Author | Tang Yahua
Edit | dawn
Endless 996, no day and night overtime, 32-year-old Zhou Weiqi in the Internet game industry after eight years of serious overdraft, he desperately wants to give himself a long vacation.
By chance, he met a trustworthy insurance agent and started thinking about changing careers. Resign, attend training, take up a job, and do what you say. Like all insurance agents, Zhou Weiqi began to break through from relatives, friends, and former colleagues, and the billing and commission came quickly. Based on his Internet experience, he also tried to break the business practices of acquaintances in the insurance industry and open up the stranger market by means of Internet advertising.
However, reality hit him hard in the face, no stranger was willing to trust him, watching the "relationship list" exhausted, and a year later, he had to return to the Internet industry.
In the past few years, many people in the insurance industry, which seems to be independent of time and have a lot of income, have gained a firm foothold, but more people have not been able to withstand the cruel elimination mechanism, and they have come in with the dream of an annual salary of millions of dollars, and they have touched a nose and gone out.
The data shows that the number of insurance agents has directly cut from nearly 10 million in 2019 to 2021. Personal factors, the impact of the epidemic, and the accumulated shortcomings of the insurance industry have all been released in the past two years. "Freedom of time" and "million annual salary" sound good, but never underestimate the cruelty of reality.
Some people can't pull customers, some people earn millions a year
In 1992, the personal agency system common to the foreign insurance industry was brought into China by AIA. For a time, domestic insurance companies that struggled to open the market followed suit. Large-scale increase in personnel, the implementation of the strategy of the sea of people, the agent as a customer "maintenance", the performance of various insurance companies has been soaring.
The second phase of the industry began in 2015. This year, the insurance industry canceled the qualifying exam and started the wild running mode. A large number of insurance companies, including AIA and Ping An Insurance, have spared no expense to recruit a large number of "three high" agents with high production capacity, high quality and high income, and have launched their own signboards.
According to the data, in 2009, there were only 2.9 million insurance marketers nationwide, and by 2019, the number of individual agents of insurance companies reached 9.12 million. Now, this is a historic high.
The 35-year-old Xuanxuan joined in 2019 at the top of the industry. She entered the media industry in 2008, transitioned to an Internet company in 2015 to be responsible for brand public relations, and in 2017, she partnered with someone to start a business.
Xuanxuan recalled that in early 2019, when she was at a low ebb, she met a friend who joined the insurance industry, "I found that she was shining all over, and she was very attracted to her in conversation. ”
She joined the company after attending a training recommended by a friend. With the accumulation of past contacts, the first half of the year is very smooth, Xuanxuan's performance is good, and the average monthly income can be more than 20,000 yuan. Also because of the development of 4 new members, she was successfully promoted to the position of first-level supervisor.
Including Zhou Weiqi and Xuanxuan, most of the Internet and media practitioners interviewed mentioned to Shen Yan that the work rhythm of 996 or 007, the physical condition of the bright red light, the bottleneck of career rise, and the crisis of being eliminated are the main reasons why they left the original industry.
When choosing the insurance industry, most people value the insurance industry's time autonomy, business flexibility, direct ratio of pay and return, and unlimited career channels.
Zhang Qiong told Shen Yan that after she left the Internet industry in 2019, she saw many peers move to the insurance industry, out of curiosity, she took the initiative to contact several people, after understanding, she felt that the insurance industry can indeed solve her age anxiety, rising space problems, she also recognizes the social value of insurance.
But after entering the industry, they found that things were far from being as simple as they thought.
"Insurance is a 'cause (referring to familiar people)' business, that is, a business of relatives and friends and their referrals, but everyone knows a limited number of people, and if there is no way to open unfamiliar channels, it is difficult to do it for a long time." When I entered the industry, I envisioned that I would sell through multiple channels and promote it in the form of similar Internet advertisements. Zhou Weiqi told Deep Burning.
But the ads he put out only let him open two or three orders, and then there were no more follow-ups, and he soon found that this model did not work. When he went back to look for acquaintances, he found that his previous customers did not have new needs. More than half a year has passed, and Zhou Weiqi's insurance career has been fixed on 22 singles.
Xuanxuan has experienced half a year of rapid progress, performance pressure is increasing, but it is becoming more and more difficult to develop new customers, and she is also in a stalemate.
Of course, it is undeniable that the insurance industry is the same as the survival law of many fiercely competitive industries, which is also the law of two and eight, and indeed some people have stood out after transformation and achieved an annual salary of millions.
