Is Health Insurance Sales for Me?
It is indeed a brave move to step out on your own, to face the challenges and uncertainty of comissioned health insurance sales. My goal is to provide you with sound advice and encouragement to help you become sucessful as a new health insurance agent. Do you have what it takes? Are you ready to jump in headfirst as a health agent? What do you need to know before making that decision?
First, the cold hard truth about what you are facing: The statistics for new health insurance agents are daunting to say the least. Of all new health agents entering health insurance sales on a yearly basis less than 20% are still writing business one year later. The statisc seems much worse for the second year for these new health insurance agents. Less than 10% remain writing health insurance business after a second year. This seems bad but if you look at it a different way this means that if you can make it through the first year tou really have a 50/50 chance of staying in health insurance sales for the long term.
Why are these percentages of new health insurance agents dropping out of the business so high? There are several reasons:
1. A large percentage of new health agents are recruited by large captive agencies that are “sold” the opertunity to be a health insurance agent by being given only the positive aspects of the career up front. In many cases this sets a new agent’s expectations so high, that when faced with the reality of their position, they become quickly discouraged and quit. I just ask you to think about it this way though, would most people take on a job if they were told up front that it is very tough, very competitve, very time consuming, they would have to pay their own way for training and gas, that it could take a few months to establish a steady income, and by the way, statistics show that less than one in five people becoming new health insurance agents will still be in the business after the first year?
2. Competition in the health insurance sales business is very tough and, to make matters worse, the customers you are competing for often have very little knowledge of how health insurance works. In many cases you have to be the first person to call a prospect or have a way of standing out to them from your competitors. A lot of times these prospects will also make poor decisions based on price alone, or not even show up to appointments. They don’t realize the cost and and waste of time have negatively impacted your business, and sometimes could care less.
3. There are also a lot of new health agents who realize, that when they are dealing with people who don’t understand health insurace well, see a chance to make a quick comission. These are a majority of new agnets you see who have just starte but seem to be doing incredibly well. (Some new agents are naturally talented and really do well starting out but this seems to be the exception.) Usually this ends up catching up with them fairly quickly when they get caught trying to circumvent undewriting or when a customer actually has a claim and it is not paid for the way this agent explained that it would be paid. So in many cases their contract is cancelled or they even lose their license.
So what does it take to be sucessful as a health insurance agent?
Determination, ability to sacrifice today to reap major benefit tomorrow, a great work ethic, ability to interact with people in a positive way, a high standard of ethics to do the right thing for your clients, and a high degree of self motivation to keep yourself on track even when things are tough.
If you have these qualities then this might be the business for you…
Are you ready to get started?
next: Licensing and Materials: What you Need
read my story: becoming a successful health insurance agent
