By: Joel McKinnon & Aaron Pace
As an insurance agent, it our JOB to have uncomfortable conversations with our clients. It our JOB to sit our clients down and talk to them about the most important policy we have to offer. It is OUR JOB to have these conversations because we care to much about our clients not to have them. As we get older, we tend to pay more attention to what is happening with our friends, family, and other people in our age demographic. Recently we have noticed that more and more young people are passing away. Recently, we have noticed more benefits and spaghetti dinners taking place. Recently we have noticed more and more fundraisers to raise money to help families pay for funeral expenses, medical bills and college tuition after the death of a loved one.
As we see more and more of this taking place, we sit back and wonder if their insurance agent cared enough to have the uncomfortable conversation with them. We sit back and wonder “did their agent talk to them about the most important policy we as agents have to offer?” Every day 7,000 people die country wide, that is 2.5 million annually. Think about that for a moment, 7,000 people DAILY – these are our friends, family, co-workers, & neighbors. These numbers include grandmas and grandpas, but also include moms, and dads, and yes even children. See we as a society like to think “that cant happen to me.” We wrote a blog post a few months ago asking the question “do you suffer from Superman Syndrome?” Point being we think these things cant happen to us, we think these awful things only happen to our neighbors, and we as Americans fail to plan. We live pay check to pay check, making everything but our our future our priority. We spend countless dollars on technology including cell phones, tablets, iPods and the list goes on and on. We spend countless money on our “habits” from smoking to lottery tickets, to pop and everything in between. We spend all of this money on “things,” yet we fail to spend it on what matters most. We as insurance agents spend our time talking to families about auto and home insurance, yet we spend very little time if any talking about the most important policy we have to offer, the policy which can impact families for generations to come. LIFE INSURANCE!!!
We can’t stress enough the importance of having life insurance to our clients. We know a lot of people think they have time to add life insurance down the road, but the truth is we never know when we will “need” it. We never leave the house in the morning thinking we won’t be returning in the evening. We never send our kids to school thinking they wont return home. We never send our teenagers to the movie on a Friday night thinking the movie theater will be attacked. We never send our spouse off on a business trip thinking the plane will crash. BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Every day a dad does not make it home from work, every day a mom kisses her kid good bye for the last time. It is OUR JOB to talk to our clients about these situations, and make sure they are prepare should the unthinkable happen to them. Its our job to make sure your children are taken are of financially if you do not make it home from work, it is our job to make sure you as a parent have time to grieve if something awful happens to your child. If your insurance agent is not having these difficult conversations with you, its time you find an agent who cares enough about you and your family to do it!
We will leave you with this thought, “If you die today, if you do not make it home from work tonight, how will your family fair financially without your income?”