QUOTE(Justinng343 @ Jul 14 2020, 01:35 PM)
1) Is it best for fresh graduate to start working in a 9-5 corporate job first that offer stable income, or should I start with being an Insurance agent? Which is better?
2) If I work in a corporate job for a few years, will it be too late for me to start being insurance agent when I could already build a client base long ago?
3) If I work as an Insurance agent and it doesn't work out, will it be too late for me to find a stable job since I don't really have any experience in banking or finance other than insurance sales. And I would have wasted all my time as an Insurance agent and go back to square one with basis salary.
4) What is the success rate of being an Insurance agent?
I wanted the freedom and make a lot of money but afraid it would fail on me even with all the hard work and I would end up with no jobĀ
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Any help from profession or anyone would be much appreciateĀ
Thank you in advance for your kind assistance!Ā
There are no right or wrong answers here, I am just going to give you my opinions based on my experience as wells as those around me
1. Working in the bank has made me who I am. A little different than most agents that were recruited from other professions. What I am saying is that your first job defines you a lot. If you start off as an engineer then become an agent, your style will be different compared to mine who started off in banking
2. There are tons of agents that were recruited from other industries, those not even related to the insurance industry
3. This is my bigger worries. I know of ONE fresh-out-of-uni insurance agent that is successful - he's an agency manager, with the support of his sister who is also an agency manager. That is one out of hundreds of agents (and non-agents now) that I have met that made it. Everyone else (successful) started off in a different career path before taking this part-time, before eventually becoming a full-time agent, if they persist
4. I wouldn't know the actual numbers, but I can give my input anecdotally: quite low. I am looking at my uplines' success rate in recruiting quality agents. In the company that I represent, there are four levels of promotion - agent > unit manager > unit manager 2 > agency manager. To get promoted an agent needs to have a few downlines that are able to reach a set of sales target. e.g. to become a unit manager, an agent would need at least 1 recruit that does RM50k sales and 2 recruits that does RM25k sales a year
So these promotion-aspirants would do a recruitment spree - based on what I see, only about 1 out of 10 makes it and would last longer than a few years. People falter away after a while, never to be heard of again. It is not an easy job, and your recruiter may even mention this - "anything worth doing is not easy". But this applies to everything else, including your corporate job
It took me about 3 years with Prudential to buy my dream car. It was hard work and my style is different from most agents out there. As mentioned, I was a banker for quite a few years, so when I become an agent I was able to
land on my two feet and started running; I didn't need any soft-skills nor sales knowledge training (not at beginners' level anyway), I only needed to learn about the products which are similar to the things I was already selling in my previous jobs. The bank made me who I am today, which tremendously helped, the same can be applied to corporate employees agents turned agents
About the perception of insurance agents - not much that you can do about it. You just have to be quite professional with yourself - I am not saying that you have to dress in corporate attire all the time, my daily "uniform" is just a dark blue shirt with jeans. Wear whatever makes you comfortable without being over-dressed. You have to be happy to announce to everyone that you are an agent. Your main job as an agent is to
meet people. If you do not meet people because you are shy about being an agent then you would have failed the first requirement of being one
QUOTE(hksgmy @ Jul 18 2020, 07:09 AM)
Actually, we do have a few insurance agents in these forums.
wild_card_my is quite active, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing his personal perspectives on this issue - from what I understand and if I recall correctly, he started off with a bank and then went into insurance: so TS might get a different view of both aspects.
If he gets this tag, hopefully he'll have time to chip in!
Thanks for tagging me. I'm always happy to share my thoughts on these matters.
This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Jul 18 2020, 08:03 AM