your products.

The people above you making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year do not care about you or if you fail. Take my advice and go to another industry, before you spend hundreds of dollars and hours getting your life insurance sales license only to run your life and finances into the dirt.