Thursday, January 20, 2011

I enjoy selling life insurance.



Selling tips.......

They said selling life insurance is tough, not until when you have tried selling office equipments. My first selling job was 43 years ago, selling all types of office equipments, mainly typewriters and calculators. The brand i won't forget was Facit, one of the most popular manual calculator from Sweden. Those days the digital calculator had not been invented yet. Most manual calculators then could only add and subtract, with the printout of paper on top. Facit was the only manual calculator that could also divide and multiple. The price wasn't cheap. It ranged between RM500 to RM1500 per unit, comparing our simple calculator of today with more applications costs less than R10 and available everywhere.

Forgotten to tell you too. There was no computer printer yet, and every office had to use the electric typewrites for office work. It was heavy and big in size, costing between RM2000 to RM5000 which was considered as expensive. Right?

Selling all those office equipments, i had to learned to use and repair them. Before making the cold calls, i had to know my stocks available in the warehouse and to remember all the pricing from top to bottom. Before a sale, i had to carry these heavy equipments to the prospective customers, where i had to demonstrate the best of my products. I had to be responsible to these demonstration equipments too. Meaning, if the prospective company disappeared with our goods, i would be held liable for all the losses. To close a sale wasn't easy because there were strong competitions from every corner. Working hard wasn't good enough, i had to learn to work smart, especially convincing and befriending all the staffs who would be using these office equipments later. I could still remember, to close a sale it normally took 3 months from demonstration to collecting payment from the big boss.

My colleagues said selling life insurance is damn high. Not me! I don't need to repeat the same task like selling office equipment but what i do need is to sell with a sincere heart. Definitely we have ample stocks for sale in insurance and i don't have to carry anything except a piece of paper and a reliable pen. No prospective client could disappear with my goods. After all our goods are only written promises which they have to pay in advance. My sale will be concluded immediately without having to wait for a period of 3 months.

I hope my short story could ease a little for all my colleagues who might have some difficulties in selling at the moment. Selling life insurance isn't tough if you really enjoy doing it my friends.

Food for thought - "Do what you love. When you love your work, you become the best worker in the world" -- Uri Geller

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