Here is my second tip for choosing an insurance agent, which can save you from making costly mistakes:

Know how much experience is important, & avoid inexperienced agents

Some agents try to convince you to insure with them based on their many years of experience, or the experience of their employees. I know one agent added up the total number of years of experience of their agency employees to conclude their combined experience equals over 100 hundred years! This sounds impressive, but does it really benefit the customer? I don’t think so.

An agent needs a certain amount of experience to be competent, but many years experience beyond what is needed to learn the product and the job does not add any real value to the customer. Besides a certain amount of experience, people should be concerned with finding an agent with expertise in the type of insurance they need.

How much experience is enough? I think a minimum of two years experience in the types of insurance you’ll be purchasing is adequate. More experience is better, but any experience over 10 years is not relevant.

A mistake many people make is they buy insurance from a friend or family member starting out in the business. It’s nice to support your friends and family, but your insurance is too important to put in the hands of a novice. This mistake is very common with life insurance.

Life insurance companies are always hiring people, particularly recent college graduates, to sell to their natural market, or centers of influence — their family and friends. The insurance companies know over 90% of the people they hire will not make it in sales, and will leave the business within two years. New agents sell to their friends and family, and then most new agents fail to find additional customers. These positions pay on commission, so constantly hiring new people and firing them when they fail to meet their sales targets is a profitable business model. Some agents turn into big producers, but the policies sold by the agents washing out stay on the books, too. Constantly hiring & firing agents increases sales. People are rightfully leery and avoid life insurance agents, but an agent who is a friend or family member can reach you. If an insurance company can hire, even for only a brief time, a family member of everyone in the USA, they can sell a heck of a lot of life insurance.

This is how it can hurt you:

Your niece may have been pressured by her manager to sell you a permanent life insurance policy she did not fully understand, with too optimistic projections of future cash value. Several years later you decide to stop sinking money into a policy not performing as expected, and pay a hefty surrender charge to cash it out. You lost a lot of money on permanent life insurance, which is no longer permanent after cashing it out, making it basically a very expensive term policy which is now expired.

It’s hard to make a big mistake when you stick to buying real term life insurance, other than paying too much for it. But the manager helping out your niece on the sales call wants her to sell you permanent life insurance, which is supposedly in your best interest, if you can afford it,

No one likes to fight with their loved tadalafil tablets india one, but there are many unresolved issues that are surrounding this disorder of repeated penile failure condition. After that, just cheap levitra by clicking on the Start button you could find out the whole list of tasks that are better off done online. Are you price levitra fond of eating watermelon? If yes! then are the lucky one who loves to eat watermelon. Consumer can also choose the liquid or tablet form and they are typically taken every day to boost up libido and bring back the youthful liveliness curing the problem of excessive nightfall. free viagra samples Buying permanent life insurance as a means to accumulate cash value from any agent turns into a costly mistake for a lot of people. But in the hands of a new agent, relying on her manager to do the right thing for her family member, it can be a disaster. Don’t fall for the same sales pitch from a trusted person, you would not accept from a stranger.

For another example, you call your nephew for auto insurance. An accident comes up on your driving record, and you tell your nephew someone rear ended you, and you collected through the other drivers insurance. Your nephew tells you it’s okay, and he starts your auto insurance policy for you. But because your nephew is inexperienced, he did not know to tell you he would need a letter from the insurance company insuring you when the accident happened, to confirm the accident was not at fault. The policy your nephew started for you is sent to you at a rate 50% higher than what you were quoted, because of the accident.

Insurance isn’t rocket science, but it’s complicated enough to cost you a lot of money, and possibly bankrupt or ruin you financially in the case of a large uncovered claim, if it’s placed in the hands of an inexperienced or incompetent agent.

When you shop for insurance, ask the agent or agent’s staff member how much experience they have when you get a quote, or before you buy a policy.

It is important for the experience to be related to the type of insurance you are buying.

You may want to call your auto & home insurance agent of twenty years regarding your business insurance needs, but it may be your very experienced auto & home agent has little experience with business insurance, or insuring your type of business. This lack of experience can lead to you missing important coverage your agent had no idea you needed.

Having enough experience to be competent is a basic requirement when choosing an agent, but more important than a lot of experience is finding an agent with expertise.

What makes an insurance agent successful, and last a long time in the insurance business, is the ability to sell policies. It may seem counter-intuitive, but knowing a lot about the insurance you are selling is not required or important for selling a lot of policies. There are very successful agents selling insurance for decades who know very little about the product they sell.

My next blog post will tell you how to find an agent with expertise, how important expertise is for the type of insurance you are trying to buy, and how to make sure you get the best advice.

How experienced is your insurance agent? Did you ever buy insurance from a friend or relative and regret it later? Tell me about it. Please leave a comment on my facebook page. Follow me on Twitter for important insurance consumer news and new blog entries at CarInsWatch.