Sept. 2010
2004: The year Life Insurance Awareness Month was created by the LIFE Foundation in response to growing concern about the large number of Americans who lack adequate life insurance protection.
68 million: Number of adult Americans who have no life insurance, according to LIMRA. And most Americans who have some life insurance coverage have far less than they need.
"The love we show while we are alive is why we live, but the love we show after we are gone allows others to continue living. Buying life insurance really is a selfless act to make sure that our families are provided for once we are gone."
-- Actress Leslie Bibb, 2010 LIAM spokesperson. See our exclusive Q&A with her.
Sept. 1987
Editor's note: The following excerpts are from the Sept. 1987 issue of Life Insurance Selling.
A Widow's Letter to a Life Insurance Agent
By Beverly S. Gordon, Peterboro, N.H.
... please remind young husbands that marriage creates a need for life insurance and that adequate coverage is an expression of love. Further, don't fall short when it comes to an annual review of your clients' coverage. Life is ever changing. An apartment melts into a house with a mortgage, a couple into a family with small children, children into college students.
... Keep insurance language simple. Allow time for questions. Be tactful if you sense some resentment in a wife's attitude toward the cost of a policy. Assure her that you will work with life insurance needs and ability to pay in determining how much and what kind of insurance you will recommend. Suggest that she think of life insurance premiums as a necessary part of the household budget.
Yes, dear agent, say and do all of those things in the name of happily married women who naively may believe in forever. Like me, they one day might find that life can fall down mid-flight.
A Spirit of Service is Key to Success
By Arlow W. Carey, Mutual Security Life, Worthington, Minn.
Early in career, I developed a service philosophy that can be remembered by the use of three initials -- S.T.P.
This formula has provided me with a sales track that covers prospecting, getting good leads, opening up sales situations and producing the motivation to go out and repeat the process, so as to build a solid career:
1. Select The People
2. See The People
3. Show the People
4. Solve Their Problems
5. Sell The People
6. Serve the People
Service -- This is the key, and after the agent has mastered the philosophy (which the agent communicates to the prospect by proper third-party influences, etc.), a new process develops. People then "select you." People "sell you" and "send you" to their friends and the cycle begins again.
A Time to Choose Our Armor
By Gerald C. Case, Homestead, Fla.
Product, education, organization and support are integrated into every agent's success. I do not understand why agents don't begin to make their rightful requests of the managers and supervisors in their agencies and companies for the things agents will need to succeed in the balance of the 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps demand is a better word.
The "positioning" of the agent becomes more critical as each day passes. I think we are beginning another "conceptual revolution" that will lead the progressive-thinking agent into extremely high earning and leave the marginal agent either dead broke or unable to support himself without a second job!
