Life insurance agents have a very challenging occupation. To be a life insurance agent, you must be able to combine the gentle and responsive nature of a friend with the cold and almost ruthless salesmanship of a hardened professional. The best life insurance agents are able to make this tough job look effortless, but making a good living in this field is more like a walk on a tightrope than like a walk in the park.
Selling people life insurance seems innately difficult, because it is no easy task to talk somebody into spending the remainder of his or her life paying money for something that wont benefit anybody until after he or she is dead. Some policies are more flexible, allowing for some liquidity so the beneficiaries can access a portion of the money during the customers lifetime, but other kinds of policies often make the complete sum of accumulated money untouchable until the customer is deceased. This makes many people reticent to invest in a life insurance policy when they could easily put that money into a potentially more lucrative and certainly more flexible portfolio of stock or mutual fund investments. A good life insurance agent must be able to express...