Lost in translation: the industry operates under the erroneous assumption that improving life insurance products will make it easier to sell the products.

Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. I don't know who first came up with that definition, but I wonder if he or she was thinking about the life insurance business.

The life insurance business is in its 27th year of the insanity--i.e., the product revolution. Current assumption policies have evolved since 1979 to the point of becoming oxymoronic. Secondary Guarantee Universal Life is the most inflexible product we've ever produced, and it stands on a chassis that is so flexible it would be the last insurance policy you would ever buy. Go figure.

Our industry continues to improve a product nobody wants. Normal, healthy, psychologically well-adjusted human beings are in denial about their mortality, which is a good thing. If we couldn't deny our mortality, and walked around all day focused on the inevitability of our own death, we wouldn't get anything done in a day, or the rest of our lives. In this case, denial is positive. The problem is the way our salespeople approach prospects. They use an approach that presupposes a motivated buyer. Because of denial, there are no motivated buyers for life insurance. Instead, when approached, the prospect's psychological reaction is, "I don't need life insurance--I'm not going to die" Followed by, "Why is someone trying to sell me something I don't need?"

I submit to you that denial is at the root of virtually every objection a life insurance salesperson encounters. Not so with any other product or service. Consider the last time you bought anything. Did you question the salesperson's motivation in selling whatever it was to you? Absent the appearance of fraud, you never do. Did you understand they were being paid in some way? Of course! It's a given that people get paid for what they do. Again, assuming nothing fraudulent about the transaction, you never question the salesperson's motivation.

Recently I met a person at a wedding reception. As the small talk unfolded, the conversation turned to what each of us did for a living. Upon learning I was in the life insurance business, my new acquaintance reacted predictably: "Oh, I don't believe in life insurance," he exclaimed. Well, I took a deep breath, and exercising all the self-control I could muster, calmly asked him the following questions:

* Do you believe your kids deserve a future if you're not there to provide it for them?

* Do you believe a business should survive the death of its owner so that employees have jobs?

* Should people retire with dignity?

* Do you believe that what a person has accumulated over a lifetime should be preserved?

Immediately, his expression, his body language, his demeanor changed.

These are four powerful and commonly held beliefs. You would be hard pressed to find many people who don't believe these things.

So why not talk to people in a language they understand? That's what life insurance people do every day in this country. They speak to people in the language of our product--a product nobody wants--and then wonder why so few people want to talk about it, let alone buy it.

We need to speak to people in a language they understand, the language of what they value. Even further, we must always speak for the one in the conversation who has no voice--the children, the employees, etc. No one can question the motives of one who speaks for another, the advocate. Advocates are in a morally and ethically unchallenged position. We must make the shift from an industry that is sales driven to an industry that is mission driven. What is that mission?

On a micro level, the mission is to identify those at risk financially and show them how to protect themselves from that risk. On a macro level, consider this challenge: Our society faces a looming crisis in its Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid systems. Eventually there will be political solutions to these problems that will come from a place of scarcity, and rest assured, we will all get considerably less and pay considerably more for these things. Our industry has the products and services that solve the financial problems of retirement, death, and long-term care for the citizens of this country. Our mission is to get these solutions to the public, and we need to be recruiting to this mission. Properly presented, people would beat the doors down to be a part of this unprecedented expedition.

None of this happens if we don't first change how we think about what we do, and then change the language we use to communicate our mission. It's a big change--but insanity is not a very attractive option.

Contributor Bill Girone is regional vice president, external life sales, Securian Financial Group. He can be reached at [e-mail].