(An excerpt from the book, “Man on a Mission: How to Succeed, Serve, and Make a Difference in Your Financial Services Career.”)
Remember Roger Bannister? Until he set a record in 1954 by running a four-minute mile, for decades people presumed it couldn’t be done. So nobody even tried. But within 46 days of Bannister’s achieving this “unattainable” goal, others followed suit and succeeded, doing what from practically time immemorial had been deemed impossible.
Our Feldman family’s formula for achieving record insurance sales also defied convention and popular thinking and the seemingly impossible with its organic approach. If there was a sales barrier we broke it, largely because we never failed to get to know and understand our prospects to the core. Who were they? How did they think? What qualities did they have? What made them tick?
We subordinated our own financial needs and goals to those of our clients, and at the end of the day this netted us more revenue. We left dollars on the table, as I still do today, when it was in the client’s best interest to do so based on product selection.
In short, what we do is create money for the client where none existed before. Taking days, weeks, or months to ascertain what the client is all about before that first meeting, and certainly during (ask questions about plaques on the walls, photographs, trophies, citations and awards, and the business they have created; become fluent in the client’s vernacular) ensures that what you ultimately bring to the table will be compelling and emotional enough to work. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different: in business or otherwise, decisions about money are fraught with emotion.
As agents and advisors, we are as much investigative journalists as we are, or strive to be, industry experts. We are intelligence gatherers. And based on the “evidence” we painstakingly root out, appealing to prospects on an emotional or “gut” level is what puts the proverbial magic in how the life insurance–based financial services industry works.
There are two basic emotions to which a client responds: fear and greed. Fear of personal, emotional, or financial loss. Greed because most prospects have worked a lifetime to earn their financial security. They don’t want the tax man, confused family members, and poor planning by attorneys to destroy that security. Prospects respond to concept sales in these areas.
Today, too much industry training is based on product education (life insurance, mutual funds, annuities) rather than on learning the psychology necessary to lay the groundwork and create an environment in which to sell these products. In medical school, this would be equivalent to strictly learning how the body works as a machine to the exclusion of the human aspect of medicine—how to listen to the patient’s wants and needs. This type of training is necessary for the doctor to become a skilled diagnostician. More and more medical schools are finally seeing the light about medicine and human communication, and implementing studies to that effect. So why is the insurance industry trailing behind? We also need to be crack diagnosticians. We need to listen not only to the prospects’ wants and needs, but to their hopes, dreams, and desires to determine their areas of concern and deliver the appropriate solutions.
One of the resources in my book is a list of questions to ask prospects which provide you with deeper insights into their real concerns and issues creating the right environment for you to solve the problems. The products we sell are the solutions to these problems, but we must first disturb the prospect enough to make them aware that there are problems to solve. Then we can educate them as to how cost-efficient our products can be, especially in light of competing financial priorities. In this regard, and while we work toward attaining our own goals, we are providing a great service by enabling clients to take care of all that matters to them—their businesses, families, and communities.
Professionally, we all want to leave a legacy—best agent, best manager, leading producer—and we need the tools to accomplish these goals, which will be shared with you throughout my book. Along with experience in life and our industry comes a different perspective. As I matured and became a top producer, I wanted to be known not just as a leader in the industry but as someone who gives back to the industry and community, and as a loving husband, father, and, eventually, grandfather, and to provide a balance between family values, productivity, and professionalism.
In today’s Gen X and Millennial-defined world, expectations about giving back and work-life balance are shifting faster than ever. The idea of entering a profession that encourages you to serve others, make a difference in their lives and the lives of the people around them, and make a great living in the process, all while setting your schedule around your family life, is the blueprint for personal and professional success as I have come to know it.
