Starving insurance agents are all around you. Every year over 200,000 newly licensed agents will drop out. They can't make enough money. Imagine than in 4 years, for every 500,000 people that attempt to make selling insurance a career, only 3,000 agents will move from rookie to experienced status. Who is going to help them survive? A hint: it isn't the insurance company.

Let's dismiss many of the misconceptions of recruiting new insurance agents. There are over 1,400,000 insurance agents currently licensed by insurance departments within the United States. Hundreds of thousand of new insurance agents are either poorly trained, have an insufficient number of clients, or should have never been hired. Eliminating these 500,000 surplus rookie agents today would strengthen the insurance agent system

Some agencies place newspaper ads, and others go so far as using college campus job fair recruiting methods to search for new agents to hire. Both of these methods when analyzed show almost identical results. 85% of these agents will within the first 18 months. In insurance sales you have two types of agents, those who can fill out an order application and those that can actually solicit and sell life and health insurance products.

The recruiter overlooks a major obstacle before a new agent is hired. Does this agent have what it takes to actually sell when given a good opportunity? Because many can’t, 50% drop out like flies for this reason alone.

Another 25% of non survival goes to insurance agent recruiters for providing false concepts, and very poor and insufficient training. Most newly licensed agents anticipate easily obtaining incomes exceeding $40,000 to $70,000. Our studies show less than 7% of these rookies ever obtain that level. In fact, if most insurance agencies did not money subsidize their newer agents; the income of a new insurance rookie would be under $20,000.

When one agent leaves, another will be quickly licensed to take his place. The departing rookie has written policies on a few friends, neighbors, and outsiders, so when these policies renew. The insurance company collects all the premiums without paying any acquisition costs.

How do you predetermine a success chance factor? Well first realize the agent is already financially in debt, hanging on to survive by living from paycheck to paycheck. Next is the agent an order taker, or a product seller? Will the agent be able to sell to the clients the agent expects him to? Can the agent find enough clients to sell?
If just one of these factors above is negative, do the agent a favor and terminate him before he gets deeper in debt.

The career agency is usually located in a swank, suburban area of a major city where the average mean family incomes are the highest in the state. The targeted customer for these agencies is high income individuals and small successful businesses. 90% of the limited training is spent on target marketing to these prime clients exclusively. However, the salesperson is most comfortable talking to and attempting to sell prospective clients in an environment or income level that matches his own. The large career agency, when closely examined, usually contains few experienced insurance professionals earning over $70,000 a year.


Don Yerke is the marketing adviser at Agents Insurance Marketing USA, a firm he founded over 25 years ago. The over 150 page website is located at http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com This is the premier firm in providing carefully refined and selected Department of Insurance agent name lists. Our clients are composed of insurance company recruiting directors, independent marketing organizations, insurance wholesalers, and general agents looking to recruit quality agents. Check out our hottest articles