Communicating and connecting with clients are the building blocks of trusting long-term relationships. Try these three ideas to help you form those bonds and keep them strong.
Connect the dots
Insurance is an invisible asset, and to convey its value to clients, financial professionals must first truly believe in its meaning and be convinced of its significance. Value begins in an invisible place, but as that value is imprinted on clients’ lives like small dots every day, those dots will eventually become lines, and those lines will become a picture, and the day will surely come when you are remembered as one person clients trust and rely on. —Hyun Sook Lee, 18-year MDRT member
The importance of human connection
Human connection actually promotes not just happiness, but physical health and longevity. How are our social connections related to health? Well, we know that loneliness, which is social isolation and disconnection, is a predictor of getting old in an unhappy and unhealthy way, as is smoking cigarettes, having untreated high blood pressure or being obese. Technology has the power to connect us, but it also has the power to isolate us. We need to be proactive in combating isolation. That includes listening to those voices that make us feel more connected and hopeful, and turning away from those voices that want to divide us from each other. Because being proactive about the connections in your life will have enormous payoffs for you and for all the people in your world. —Robert Waldinger, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and 2025 MDRT Annual Meeting speaker
Spare tire
I often use simple analogies in my conversations with clients. For example, when explaining the importance of an emergency fund, I use the example of a car’s spare tire, which is always ready when needed: “We don’t expect a flat tire, but we feel calm knowing we have a spare tire.” This analogy makes the concept of protection more tangible and easier for clients to understand. —Lilyana Chandra, 12-year MDRT member
This was excerpted from “Building trust and value through meaningful connection” in the March/April 2026 issue of Round the Table. (MDRT member-exclusive content)
