I should rename my poker game at home the “insurance salesman poker game.”  I have one guy in his 30’s that spends most of his day underwriting physician disability insurance policies.  Another guy in his early 40’s spends most of his days at a telemarketing center providing disability insurance quotes over the phone.  Yet another is a dentist disability insurance salesman.

The game many times breaks down into a discussion about work.  They will start off talking about their week and their unusual customers.  Then sometime during the conversation they will go into some type of unique disability insurance policy situation, such as when they had to insure a stuntman who specialized in being set on fire.  Other times, the discussion becomes a debate about who provides better coverage for better rates.

The first couple of times that they went into this type of conversation, I would get somewhat annoyed as I really didn’t know anything about their industry.  I then noticed that when they talked about work, they focused very little on their poker game.  As a result, I started to take advantage of this and have profited quite nicely. 

Now, I try and make sure that we start talking about their work at some point.  I might even get a conversation started by talking about a policy.  Is it underhanded?  Maybe.  Is it profitable?  Definitely.

Technorati Tags: dentist disability insurance, disability insurance quotes, physician disability insurance