Will focusing on HNIs help or hinder you from qualifying to the MDRT?

 

The High-Net-Worth Market - the Holy Grail of insurance agents?

HNIs are wealthy prospects, they have substantial resources coming from their own business or the practice of a profession, some inherits it, and some married into it.

This is the profile of THE "ideal prospect" for most insurance agents.

The reason is obvious... working with HNIs gives us the opportunity to conceptualized, create and recommend creative financial solutions to serve their unique needs, whether to set up a perpetual paying fund for grandchildren, ensuring his business pass on to a preferred offspring, creating a legacy fund to finance the building of a school in their name or simply creating an efficient financial vehicle to ensure the maximum preservation of their wealth.

and if we are successful, the rewards are also substantial! 

I am quite fortunate to know personally some people who belongs to this category, in the early phase of my insurance career, I have worked with some of them and qualified to the Million Dollar Round Table!

SUCCESS BREEDS HUBRIS! Because of my early success, my insurance career workflow became centered on this segment, all I need is two or three large policies per year, and I am home free to the MDRT?

Big Mistake!!

The HNI market is fiercely competitive! it is not unusual for them to be pursued by a lot of agents at any given time, offering them a myriad of products from real estate, fast cars, investment and insurance products just to name a few, most of them would have numerous policies already, the challenge now is how to sell a new policy on top of whatever they already have.

Some other challenges we faced are:

HNIs often have high expectations regarding the level of service and the quality of products they receive. They expect personalized and tailored solutions that cater to their unique financial situations and goals. Meeting and exceeding these expectations can be demanding.

They are very busy!! trying to get them to sit down and meet with us is a constant challenge.

HNIs tend to be well-informed and may conduct extensive research before making financial decisions, we need to be well-versed in our products and services, capable of providing in-depth information and answering detailed questions.

Because of these challenges, the conversion number from prospects to client is very low!!

My "big mistake" is not approaching and talking to a bigger number of prospects! I may have qualified to the MDRT, but I failed to qualify to the Macaulay, why? because I lack the necessary number of unique policies.

What did I learn?

A successful insurance career is not just about getting the production requirements in terms of premiums, it is also equally important in getting the minimum number of policy holders to remain sustainable. 

In conclusion: Focusing on HNIs and thus talking to a fewer number of prospects will hinder us from qualifying to the MDRT, Focusing on HNIs AND building a wider network of prospects will help us qualify!

All the best my friends!!

#acgadvice

If you forget your goal and just focus on your "system", will you succeed?

 

Winners and Losers have the same goal, the only difference is one achieves it while most others fail. If we are to apply this to the total number of financial advisors vying to qualify for the Million Dollar Round Table each year, statistically, just by setting a goal to qualify for the MDRT does not work!

The prevailing wisdom says that for us to achieve anything we want in life, we need to set goals and tie it to an action plan, Jim Collins even coined the term BHAG for "Big Hairy Audacious Goal", the idea is that the bigger, clearer and more well-articulated the goal, the more likely we are to achieve it, because it would constantly inspire and motivate us to reach it!

Inspiration and motivation are not sustainable! just look at new year's resolutions!

One interesting insight I gathered from reading James Clear's book "Atomic Habits" is that "Goals is just a standard to let you know you won the game" while "Systems is a set of habits that allows you to continue playing the game" even after your current (goal) game is won, the system will enable you to play bigger games in the future, one that builds from your latest success. 

A Habit is a series of Behaviors.

A System is a series of Habits.

Success habits for financial advisors are "Prospecting" and "Presenting", setting up a system to embed these two activities in our daily habits is the sure-fire way to success!

Building habits are daunting at the beginning, imagine telling yourself to make 5 client calls a day as suggested by a sales guru, you may do it for a day or maybe two, but as it goes on the weight of rejections may start demoralizing you and you most probably will give up after a while. The key idea is to develop habits to make this automatic!

BJ Fogg in his book "Tiny Habits" suggests breaking down the task to its smallest possible version - so making a client call may just become browsing your contacts in your phone directory. 

Next is to identify an "action prompt", this will tell you when to start a new habit, Fogg suggests tying this to an anchor (a habit you are already doing regularly like having coffee in the morning?)

Your anchor - After I ... (had coffee), the new tiny habit - I will.. (browse my contact list). browsing is much less intimidating than making an actual client call, its easier and you don't need a lot of motivation to do it, so it is an easier habit to create. But just browsing your contacts will not make you any money, you have to "grow this habit", How? 

By celebrating your small success (browsing your contacts)!  After browsing congratulate yourself for a job well done! It may sound ridiculous in the beginning to celebrate such an "insignificant" action, but the positive feeling generated will encourage you to repeat the habit again, this momentum that you have created may now give you enough motivation to repeat and grow this habit.

So the next habit that you formed in this progression may be, After I... (browsed my contacts) I will... (send messages to 3 of them requesting for an appointment)

Celebrate this and grow this to an even bigger habit till you are making 5 client calls a day!

Success is the result of what we do every day, and habits are what we do regularly, embed a new habit that would lead to your achieving your goals to a habit you are already doing will help ensure you do it everyday.

Read "Atomic Habits" (James Clear) and "Tiny Habits" (BJ Fogg | Tiny Habits) for more insights!

