Elephant in the living room: you can't sell life insurance without talking about death, but many boomers--and agents--seem to think death is optional and would rather talk about mutual funds.

We talk a lot about selling in the life insurance business and we take pride in our ability to present persuasively. With all the speakers, articles, books, seminars and training programs for financial advisers, any outsiders would think we're terrific salespeople.

But are we? Certainly, one definition of successful selling includes our capability to assess the clients' needs accurately and make proposals that fulfill them properly.

Then why is it that so many financial advisers start off client financial plans by recommending mutual fund or investment products? Is it because they're popular with clients and easier to sell? Even though we're aware of the risk, we still do it.

Whatever happened to adequate savings and life insurance as the fundamental building blocks of every financial plan? When the smoke clears, isn't the goal of a financial plan to help the client reach a certain financial objective?

No matter how you look at it, the client believes that a financial plan should produce specific results. The client looks at the plan as the road map to reach financial objectives. Would any survey of client expectations indicate any other expectation? Of course not.

Now--and here's the test--what one financial product has the ability to deliver for the client? There's only one possible answer as we all know. It's life insurance.

No matter what other investments a client may have, life insurance is the one that gets them where they want to be financially if they are unable to complete other elements of their plan. Look at it this way: If you had a tree that produces money equal to your annual income, how much insurance would you buy on the tree? The answer seems obvious. Yet, financial advisers often skip life insurance in favor of potentially more "exciting" but riskier returns.

For the young family, life insurance is the one product that can solve the financial security problem if the breadwinner dies prematurely. Nothing--absolutely nothing--can be more reassuring and comforting than that. For a couple of thousand dollars a year or less, a 45-year-old male can own $1 million in life insurance that comes with a 100% performance guarantee. What else offers such security? What could possibly be worth more to any client? Mutual funds can't come close to providing total certainty.

Then why do so many planners avoid introducing life insurance into financial plans?

There are several reasons. First, it's easier to discuss the appeal of the stock market, the popularity of mutual funds and the exuberance of owning a piece of the action with a prospective customer.

Second, most of those who know how to sell life insurance products are getting gray hair. With the demise of life insurance company-sponsored sales training programs, the new recruits in the financial-services field have little or no serious life insurance education. So, they sell what they know and what they know is accumulation products. Life insurance becomes little more than an addendum to a client plan.

In reality, many client financial plans are faulty. Equity products have a place in client financial plans, of course. But they should come after the life insurance and adequate savings establish the foundation.

There's a third reason financial advisers avoid the life insurance sale. Many top prospects for financial advisers are middle-aged boomers who are at the apex of their earning power. With medical advances and increasing longevity, death isn't a pressing issue, even though their parents are dying. With the stream of medical advances and medication advertising aimed at consumers, it's as ff there's a solution to every medical problem. They just don't think they're going to die!

In a cultural milieu where life seems to go on for a long, long time, products with a promise of growth possess far more appeal than life insurance with its implication of mortality.

An associate became fascinated with this issue and glanced through a half-dozen books dealing with boomers, and selling to seniors. He found only one reference to death. Accidental? Perhaps and then again, perhaps not.

Today's financial advisers need to come to terms with one basic fact: If the client isn't ready for life insurance, the client isn't ready for financial planning.

Is this too harsh, too narrow, too old fashioned? Possibly. Yet, the unpleasant issues must be laced if the goal is our clients' financial security.

Every family or business associate receives exactly what is expected and promised when a financial adviser delivers the proceeds from the client's life insurance policy.

While no financial plan may be perfect, the chances are that those without life insurance are deeply flawed.

Ronald D. Verzone is a Best's Review columnist and president of United Underwriters, Exeter, N.H. He can be reached at [e-mail].