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This is fast becoming a Hoosier thread which is nice to see.
I'm quite familiar with the Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany and Louisville area. This is a nice area to set up shop as you are right, you have a lot of people to potentially work with. If you haven't already, I'd get your nonresident license for Kentucky so you can work across the river in addition to Indiana. I'm not sure what you want to focus on but life insurance is a good place to begin.
When you are new, everything seems pretty overwhelming. You have to learn what you are selling and find people to sell it to.
At first keep it simple.
If you decide to focus on life insurance, I'd just start out with a good term policy and a good whole life policy. Next learn the underwriting requirements to get those policies issued.
After that, you got to get on the phone and start asking people to meet with you. I use to find or make my own lists of people I either knew or that had something in common - like their neighborhood, small business owners, an employer or an occupation.
Once you have made your lists, start calling these people up and explain to them why you called and you want to meet with them for just a few minutes to go into more detail about how your process works.
Now just calling people up and saying you want to show them what you do doesn't work. You have to give them a solid reason to meet with you in the first place. It could be because you think you can save them money or because you want to make sure they don't have a crappy policy.
You can hold five or six of these initial meetings each day if you make enough calls and they can all be done at work real quick most of time.
The purpose of the first meeting is to set up the second meeting. At the second meeting, you'll meet with them and their spouse if they are married and have them get all of their stuff together. You can typically hold four to six of these meetings per week as not all your initial appointments will move on to step two.
I personally only collected information at the second meeting and set up a third meeting for my recommendations and taking care of the paperwork to get started.
You can easily write two to four applications per week if you do this. But it doesn't work if you don't get on the phone in the first place. Obviously, if you have people you know to begin with that will shorten your sales cycle. Calling cold is a lot of work and it's tough but it's certainly doable. If you aren't meeting with people in person, you need to be on the phone no matter what you are selling.
I know you say you are independent but it appears you are working in an office with others. I was a little confused by that because it seems like someone brought you in and hired you but isn't providing any training.
Whatever you do, just don't take this advice. If you're having to resort to this, you don't have enough money to be in this business.
