Why Life Insurance Agents Should Own Up to Mistakes

We all make mistakes in our business from time to time… We may miss a deadline, delete an important file or foul up a project…or whatever.

The question is how we handle them when they happen. And just for the record, life insurance agents are NOT supposed to lie!

Inevitably, to cover up the mess instead of owning up to it is usually far more expensive in the long run. Lies will follow you like your shadow…Sooner or later you pay…and sometimes with a steep interest rate.

If you think I’m over reacting, ask Martha Stewart…She would have avoided criminal conviction and financial disaster if it weren’t for lying. The judge determined that the charge of fraud wasn’t a crime in which she could be convicted of. The fraud charge was actually dismissed. The only charge that remained was the perjury.

There are many examples throughout history where the cost of the cover up was far greater than if the truth was confronted from the get go:

- Nixon could have possibly survived impeachment or avoided it all together if he had fessed up immediately.

- Same goes for Clinton…the whole Monica scandal probably wouldn’t have been in the headlines for a decade if he hadn’t drawn it out for so long.

- Maybe Newt Gingrich would have been our standing president if he stood his ground and told the truth. Who knows?

I know I’ve had my fair share of poor decisions, bonehead moves and miscalculations in my lifetime…And it almost always ends up costing me dearly.

In the life insurance business it is vital to keep your integrity and be truthful always, PERIOD. If you give your client a quote, (for instance), that you know is way off base, just to get a commitment, most often that will come back to bite you in more ways than you will ever realize.

If you want the trust of your client and community, then you must be trustworthy. If you want to have credibility with your clients and community, you must be credible.

It is no easy task to regulate our own personal behaviors…But our reputation and credibility is far more valuable than any gain we may accomplish by leading people on with lies. If you lose their trust, you lose their business, their family’s business and potentially the business of everyone they know.

Source:http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=44908