Selling life insurance is a hard-won dignity. It involves a lot of rainy Monday mornings and great Friday nights. The day-to-day challenges of working in the market may lead newer agents to look for a secret formula for success or self-improvement. However, a determined person with zeal and a good sense of humor can most certainly become a business and community leader through life insurance sales.

Of course, the first 40 years are the hardest. There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. But there are strategic roads to take.

Here are three tips to incorporate into your career to find success in life insurance: 

1) Drive yourself forward. Glamour is the name of a magazine, not the life insurance profession. The great Al Granum was right when he discovered that for every 10 people you may approach, three will see you and one will buy. When you're a new agent, I would suggest that you kindly ignore the statistics about how long agents last—or how many succeed—and be the source of your own resolve to succeed, like the racehorse that doesn't know the odds.

Most successful life insurance agents are not good salespeople, but they are almost always good prospectors. Play detective and get yourself in front of good people and learn how to ask great questions. You do not have to be all things to all people, just a few important things to the right people. Go out and find them.

2) Remember why people buy. How a person does anything is how they do everything. Know what you are going to ask a person before you see them and always expect the loss.

To buy life insurance, people must love someone else enough to worry about what will happen to them after their death. Look for people who love their spouses more than anything else in the world. Also, a debt should last no longer than the person who created it. Look for successful businesses that have large commercial bank loans and cover them with life insurance.

3) Build a support network. William Faulkner wrote, “Be better than yourself." The more people you know well and admire, the better your life will be. Your attitude will usually end up as the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Remember this as you pull yourself up to your full height.

Make sure you keep a positive attitude and share it freely. Learn how to appreciate the good days and tolerate the challenging days. Abundance is a state of mind; we could be born a dozen other lifetimes and not be as lucky as we are today.

D. Scott Brennan of South Bend, Indiana, has been a Milion Dollar Round Table member for 39 years and served as MDRT's 2013 president. Brennan has multiple Court of the Table and Top of the Table qualifications and is an MDRT Foundation Legion of Honor Excalibur Knight. He is the 75th recipient of the John Newton Russell Memorial Award