Much of a financial services sales agent’s training is on the job, although top firms also do give some training up-front before sending a new agent off into the field with a manager or experienced agent. Firms that offer up-front training usually make this paid training, and therefore the firms have a vested interest in the success of the new agent. They want the agents to succeed so that their money was not wasted on the training.
But a financial services sales agent will largely be on his own once he gets put in the field. He will be expected to learn quickly from experience, be self motivated, and make himself a knowledgeable person about personal financial matters and keep abreast of the economy in general. He is expected to be highly professional and to seem as much of a specialist as a doctor, personal trainer, or other specialist.
But, much of the ''education'' for financial services sales agents’ jobs comes just from innate personality traits and life experience. The drive, the ambition, the interest in thinking about life in terms of numerical values placed on everything, the garrulousness that facilitates quickly creating a friendly bond with someone are all traits that a person develops on their own. These traits predispose someone to have an interest in, or an ability to fully understand financial services. However, it's possible that some or all of these traits may not be fully ''activated'' in a person until they decide to apply for a job as a financial services agent. Top firms apply a testing procedure to an interested candidate to see if they have the profile to become an agent, and this testing itself might draw out traits in a person that they themselves did not know they possessed before the profile testing.
Those who pass this test are then enrolled in a basic training course for insurance, annuities, and mutual funds. This class usually lasts for a couple of weeks, and if passed the person is granted the ability to become licensed to financial services firms. Typically the person must lay out the money for this class himself, although if they pass the firm to which they get licensed will reimburse him.
Once someone lands a position as a financial services sales agent, she will be expected to take part in continuing education, perhaps to acquire such status levels as CLU (Chartered Life Underwriter) or to be licensed to act as a field stock broker and sell individual stocks (Series 7 licensing). Certain minimal continuing education credits will be required for license renewal, which in most states is every four years.
Other criteria that could make a person an attractive financial services sales agent prospect is a background in something else. People who have sold other products or services, people who have professional backgrounds in other fields that require superior communication skills such as writing or even bartending, and people who have professional experience in a field like psychiatry can all excel in financial services if they have the right temperament.
If you can last in financial services, you can possibly make a very large amount of money. People who can weather the storm of the first few years then have a large book of business and referral network in place, and they are usually also earning residual income from past written business that is kept in force or earning fees from the continued management of an investment account while still earning money from new business. Financial services sales agents’ jobs also come with a lot of freedom, and if you are successful as an agent you have a sense of great accomplishment and value to other people while making many new acquaintances and friendships.