Xiaoyu turned from the media to an investment agency as a public relations manager, taking a not low salary and living a tall life. But she was anxious about her career direction five years later and chose to leave. Determined that the insurance industry is on a fast-growing trajectory and that her career path is not limited, she entered the industry. Her plan for herself is to stay in the insurance industry when she is done well, accumulate experience if she does not do well, and then apply for employment in the insurance sector of Internet companies.
She even set herself a goal of making a million dollars a year for three years. Xiaoyu is an extremely enthusiastic, energetic person who can give people a strong sense of intimacy and trust. After entering the industry, her income doubled every year. In the third year, she achieved her goal of earning millions a year.
But such people are, after all, a minority, more people, facing new challenges.
Losing money to sell insurance, the transformed Internet people began to flee
In order to maintain the position and performance of the supervisor, Xuanxuan embarked on a "road of no return" that is visible to the naked eye.
According to reports, the insurance industry refers to the insurance products that agents buy for themselves and their families as "captive insurance pieces". In recent years, the management of the insurance industry has become stricter, and it is not allowed to take "captive parts" to charge performance. But Xuanxuan couldn't take care of so much, and when she couldn't open orders, she began to frantically buy insurance for herself and her family.
At the beginning of buying these insurances, she knew that most of the products bought for performance could not be used at all, her plan was to choose the opportunity to return, and when she bought some products, she made up her mind not to renew the insurance directly in the second year, and the premium rights in the first year were adrift.
Counting down, Xuanxuan has been in the insurance company for more than a year, with an income of more than 100,000 yuan, but the amount of insurance she bought out of her own pocket is about 130,000 yuan, which is equivalent to her own work for more than a year and has lost 20,000 or 30,000 yuan.
Xuanxuan was basically in a state of derailment in the last six months, until she was automatically removed from the company for three consecutive months of unqualified performance.
In hindsight, Xuanxuan felt that this result had a lot to do with her own personality. First of all, she was a little resistant to insurance since she was a child, and after entering the industry, she changed her mind, but she was still worried that others would look at her with colored glasses. She is also worried that in the future, if she does not help customers successfully settle their claims, they will be blamed. The company lets create a positive personality, and she is not willing to do it.
"The company has a lot of inspiring ceremonies, we need to stand up and read slogans, values, and applaud and thank you after reading", Xuanxuan is a bit repellent of these, the company often organizes some celebrity-like dinners, tea breaks, flower arrangements and other activities, so that agents invite potential customers to gather, but also take some tall photos to send circles of friends, "but I am not adapted to this atmosphere, occasionally after sending a circle of friends I quickly deleted." ”
In addition, Xuanxuan herself psychologically can not pass that hurdle, if the customer said that the hand is nervous, she is embarrassed to continue to guide the other party, only recommend the most necessary and very cheap medical insurance and accident insurance, but this kind of insurance agent can only make dozens of dollars, may not be enough to take a taxi and invite customers to dinner.
After a year and a half of practice, in the second half of 2020, Xuanxuan officially left the insurance company and returned to the Internet industry she was familiar with to do public relations and self-media, Xuanxuan's self-confidence and light that was consumed were finally back, she sighed: "Still have to find the industry that suits herself."
Zhou Weiqi withdrew a little earlier than Xuanxuan, he stayed in the insurance industry for nearly a year, and in the last few months, he found that he had no new customers. There was no base salary, nothing to do every day, and he was a little flustered. In the game industry, the annual salary is about 300,000 yuan, and in the insurance industry, there is not even half left. Eventually, he returned to the Internet industry.
As a senior Internet person, from the model, he does not recognize this way of only doing "reason" market and referral, "I like efficient things, we do the Internet radiation area is very large, generally a point to a surface, insurance This point-to-point business efficiency is not high, it is not interesting to do." ”
Moreover, he feels that insurance is not as good as daily consumption after all, a few tens of thousands of yuan a year premium, a payment of 20 years, most people may not be able to afford, and in the end whether it can benefit is not certain. Zhou Weiqi is also unwilling to pull others in to do insurance, so he can't earn the team commission brought by "pulling people's heads".
In his view, this industry is suitable for some mothers who do not need to support their families or people with good family conditions, if they are eager to open a bill, the feeling of giving customers will be very poor, and the more there is no performance pressure, the easier it is to succeed, "but I want to support my family, I am doing it completely as a career, which may not be suitable." ”
Factors such as personal incompatibility and doubts about the insurance agency model have made some transformed Internet people choose to quit.
At the same time, the entire insurance agent group has also experienced a cliff-like decline. According to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, at the end of 2020, there were 8.428 million agent sales personnel registered by insurance companies nationwide, and as of June 30, 2021, the number of people dropped to 7.7 million. The Beijing Business Daily report further shows that by August 2021, the size of insurance agents will drop to 5.29 million, although this data is not officially disclosed. Compared with the peak of 9.12 million people, the number is almost waist-cutting.
