By Corey Dahl

January 10, 2012

You know that movie “Fever Pitch”? Where Jimmy Fallon plays a fan obsessed with the Boston Red Sox? If you changed the team to the Denver Broncos and amped the crazy up a few notches, you’d have my family.

We’re die-hard, lifelong Broncos fans, not just Tebow bandwagoneers. So, naturally, we made the trek to Sports Authority Field at Mile High on Sunday to see our team play its first post-season game since 2005, against the Steelers. Unless you’re a hermit living on another planet, you’ve likely heard about the outcome, so I won’t rehash the details or, like every other sports-themed blog this week, wax rhapsodic about the Teebs.

What I want to talk about is this: midway through our post-game celebration, my dad stood up and said, “I’ve got to get the t-shirt.” He made a beeline for the nearest vendor, but by the time he got there, all the shirts were, of course, sold out.

It’s kind of a boring anecdote, but two things about it stood out to me. One, which most life insurance agents are probably already familiar with, is the power of sentimentality to sell. My dad owns plenty of t-shirts — too many, my mom would say. He didn’t really need another one. What he did need was something that would remind him of the one day that made all those other Sundays — spent freezing in the stands, rooting for a mostly losing team — worth it. It’s the same impulse that sells vacation tchotchkes or — I’m guessing here — those Royal Wedding commemorative china sets.

But what really struck me was the reflexive, unprompted nature of the decision to buy. The brain equation that thinks: favorite team + winning game = opportunity to buy t-shirt. My dad — and presumably the dozens or even hundreds of other fans who beat him to the t-shirt stand — didn’t need a commercial or a salesman telling him t-shirts were available. It was just expected; it’s what you do.

Wouldn’t it be great if life insurance were like that? If after getting married/having a baby/starting a business, people automatically bought not just honeymoon tickets, Baby Bjorns and chamber of commerce memberships, but also first-time or expanded life insurance coverage? That used to be more common, decades ago, but with many people un- or under-insured, it’s hardly the norm today.

Thanks to state laws, the purchase of auto insurance is largely engrained into our behavior these days. You buy a car, you have to insure it. But short of mandating adequate life insurance coverage for every man, woman and child, how do we breed that purchase reflex into people again?

Education seems like a good place to start. Social networks, too. Imagine how greatly we’d up the cool factor of life insurance if people boasted in their Facebook status updates about purchasing coverage, rather than their new car or iPad.

Or…I’ve got it. What if we gave everyone who purchased life insurance a commemorative t-shirt?

Tell me what you think in the comments space below. Unless you’re a Pats fan, that is.

Corey Dahl is life channel and social media editor for LifeHealthPro.com and managing editor of Life Insurance Selling.