3 ideas for being a better advisor

These three ideas from MDRT members can help you better communicate your ideas to clients.

Put a positive spin on the future

In our industry, we’re able to rattle off the percentage chance of a death or critical illness or disability to our clients. To create a more positive experience, I flipped the statistics. Rather than telling a prospect that they had a 7% chance of dying and a 22% chance of critical illness before 65, I would explain to the client what those odds meant is that they actually had a 93% chance of being alive and a 78% chance of being healthy into retirement.

On the surface, it seems like I had just talked the prospect out of seeing the need for insurance at all. Instead, I was now positioning insurance in a more positive way. I was advising clients that we need to prepare for the most likely scenario, that they would be alive and healthy into retirement and retiring income, state taxes, family succession and legacy funding needed to be addressed. It makes little sense for the least-likely events to occur and not for the most likely.

—Chris George, CFP, TEP, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 8-year member

Boosting sales through webinars

Good webinars can be a little like independent movies: They leave you feeling wonderful, inspired and ready to take on the world. Keep your webinar to 60 minutes. Find the interesting topics and enhance them by inviting other experts to your webinars.

Read the July/August 2021 Round the Table magazine.

—Miliana Marten, CFP, Jakarta, Indonesia, 12-year member

Navigating in tough times

Our clients who stayed with us during the pandemic, during the stock market crisis, have come out of it better off than if they’d left during the bottom of the market. We let clients know that there are no certainties, but they will learn safely because we know what we’re doing. We’re like a trained pilot. We’re experts. We’re going to get them to their destination. Sometimes it’s sooner; sometimes it’s later.

—Andrew William Maher, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, UK, 6-year member

See more ideas in the July/August 2021 Round the Table’s special edition of the Ideas section featuring takeaways from the 2021 MDRT Annual Meeting. (Members only, available in 11 languages)