Tips to Prepare for Your Insurance Sales Interview

Selling insurance can earn you a substantial income, and if you grow a big customer base, renewal commissions let you build wealth over your career. But how can you optimize your chances of getting into the industry, or of making a move to a more profitable position? Careful preparation for the interview is the key.

These days, many insurance companies conduct behavioral interviews for sales positions and independent contractor agents. “We’re trying to get in touch with competencies or behaviors that are part of a track record for success,” says Mike Kiley, director of agency recruiting for State Farm Insurance.

“If you’re going to sell insurance, you need to communicate the benefit of it and the need for it,” says Paul Powers, a management psychologist. “To establish rapport, instead of starting with life insurance, for example, you talk about protecting your family in the worst of circumstances.”

Beyond these basics, what can you do to make the most of your insurance sales interview? Here are nine top tips.

1. Brush Up on the Industry

“Go to competitors’ sites and learn what kinds of trends are going on in the industry,” says Michael Neece, an interview expert and chief strategy officer at Pongo Software LLC. “What are the drivers that will be influencing the market over the next 18 months?”

Says Powers: “Your knowledge indicates your competence and interest.”

2. Prepare to Sell Yourself in a Minute

“Create the 60-second sell,” says Robin Ryan, author of 60 Seconds and You’re Hired. “Take your five best selling points and link them together in a couple of sentences.”

3. Talk About Your Selling Prowess

“How you can bring in sales -- that will be the main focus of the interview,” says Linda Matias, author of How to Say It: Job Interviews.

Professionals coming from functional areas other than direct sales should talk about how they can excel at selling. “Candidates should talk about why they’re suited for sales [and] why they would thrive in that environment,” Kiley says.

4. Be Ready for the Tough Questions

Salespeople often have checkered careers, so they need to be able to talk confidently about their work history. “Prepare answers in advance,” Ryan says. “Anyone can improve their interview if they write out answers to questions like, ‘Have you ever been fired?’”

5. Find Out What You’ll Be Doing All Day

How much time will you spend in the office? Paying calls on clients and prospects? Filling out paperwork? Working late? Now’s the time to find out. “Ask what is a typical day in the life of an insurance sales executive at this particular company,” Neece says.

6. Show You Know How to Learn

Insurance products are complex and changeable. In addition to demonstrating a basic knowledge of your prospective employer’s business, you need to convince the interviewer that as a new hire, you’ll be able to drink from the proverbial fire hose. “The interviewer will be looking for trainability,” Matias says.

7. Come with Questions that Transcend the Obvious

Show that you’ve thought about this career opportunity enough to ask questions that go a step further than your rivals’. “The questions you ask have two potential benefits: You can communicate information about yourself, and you can gather the data needed to decide on a job offer,” Powers says. For example, “ask about turnover rate, the types of people who are most successful in the job, training, technology support and actuarial support.”

8. Zip Your Lip on Money Until Late in the Game

“You really have no leverage to talk about compensation until someone wants to hire you,” Neece says. In any case, there’s usually not much an insurer will do to sweeten the deal beyond its standard salary-and-commission structure, at least for staff-level sales positions. “The hiring manager has very little leeway, maybe $1,000 or $2,000, up or down.”

9. But Do Ask the Interviewer to Get Real about Compensation

Don’t be satisfied with broad claims to the effect that the sky’s the limit. “Ask what their top earner makes and their bottom earner,” Ryan says. “How many of their salespeople earn less than $100,000?”

Insider Tips for a Powerful Insurance Sales Resume

If you’re considering a career in insurance sales or are an experienced agent interested in transitioning to a new insurer, there’s good news. Many major insurance companies, such as State Farm (the top home and auto insurer in the US), recruit for their agency force year-round and are always on the lookout for new talent.

Regardless of whether you’re an established agent or an aspiring one, you’ll need a resume that speaks to insurance companies’ needs. Follow the advice from State Farm agency recruiters to create a resume that will generate interviews and be sure to check out our sample resume here:

Spell Out Your Career Objective

“Be clear in your objective,” says Mark Welker, a 15-year State Farm veteran and agency recruiter since 2000. Welker advises candidates to be specific by including a title at the top of their resumes such as “Targeting State Farm Agent Opportunities in Oregon.”

Don’t Worry About a Lack of Industry Experience

“Not having insurance industry experience isn’t really a big factor,” says Rickey Broussard, a central recruiting zone recruiter specializing in hard-to-fill positions. He explains that 55 percent of State Farm insurance agent recruits are from other industries. “We look for candidates who are coachable and willing to learn,” he says.

Integrity and sales ability are more important than a background in insurance, Welker says. “Attitude and enthusiasm are key,” he says. “We would rather hire someone with the right competencies and attitude versus someone with industry experience but who shows signs of burnout.”

Quantify Sales Results

Think numbers when it comes to your resume, whether that’s dollar amounts, percentages, sales rankings or some other figure. “Don’t just tell me you can do it; show me how you have done it,” Welker says.

