Get emotional: MetLife exec reminds producers of their ultimate mission--to sell peace of mind.

This one wasn't about product design or sales strategy. This speech to the April 5 general session of the Life Insurance Conference was from the heart. Actually, it was from the right side of Joseph Jordan's brain, the side he was asking insurance advisers to use. It is the part of the brain that handles human emotions, while the left side handles rational thought.

To the MetLife senior vice president, known for delivering inspirational talks, insurance is fundamentally an emotional sale. Insurance, he said, is what humanizes the capital markets. The main reason to sell life, disability, and long-term-care insurance--and annuities--is so that an individual's or a family's lifestyle won't be diminished. And that, he said, is the main reason people will buy the products.

Jordan said that for about two decades beginning in the mid 1980s, insurance producers lost their way. They were ashamed to sell insurance, he said, and tried to turn themselves into sellers of left-brain products, financial/accumulation products, the ones that dealt with net worth rather than self-worth.

Asking people to buy something they don't want to buy may be among the hardest jobs in the world. But he said it is incumbent on producers "to overcome their call reluctance," because it is their moral responsibility to advocate for spouses and children that need the protection of life insurance, or for buyers of the other products who can't or won't dare to consider the bad things that could happen to them. Insurance products provide peace of mind, independence, dignity and legacy, he said.

The Conferences

The Life Insurance Conference and the RetirementIndustry Conference were held in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., in early April and sponsored by Loma, Limra International and the Society of Actuaries. The American Council of Life Insurers was also one of the sponsors of the Life Insurance Conference.

Conference coverage by Ron Panko.