It’s Life Insurance Awareness Month!

By Ayo Mseka

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month, the annual life insurance awareness campaign coordinated by Life Happens and supported by the nation’s leading financial-services organizations. The spokesperson for this year’s campaign is Brooke Shields, actress, model, designer, and mother. Shields’ story is being shared through a national TV and radio public service announcement (PSA) program that began broadcasting this summer and will continue until the end of the year. The PSAs are available on the Life Happens website, website: www. lifehappens.org, along with educational information and interactive tools, such as Life Happens’ Life Insurance Needs Calculator, to help consumers evaluate their own life insurance needs and get the protection they need.

The business case for LIAM

The need for an awareness campaign has never been greater. The 2019 Life Insurance Barometer Study by Life Happens and LIMRA found that only 57 percent of Americans have life insurance, and four in 10 households without it would immediately struggle to pay for living expenses if their primary wage earner died. The risk to a family’s financial stability if they forgo life insurance is incredibly high; yet, there are still many Americans who are living without it, leaving them vulnerable.

Reversing the trend

Through its partnership with Shields, Life Happens seeks to reverse this damaging trend by reinforcing the need for families to take long-term financial planning seriously, consider the benefits of life insurance, and take financial control now.

As a NAIFA advisor, you, too, can help reverse this trend by intensifying your efforts to persuade prospects to get more life insurance for themselves and their loved ones. Here are some of the tenets top-producing agents live by as they serve their clients:

• They establish themselves as good educators.

• They have a good “conversation starter” with each prospect and client.

• They know how to turn their knowledge into sales.

• They stay energized by networking with other successful professionals.

• They know that successful selling is how you get business, but responsive service is how you keep it.

• They follow through on their promises and always over-deliver.

You will find more of these “best practices” in this issue of the magazine, and at NAIFA’s Performance +Purpose Conference, currently under way in Orlando, Florida. Dubbed the industry’s most anticipated event, this year’s P+P is the place to be for ideas that educate, inspire and motivate.

With many of your clients currently living from paycheck to paycheck and deeply worried about their financial future, LIAM and P+P could not be happening at a more opportune time. Make the most of these two exciting events and you will be doing your clients and your practice a world of good.