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Hello!
So I have a job opportunity as insurance agent (selling insurance) but I am not convinced about it, dunno if someone of you work in this field or know someone working in it to help me choose objectively.
The guy who explained me how it works begun with the positive side of the job which is making lot of $$$, you already feel yourself buying a chalet in Fakra with a cigar in your mouth lol. Commission on sales are pretty high as we know in insurance. Though what I am afraid of are these points that he talked about in the end:
-I need to have at least 60 meetings per month in the beginning + 1 customer or I won't get any $
-There are NO basic salary at all, so you can pass the 1st 6-8 months working like a donkey for nothing
-You need to have a strong PR personality meeting with people you don't know to sell hard selling products (I was very shy when at school, now I am much less but still not as extroverted as others)
So voila!
The big amount of money is tempting but my parents are saying it's a bs work and I am not fit for it, if I had 500 friends and 1000 connections ok, but all the friends I have left in Lebanon (as many friends went in Europe working) are a very few. So what do you think?
I tried that with MetLife Alico , as an Insurance Agent for Life Insurance , and I quit directly , The basic Salary was USD 1000 and commission based and in the 1st 3 months the quota was at least 1 Life Insurance. It was a jumping experience from one person to another with transportation on my side , cold calls for people I do not know , doing insurance plans for people and the end they will not buy.

These insurance company usually target:

Unemployed starving individuals who are seeking to work , and they brain wish them about a career path in a market that is saturated with insurance plans , most people are already insured , and most people are unaware of Life Insurance.

To sum it it depends on "luck" and "bagging" :)

Better to stick with your specialization or if you want to set apart go with business development / marketing analysis and not Sales Insurance in Lebanon.
Yeah you are right!
I don't have neither the personality for this work (to be the total opposite of shy) nor the hundred of friends to talk to.
As you said luck has a big role in this work, you can get a contract with a company to give insurance for 50 employees hence you are rich...or nothing and you are called the ''laz2a'' by your friends and family because you try to convince them twice a week to buy an insurance.
From what I understood during the interview, you have several steps in the insurance company, you start as trainee, then sales then sales manager (you get a 3-5 sales persons in your team) then one of the higher step is to convince several dudes to be insurance agents in the company, that 's why they are desperate to get people like me, they play the scenario ''waw your diploma is very good and your work experience is pretty nice that's why we want you and you will be rich...''.
If I want to be a comedian I will go to France or US of A and try my career there instead of this work ;)
Sounds awfully similar to pyramid schemes :p
silo_m8 wroteSounds awfully similar to pyramid schemes
This has nothing to do with the Pyramid scheme, it is like an outdoor salesman for an insurance company..
In my opinion this is not a good idea to have it as a main career path, this can be a side job though, for instance the trainer in my Gym also sells insurance plans as a side job.
You will either be extremely successful, or an utter failure. And judging by the fact that you are an introvert, the chances of failure are very high. It's very difficult to sell life insurance. I never tried, but I know people who have. The thing you said about the chalet and cigar is 100% true, this is how they reel people in. Think of it this way, do you really think commissions would be that high if it was easy to sell? Or if you can sell huge quantities? Don't waste your time.
It does sound like someone trying to sell you BS.
Why is there no basic salary? If there is so much money to be made, why don't they give you some basic salary then?
Plus you only spoke about money. How are the work conditions? Would you like it? Do you have any opinion or any idea about what you want? That is important to find a satisfactory job and avoid being mislead and bad decisions.
People will often give you hopes during interviews. They have the best code, the best ethics, etc.
But you only know how the work environment is either 1) when you see the office yourself 2) when you try working on the job
In your case it's hard to know since it seems like an outdoors job.
It is possible to try, and people will tell you "why don't you try?" but I will not encourage you to do that because I know that even 1 week in a crap job is a very uncomfortable experience and will discourage you from searching jobs in the future, maybe make you think that you're unfit for the job or that you will not find a good job. On the other hand accepting a bad job will teach you to be careful and maybe you will better know what to look for in the future.