Taking the head insurance companies as an example, as of the third quarter of 2021, the sales staff of Chinese Life and Ping An of China were 1.052 million and 706,200 respectively, which decreased by 406,000 and 317,600 respectively compared with the end of 2020, and both fell by more than 30% month-on-month.
Some analysts believe that the number of insurance agents is almost back to the level before the cancellation of the agent qualification examination in 2015, but the number of agents has not yet fully bottomed out, and it is expected to continue to decline, and then stabilize.
Millions of agents have disappeared, is the insurance industry still fragrant?
Millions of agents left the market, and some even called 2021 a year of great changes in the insurance industry.
He Xu, a senior insurance practitioner, told Shen Yan that the epidemic has had a certain impact on the insurance industry, but in fact, the characteristics of the insurance industry have always been "big in and big out", and insurance companies have used the tactics of the sea of people to continuously increase the number of personnel to "wash people's heads". Most agents sell "cause lists", and it is difficult to develop new customers by "selling" their relatives and friends all over again.
Many people wonder why the insurance industry has been doing the business of acquaintances for so many years, rather than making standardized products like many consumer goods.
He Xu explained that in fact, car insurance, travel insurance, accident insurance and other types of insurance are relatively standardized, can be placed on the official website of insurance companies or Alipay, micro-insurance and other platforms for users to purchase on demand, but life insurance, serious illness insurance, annuity and other complex products, the amount of premiums is large, it is not easy to standardize, the threshold for understanding and decision-making are very high, and professional agent services are required.
In addition, the high elimination rate of the insurance industry has also led to the short working years and poor professional skills of most people. In 2019, the average length of service in the insurance industry was 1.65 years, while the average life insurance agent in the United States was about 6 years.
In the limited process of practice, insurance companies and agents are mostly heavy sales, light vocational skills training, "insurance companies have a lot of management of agents, such as requiring them to submit a list of visiting customers, several visits a week, rather than teaching agents how to do risk identification, product matching, and family wealth planning for customers." He Xu said.
Agents are not progressing, but the market and customers are developing. Today, the post-80s and post-90s generations have advanced, and their awareness and recognition of insurance have rapidly improved.
Moreover, the income of insurance agents is not as high as the outside world thinks. According to the "2020 White Paper on the Ecology of China's Insurance Intermediary Market", 31.04% of the respondents earn more than 10,000 yuan per month, and more than 40% of the agents earn 3,000-6,000 yuan per month.
Moreover, in recent years, the supervision of the insurance industry has become more and more stringent, such as the relevant departments issued regulations that do not allow the sale of "self-insured parts", penalties for rebates or disguised rebates. For some past problems of insurance companies, it has also begun to regulate. In April 2019, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a notice requiring insurance companies to check and rectify the registration data of employees. Under the guidance of the "clearance" policy, insurance companies themselves are also retiring agents who cannot keep up with new demand.
Xiaoyu's aunt, who has a high school education, has been doing business for more than 20 years in a head insurance company, and in 2021, she was dismissed due to her average performance.
He Xu mentioned that in recent years, the insurance industry has also realized that the way of increasing staff and "washing people's heads" is no longer effective, and is trying to break the structure of the pyramid and strengthen the platform, professionalization and long-term training and management of agents, such as APP rapid underwriting, company branding, and personal IP creation, so that agents can understand customers better. "But so far there has been no significant change." He Xu said.
"The entire insurance industry may have reached a stage where the model needs to be reconstructed, and insurance companies need to upgrade their product forms and sales models to find a second growth curve." He Xu pointed out.
Today, some of the Internet people who remain in the insurance industry are the "two" in the "law of two and eight", maintaining new and old customers and leading teams to do well and perform well; and some are groups that do not have much economic pressure or need to take care of their families, and their business capabilities can still maintain passing.
Internet people enter the game and leave the insurance industry, have their personal choices, and are also affected by the phased changes in the insurance industry. What they have in common is that they are encouraged to enter the market at the high point of the industry's development, and then fade with the waves during the contraction period. The conclusion is that the seemingly easy insurance industry is not less stressful than the Internet industry.
In any case, there has never been an industry that can easily achieve success, not overly superstitious and superficial, and objectively understand itself and the industry in order to be suitable.
*The caption and the accompanying picture in the text are from unsplash. At the request of the interviewees, Xuanxuan, Zhou Weiqi, Zhang Qiong, Xiaoyu, and Hexu are pseudonyms.