You know the type. The ones who can walk into a room and size up the atmosphere in half a second. The ones who know exactly what to say and when to say it Career Success.
For most of their lives, people like this have been told they talk too much.
Teachers have marked them down for it. Managers have written them up.
But here’s the secret…
When it comes to insurance agent careers, there couldn’t be a more valuable skill.
Empathy. Communication. The ability to simplify the complex and talk about sensitive subjects with ease? Insurance sales is filled with all of it. Clients want to work with agents who make them feel understood, and agencies are dying to hire agents with the people skills to find them.
If you’ve got a way with words, here’s why now is the perfect time to make a career change into insurance.
What you’ll learn:
- Why Communication Is the Core Skill in Insurance Sales
- How Storytelling Actually Closes Deals
- What Makes an Insurance Career Worth Pursuing Right Now
- The Edge That Puts One Agent Ahead of Another
Why Communication Is the Core Skill in Insurance Sales
Let’s start with the basics. What does an insurance agent actually do?
They sit down with everyday people — families, small business owners, millennials buying their first home — and talk about risk. Uncertainty. Hope.
Sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be.
The insurance agents who excel at their job don’t just drone on about exclusions and liability. They connect with clients on a human level.
They ask questions. Great questions. Questions that make clients feel heard. That allow agents to really understand their situation.
Once that foundation is built? Agents who are good communicators can explain anything.
That’s why so many skills translate directly to insurance agent careers. Teachers have spent their lives simplifying difficult concepts for students. Customer service reps have talked nervous hotel guests down off the ledge more times than anyone can count Career Success. Writers have learned how to pack infinite meaning into a finite space.
None of them have to start at square one when they switch careers. Their people skills can follow them anywhere. Including the insurance industry, which happens to have a projected need for 47,000 new agents each year through the end of the decade.
How Storytelling Actually Closes Deals
Here’s the secret to getting anyone to do — or buy — anything…
Stories are memorable. Facts? Not so much.
Think about the last time you went to the doctor. Did your doctor sit there and rattle off your test results in plain text? Or did they weave your bloodwork into a narrative?
Storytelling is how humans have been communicating since the beginning of time. It’s how we make information sticky. By one estimate, stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. That translates to insurance agents closing up to 30% more sales.
Think about that next time you’re working with a client.
Agent A meets with a potential customer. They explain the benefits of the agency’s leading life insurance policy.
Agent B does the same. But instead of just listing the bullet points, they show the client a story. A family who lost their income and was saved by this exact coverage. A child who was kept in college by the policy they picked. The client becomes the main character of that story Career Success, the hero who provided for their family thanks to U-Agent-A’s help.
Which agent do you think gets the callback?
Of course, a bilingual insurance sales rep has a leg up on most of the competition when it comes to storytelling. Consider this scenario again. This time, Agent A and Agent B are fluent in Spanish.
Now they’re not just selling insurance. They’re telling insurance to families that speak Spanish as their primary language. Families that may have never even considered buying insurance before because no one in the industry who could speak to them felt they truly understood them.
That’s an opportunity to do some serious good. And it all comes down to using your voice.
What Makes an Insurance Career Worth Pursuing Right Now
It’s a great time to be an insurance agent.
Baby boomers are set to retire en masse over the next decade. At current trends, nearly 50% of the industry will be looking to retire by 2028. That’s entry-level positions. That’s manager roles. That’s veteran agents with a book of business opportunities.
Put simply: there’s going to be room for newcomers. And those newcomers will be welcomed by agencies who are ready to hand leadership reins over to fresh faces Career Success.
On top of that, agents can expect to make a median annual salary of $60,370. (To put that into perspective, the top 10% of insurance sales agents make over $135,000 annually.)
There’s training to consider, of course. But if you’re worried about starting from scratch:
Don’t be.
Sure, insurance agents need licenses. They need to be able to understand policies and speak the language of the industry. But agencies know this too. That’s why most offer new-hire training and mentorship programs. Teaching someone how insurance works when they already know how to sell? Easy.
The Edge That Puts One Agent Ahead of Another
Okay, one more question for you:
Why do two insurance agents with the same resources, training, and support end up with radically different books of business?
The answer, nine times out of ten, is soft skills.
Sure, there are exceptions. An agent who crunches numbers better than their colleague may come out on top in certain scenarios. But generally speaking, when you compare two agents who are almost equal in experience and know-how? It comes down to who’s better at selling with heart.
The agent who returns client calls when they promise they will. The agent who remembers that Mrs. Smith’s dog just passed away, and checks in to see how her family is doing. The agent who makes their clients feel like…well, clients.
Not objects. Not rolling revenue streams.
Clients.
Thank you, English class. Whoever said you never use creative writing in real life clearly didn’t consider insurance agent careers.
Insurance agents write policies. They write follow-up emails. They craft emails that break bad news to clients in a way that preserves the agency/client relationship Career Success.
Anyone who’s excelled at writing before should feel that coming. Storytellers understand the power of words. They know how to get people to feel heard. How to foster trust by helping clients tell their story.
That’s what agents do.
They tell their clients’ stories. With the help of the right insurance policy.
Putting a Bow On It
When it comes down to it, insurance agent careers are really about trust.
Trust that you have your clients’ best interests at heart. That you’ll do everything in your power to find them the best fit. That you won’t take “no” for an answer until they’re sure.
Trust isn’t built over email or by reading from a policy summary. It’s built face-to-face. When you sit down with someone and ask them about their life. Their worries. Their dreams.
Agents who are naturally gifted speakers have spent their lives doing this already. Now all they need to do is learn a little about insurance. Get licensed. Find the right agency to work at.
Oh, and take that career jump. Because jobs in insurance are waiting for people with your skills.
Don’t stop now. Uncover our full library of insights at The Tispy Gypsies.
