Diary of a New Part-Time Agent, Ep 1: The Gathering (of info)

I'm 49 and live in Portland, OR. I have a good job making mid-six-figures, completely unrelated to insurance. I'm unfortunately a bit behind as far as retirement savings and have been considering some ways of making additional money part-time.

Insurance has interested me since I picked up some of those coin-dispenser airport policies to read on the plane and found their language and details curiously fascinating. Although I've never held a sales job, I do spend a lot of my day job talking to people explaining complex subjects, and I generally build rapport with people quickly. I'm willing to commit for a period of time and see how I do, and then evaluate.

I'm thinking of initially focusing on final expense, as it's generally a one-visit conversation and there isn't the daily servicing you'd have with something like auto. I searched for FE scripts on the Internet and found several, and reading through them I could envision myself making that kind of presentation and pitch. For that target market, the product makes sense to me. I read somewhere on here that "compassion sells FE" and that resonates.

I have three things on my todo list.

First step is licensing, so I'm looking at various providers to get that out of the way. ExamFX seems to be panned everywhere. Kaplan I've heard is overly verbose and a slog. America's Professor looked good, but they don't cover Oregon. At the moment, looking up each vendor on the Oregon Dept of Insurance website and comparing.

I've also started consuming all free resources I can find on FE and insurance in general (web sites, YouTube, etc.). I'm generally adverse to gurus but there's some stuff on Kindle Unlimited I might try.

Finally, I'd like to build a model to show what's possible in terms of sales - i.e., lead cost, gas and time, close rate, premiums, etc. to see what is possible, given I'd be doing this part-time. But then I haven't really started researching who I'd affiliate with or sell through or any of that yet.

And now back to reading pre-licensing reviews...
 
If you're making $500K a year and still have time for this, why would you want to do this?

Sorry, I don't know why I phrased it that way. I meant $150K.

My point was that I'm not going to do a wholesale career change (I think even if I was an ace agent, it would be a long time before I'd replace that income selling insurance, not to mention the opportunity cost getting there).
 
I wouldn't suggest final expense, the retention is industry low.

I'm 49 and live in Portland, OR. I have a good job making mid-six-figures, completely unrelated to insurance. I'm unfortunately a bit behind as far as retirement savings and have been considering some ways of making additional money part-time.


Insurance has interested me since I picked up some of those coin-dispenser airport policies to read on the plane and found their language and details curiously fascinating. Although I've never held a sales job, I do spend a lot of my day job talking to people explaining complex subjects, and I generally build rapport with people quickly. I'm willing to commit for a period of time and see how I do, and then evaluate.

I'm thinking of initially focusing on final expense, as it's generally a one-visit conversation and there isn't the daily servicing you'd have with something like auto. I searched for FE scripts on the Internet and found several, and reading through them I could envision myself making that kind of presentation and pitch. For that target market, the product makes sense to me. I read somewhere on here that "compassion sells FE" and that resonates.

I have three things on my todo list.

First step is licensing, so I'm looking at various providers to get that out of the way. ExamFX seems to be panned everywhere. Kaplan I've heard is overly verbose and a slog. America's Professor looked good, but they don't cover Oregon. At the moment, looking up each vendor on the Oregon Dept of Insurance website and comparing.

I've also started consuming all free resources I can find on FE and insurance in general (web sites, YouTube, etc.). I'm generally adverse to gurus but there's some stuff on Kindle Unlimited I might try.

Finally, I'd like to build a model to show what's possible in terms of sales - i.e., lead cost, gas and time, close rate, premiums, etc. to see what is possible, given I'd be doing this part-time. But then I haven't really started researching who I'd affiliate with or sell through or any of that yet.

And now back to reading pre-licensing reviews...
 
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