Here's what I can tell you. Sales is a tough job, whether you're selling insurance or anything else. Personally, I think that's a big part of what goes wrong for some of those who try their hand at sales and just really don't understand what it takes to succeed. Sales can be incredibly rewarding, from an enjoyment of the work standpoint and feeling like you're growing in an actual profession, it can certainly be incredibly profitable and, for me, I've never done anything else and I've never wanted to do anything else. With that being said, you have to understand a few basic principles going in. First, you have to believe deeply in yourself and really know what your true strengths, weaknesses and abilities really are. You have to be honest with yourself and you also need to be your own harshest critic always. You can always grow, learn something new and get better. Second, you CANNOT be a quitter. Third, you also have to really understand that in many ways, I mean in the actual day to day of you just dealing with and interacting with customers, we're mostly out there on our own. I don't care what group you work with and how hands-on or hands-off they might actually be, when the real selling work needs to be done we're all lone wolves. That's another of my pet issues is this supposed idea of some kind of buddy selling system. You need a buddy just to run with, keep you motivated and compete against. That's healthy. A "buddy" who wants to mope, make excuses and just wants to commiserate with you during the lows can be deadly. As the greats say, "there are the extreme highs, and there are the very low, lows", but you truly don't need any outside influence to accentuate either one. Deal with them both in your own way. Bottom line, stay focused. "Keep your head down", as they say. Keep plugging away EVERY day. Be aggressive, be ferocious, be tenacious, BE greedy, STAY hungry, always "play the numbers" and just ALWAYS know that your girlfriend, boyfriend, best friend and ESPECIALLY your spouse will never understand what we actually go through and deal with on any given day. Unless they've been successful in sales themselves, it's just a language that they really don't speak or understand. They only understand sick days, paid days, paid vacations, holidays and time cards which we don't really get any of LOL. "Stay in your own head" in sales is my favorite expression ever said to me and block out all of the other noise. Beyond that... Just follow the system
Oh, and yes, having some states in some different time zones to call is always helpful.