All the best my friends

#acgadvice

To qualify for MDRT, bring in 2 clients per week

 

Most of us have already set targets for ourselves, no doubt a lot would be aiming to qualify for MDRT and beyond, but wishing and believing is not enough, it must be supported by a process that outlines the critical action steps and benchmarks that would tell us if we were on track

The two most important benchmark for tracking is first, the number of clients that we brought in and second, the average case size

The number of clients that we bring in is a function of our activities;  the more number of prospect engagements we have, the more clients we can bring in, this is very straightforward

so wishing and believing will come to naught if it is not supported by the number of sales calls that we do regularly

Average case size is a function of skill; we cannot close a Php 1 Million policy doing a Php 10,000 presentation, To get prospects to entrust to us their millions, we should be able to demonstrate credibly through our advisory conversations the extent of our knowledge and expertise in helping them achieve their financial objectives

Among the two, "number of clients" would be the more rewarding benchmark in the sense that "victories" no matter how small will motivate us to do more, as we do more presentations, we will become better, doing this regularly will raise our skill level

This will lead to progressively bigger case size

To qualify for MDRT, aim to bring in 2 clients per week, doing this consistently will greatly increase our chances of finally qualifying for the MDRT

All the best my friends!

#acgadvice

Number of clients x case size = MDRT

Its the time of the year when financial advisors all over set their targets for the year, whether its the setting of personal or team targets, it helps to focus on two key measures to track progress

A lead is just a "name" that may or may not avail of our services, to convert a lead to a prospect, there has to be some interest in the part of the "lead" to bring the conversation to the next level

Financial advocacy is freely sharing ideas and that may be relevant to somebody aiming for financial security, approaching a lead with insightful ideas on how to maximize the benefits of financial planning without any commitments on his part may create a desire in the "lead" to request for more information, this could pave the way for a follow up meeting which would increase the chance of the lead to turn into a prospect

Contrast this with the typical sales approach when a "lead" is placed in a situation where he has to categorically decide "yes" or "no" to a proposition, a negative response effectively ends the possibility of follow up meetings

Activity is number driven - the more people we talk to, the higher will be the chances of getting prospects. Adapting an advocacy approach minimized call reluctance due to rejections and increase the number of people we talk to

The lead that turned into a prospect and eventually to a client may start with the "minimum" to test out the validity of our ideas, next step would be to build up case size which is function of financial advisory skills

The basic foundation of financial advisory skills is an extensive understanding of the financial planning process, mastery of available products and the ability to match these products to an identified need

To make 2022 your best year ever!

1. Talk to as many people as you can using your "advocacy narrative"
2. Continuously enlarge case size using your "financial security narrative"! 

All the best my friends!

#acgadvice

Advocate your way to MDRT in 2022? why not!

The biggest challenge to MDRT aspirants is to find enough 

prospects/clients to satisfy their production requirements

Using Premiums as method of production to qualify, an aspirant needs:

1 client paying 2.2M in premiums*

10 clients paying 213K in premiums

50  clients paying 44K in premiums

*regular pay products

as most of us would not be able to have access to people capable of paying 2.2M in regular premiums, we can surely talked to people who can set aside 44k per year for their financial security, the task would just be finding at least 50 of them next year

Let us develop a plan using the following assumptions:

• to get one interested prospect we need to advocate to 5 contacts
• to get one client we need we need three interested prospect
• to get to 50 clients we need to advocate to 750 people
• as there are 52 weeks in a year, our magic number is advocating to 15 people per week

The biggest hindrance to this exercise is "call reluctance", this usually happens if we don't score a "success" after an engagement, this is where our advocacy comes to play

Advocacy starts with wanting to do good for others, as financial advisors we believe that knowing and understanding financial concepts that we are capable of "sharing" will enable others to make more informed financial decisions that could help them achieve financial independence

with an advocacy mindset - every "sharing" that we do count as one of the 750

would you like to qualify for the MDRT in 2022? would you like to earn at least a million pesos? 

share your advocacy to 750 people!

review post #44 on how to use advocacy to build your prospect base

all the best my friends!

#acgadvice

Practicing what I preach, my quest for MDRT

August of 2019 I was licensed as a financial advisor, ever since I heard boss rex talked about MDRT during our PAMI agency rounds, becoming one has become one very important item in my bucket list. so after decades of corporate work, I took the challenge

there are 2 lessons I re-learned early on as a financial advisor that I would like to share to those who are still aspiring to become one

1. its not how much we know, its about how much we understand the client's needs

as a person who is quite familiar with investment concepts, my first few "calls" was centered on topics on how I can make more money for clients using my "investment acumen" (kuno ha ha ha) in creating a market responsive portfolio of VUL funds (naks!), unfortunately none of the people I talked to showed any interest even if I am doing the best presentation of my life!  got a big fat ZERO production for August

Reviewing these calls, I realized that during the client meeting I was the one talking most of the time, at times it seems I am lecturing my prospects, there could also be moments that I may have sounded condescending, I wanted to impress my clients by rattling off an encyclopedia worth of information to prove I am an "expert" and that they should entrust their money to me.

Big Mistake! 

I remembered one of my agency training modules -  "Sell what the client needs!" 

80% of the time during a client's meeting should be focused on understanding what the client need and the remaining 20% of the time on how we can help address those needs, shifting focus from what I think I need to say to the client's circumstances bought me my first case in September

2. Clients (especially the rich ones) are more interested in protecting what they already have than making more

Health insurance products are my bestsellers considering that my prospect base is in my age group (young once ha ha ha), products that focused on investing for capital growth have little appeal to them, I will share some highlights of my most memorable meetings in a separate post

while most of them can afford the cost of expensive medical treatments, a health insurance makes sense to them as it gives them a way to pass on these costs to an insurance company in case it is needed saving them a lot of money

Solutions protecting their wealth like estate planning also are quite of interest to them, the assurance of an insurance policy taking care of estate taxes obligations far outweighs the actual amount of taxes to be paid, they want to ensure that their heirs get the maximum value of their wealth in a most tax efficient manner (least leakage)

#acgadvice