Quit selling to reach Top of the Table

I quit selling when I realized that being an insurance agent and financial advisor is a profession of results. It doesn’t matter how many phone calls you make or how many appointments you go on if you’re not seeing results.

Succeeding is more about technique and strategies than it is about product. Clients don’t care about the product. What they care about is the outcome you derive with the technique using the product. I learned this when I became a specialist.

Offer the solution

For me, it was the specific use of life insurance under the U.S. tax code for large-net-worth clients, businesses, clients with tax problems and clients who had special needs in their families.

I spent my career identifying and focusing on mastering the strategies and techniques that enabled the best use for clients of insurance and other products that we sell. It’s not about the insurance though. Insurance is the solution. It’s not the problem. The premium is the solution. And the technique is what makes it all happen.

Understand clients’ fears

You have to stay the course to understand what the client’s deepest fears are, the ones that keep them awake at night. Then you can focus on and understand the necessary steps for them to find a solution to what’s bothering them most or that they most desire. And then from that, you can craft a solution that will involve the products, services and financial tools you make available through your relationships and the skill set you offer.

Furthermore, because my clients needed specific solutions, I was able to create connectivity within that group. There were thousands and thousands of people connected by large common employers who were looking for solutions that we had. Then we marketed that to the companies that had those employees — and our results multiplied.

When you do the job right, people take the solutions you offer. You don’t have to push it.

See more from Mark Hanna in “Grow faster by group prospecting.” (MDRT member exclusive)

Mark Hanna, of Walnut Creek, California, USA, is a 35-year MDRT member who is also the 2017 MDRT President and a Top of the Table member.

Watch more about how other Top of the Table members succeeded:

• “How to qualify for MDRT’s Top of the Table” — Simon D. Lister, Dip PFS, first qualified for Top of the Table when he was 27 and he kept qualifying. In this 2016 MDRT Annual Meeting presentation excerpt, Lister shares how the keys to his success are focusing on discipline, goals, accountability and mentorship.
• “Qualify for Top of the Table: Shift from order taker to financial advisor” — When you become a financial advisor instead of an order taker, it can cause a shift that increases both your income and professional happiness. See more from Top of the Table member Edward Franklin Marshall, APFS. (MDRT member exclusive)