If you have sales experience, make sure you:

• Include Revenue You Generated: If you helped propel your territory or company to record-high earnings, be sure to showcase that as well.
• Highlight a Track Record of Meeting Quotas: If you exceeded your quota, use a percentage to show how far above target you were. For example, “Routinely exceeded sales quotas, outperforming targets by as much as 165 percent throughout four-year tenure with ABC Company.” Also, be sure to include sales awards you’ve earned.
• Include the Number of New Accounts You Signed: You could also include the percentage increase in sales you delivered from your existing customer base.
• Use Numbers to Give Context to Your Sales Ranking: For example, “Quickly became a standout producer, with top 15 percent ranking among a 380-member sales force.”

If you lack sales experience, it’s even more critical to demonstrate your bottom-line contributions. You may need to think a bit more creatively to show this, but it can be done. Describe individual or team efforts that elevated sales/profits and use numbers to quantify these achievements.

Eliminate Errors

“One of the biggest problems I see on resumes is typos and spelling errors,” Broussard says.

Welker concurs and adds, “I’ve seen resumes where people claim they are ‘detail-oriented,’ and then there are typos, grammatical mistakes and other errors throughout -- that’s a red flag, and they probably won’t get interviewed.”

Chris Lane, a State Farm recruiter with three years’ experience, is even more emphatic on the importance of an error-free resume. “If they misspell one word, I will toss the resume,” he says.

Emphasize Entrepreneurship, Community Leadership and Stability

“As an insurance agent, you are running a small business,” Welker says, so candidates who can demonstrate entrepreneurial thinking will have an advantage.

In addition, an insurance agent’s resume should include volunteerism. “We look closely at community service and leadership,” says Broussard. “In reviewing resumes, we ask, ‘Which organizations are this candidate involved with? Who is establishing themselves as a leader in the community?’”

A history of career stability and employer longevity is also a plus. “I don’t want to see a lot of job changes,” Lane says. “I would rather see stability.”

An insurance agent candidate who understands that the resume is a marketing document will be more successful than one who simply views it as a career chronology. “If you can’t sell yourself on paper, how can you sell the State Farm product?” Broussard asks. “Take a page or two, tell me who you are, where you’ve been, how you got to where you are now and where you’re going,” he says.
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The SALES Formula for Insurance Agent Resume Success

This SALES formula recaps the advice from insurance agency recruiters. Follow it to create a winning resume:

• S = Sales contributions should be touted.
• A = Achievements should be quantified.
• L = Leadership skills should be highlighted.
• E = Errors must be eliminated.
• S = Stability should be emphasized.
  

Look to the Insurance Industry for Job Stability

People may not think of insurance as the most glamorous industry in America, but it does offer stability, challenge and growth to those who choose the profession. “You don’t have a lot of college students graduating and saying, ‘I want to work in insurance,’” says Eric Schulting, enterprise recruiting and retention manager for State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, Illinois. “But there are a lot of benefits and advantages in insurance that you don’t have in other industries.”

For instance, insurance is fairly recession-proof, because insurance companies tend to be fiscally conservative and Americans need insurance whether the economy is up or down. And since insurance firms are often mutual companies (meaning they answer to policy holders rather than Wall Street), they can launch sophisticated and aggressive information technology strategies, routinely support safety education and tend to have close ties to their local communities, Schulting adds.

The industry is not without challenges. If gas prices rise too high, consumers may decide to own (and insure) fewer cars, and fewer home sales mean fewer homeowners’ policies sold. When unemployment rises, so do theft and arson, and, therefore, hazard insurance claims.

Industry job growth is also limited by corporate downsizing, improved productivity due to new underwriting technology and a trend toward marketing by mail, telephone and Internet.

At the same time, the industry is expanding into the sales of other financial-services products, such as securities, retirement plans and mutual funds. That trend is balanced by competition from banks that have entered the insurance market.

Retirements Driving Strong Hiring Climate

With so many of their employees rapidly reaching retirement age, insurance companies are on the lookout for all types of employees. “The biggest trend influencing hiring and employment in the insurance industry is the generational shift the talent market is going to experience,” says Sharon Rues Pettid, manager of human resources for a large national insurance company.

Some insurance firms look beyond recent college graduates and also recruit mid-career professionals from the health, financial-services and call-center industries. “We hire doctors and nurses for underwriting,” says Clarissa Gilliam, corporate vice president of talent acquisition for another insurance organization. “We open our search to investment houses for our accounting positions and look for sales and marketing people who want to move over and learn insurance.”

At State Farm, call-center jobs are plentiful since the company does not offshore its customer-service representative (CSR) positions. However, competition for those jobs can be keen, because the pay is decent, the benefits are generous and job security is good, Schulting says. And multilingual CSRs are particularly in demand.

Actuaries and underwriters continue to be very much in demand, according to Pettid. “This unique skill set is challenging to find and provides a unique and defined career path,” she says. “Also niche product line expertise, such as group disability insurance, tends to be very hot and lucrative for candidates.”

Surveying the Segments

The medical service and health insurance segments are the fastest-growing parts of the insurance industry, thanks to aging Baby Boomers buying health and long-term- care insurance, as well as annuities and other pension products.

Growth may be slower in the auto insurance segment, where competition has resulted in rate declines in virtually every state, says a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute.

While some areas of insurance are projected to grow more than others, companies in all lines will continue to need support personnel in the years ahead, Gilliam says. “We don’t get to be successful at life insurance without having good accounting, corporate, compliance, public relations, underwriting, risk and tax people,” she says. “Life insurance is our brand and our product, but we’re a major, stable, successful, diverse employee-friendly company.”