It is pretty common for people to start their own business under the name of an established company. You see this all the time in direct selling companies that sell their wares through home parties or through a persons network of family and friends. You find it in financial services companies who hire agents to sell insurance policies. You taste it in when eating a sandwich in a franchised restaurant.
All these have some type of system — rules, tips, guidelines, best practices — to make you successful. The implied message is “Do this and you will make money! Your risk will pay off, and all this will be worth it.”
For the most part, they are right.
Somewhere in each of these companies is a team of people who have combed through all the data, listened to all the stories and come up with what tends to work best.
The first and best piece of advice I can give you here is to throw yourself into whatever system you have been given.
Work the phones like they recommend
Put ads in the paper like they recommend
Send emails like they recommend
Talk to prospective clients like they recommend
Until you have gone through the width and breadth of their system, you will have no right to say, “This isn’t working for me.”
I was having a meeting at Panera earlier this week and I sat a few tables away from an older, well polished individual who was offering an industrial version of a be-your-own-boss position (probably as a manufacturer’s rep) to a guy in his mid-30’s. No doubt the guy offering the opportunity had some type of proven system to offer the prospective salesman.
Here’s how we find prospects for our products
Here’s what we say on the phone to get an in-person meeting
Here is how we quote our products
The new guy would do well to listen to the voice of experience.
The Rest of the Story
Some of you are saying, “Jason, I’ve been there and done that. Their system does not really work for me.”
Maybe you were sold a bill of goods on how fantastic the system was.
It could be that the system works well for others, but just does not work for you.
Perhaps you don’t have a system at all because you are not working under the banner of another company.
Either way, you find yourself at a crossroads.
“Do I stick with it, or do I bail?”
In my next article in the series I will cover how to find your voice in selling.
Take stock of how full, good and rich your life really is. For just a moment to count all the things that make your life a little easier. Consider the simple things such as:
indoor plumbing
hot water for your shower
a refrigerator / kitchen/ pantry stocked with food
grocery stores
paved roads
family
friends
heat
My in-laws are in town today for my daughter’s birthday. Before I went to work my wife and her mother had gone to get groceries at a specialty health-conscious store across town. Note that the local big box store which is designed to meet the needs of a wide mass of consumers, does not carry exactly what my wife needs. She drives, in one of our two cars, on roads that are paved, to the speciality store across town.
I sit here in a coffee store (an entire store devoted to coffee?) writing on a computer that I can carry anywhere. I have the time to do this because I am not washing a week’s worth of clothes by hand, and I’m not having to plow a field with a team of 2 horses. This amount of “free time” I have would have been unfathomable 100 years ago.
My father-in-law volunteered to watch my daughter while I work in my “office” just a few miles from the house. Thinking about things from his vantage point, how amazing is it to live so long that you get to spend time with your grandkids? As I was pulling out of the driveway on my way to write I realized that we live very long, full lives. We have so many conveniences compared to what was available in the past. These conveniences wash our dishes, dry our clothes and give us, well, more. More time, more availability, more room to give. As a whole, we are better equipped to meet the needs of others than perhaps any other time in history.
We have full, wonderful, productive lives. Today, take time to notice how good you have it.
A Big Collection of Articles on what you can expect
I did a pretty broad search on the net today to find some of the best resources possible on what you can expect in your new career as a new financial advisor or a new insurance agent. My results cover a fairly broad spectrum of producers with wire houses on one end of the scale — traditionally producers here collect assets in the form of mutual funds, 401(k) accounts, IRAs, stocks, etc. On the other end of the spectrum we have property and casualty (P&C) who traditionally sell home owners insurance and car insurance. There are a variety of roles in between who sell a mix of investments and life insurance. Your job probably lies somewhere along this spectrum.
Forums for New Financial Advisors or New Life Insurance Agents
My largest area of surprise is how many forums exist for producers in the financial services industry. One in particular is Ampminsure.com. I managed to find one thread on the challenges that life insurance agents face.
There is even one small exchange on new life insurance agents on Indeed.com.
Interviewing with companies? For those of you who are considering becoming a new life insurance agent or a new financial advisor, this exchange between newbies and interviewees is very enlightening.
Articles for New Financial Advisors or New Life Insurance Agents
Fins.com has a pretty good collection of articles for new financial advisors, in particular.
From Rookie to Retiree: Financial Advisor Lifecycles gives a great end-to-end perspective on what to expect. I particularly enjoy the quote from Joe Matthews who advises new recruits to “Hit the ground running”. Peter Izzo also points out that “its a meritocracy.”
This next article is a little dated, but brings up a great point in the hiring and training of new financial advisors. The article, The Future of the Industry is a general state-of-the-industry look at financial advisory services, and it quotes a price tag of $250,000 for launching a new financial advisor.
Videos
First Year Insurance Agent is a text-to-movie animation. While the language here is a little off-color at times, the video hits on a number of really relevant points including the expectations of management, and the need to market products outside of your company’s core portfolio. A little long at nearly 7 minutes. I feel the first 5 were well worth the time.
New Insurance Agent Mistakes to Avoid is a well-done video by what appears to be a mother-daughter team. At 2 minutes it is worth the time. This video illustrates a good point about avoiding competition with the internet.
This is the 3rd post in a series that I am writing on God’s redeeming our every day work lives (article 1 and article 2). The series started when I came across a presentation by Dr. Denise Daniels of Seattle Pacific University.
After the fall came redemption, and this carries through to our time at work.
Until reading this presentation I had been of the opinion that the fall had doomed us to work in jobs that were monotonous, tedious and boring. Dr. Daniel’s presentation covered the fall, yet it made me realize that God, in fact, has redeemed work.
Dr. Daniels includes a vital observation on slide 22.
Your work can bring economic justice and social justice to people who can not speak for themselves.
Consider for a moment the considerable rise of social entrepreneurs over the past decade — organizations such as Charity:Water and LoveGrows. Charity:Water provides clean drinking water for those who otherwise would not have the means to obtain it. Clean water leads directly to better health for the villagers and improves education opportunities for girls and women. LoveGrows helps provide orphans with housing and access to age-appropriate schooling. Both organizations seek to create a cycle of empowerment at a local level.
These are not organizations that started as well-funded offshoots of major corporations or endowment funds. These are organizations that are started from people who simply said “I want to make a difference”, and they chose to get involved despite the many issues that lay before them.
The work that you do can have an amazing impact on the lives of many.
References
Daniels, D. (2008). Redeeming work: Living out God’s Purpose in our work [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://www.spu.edu/depts/sbe/cib/documents/CIB_Kiros_Redeeming_Work_Daniels_7-08.ppt
In an earlier post I discussed why research should be generalizable. Here I will cover transferrability which is equally powerful. I will continue with my example where we had a hypothetical study showing that nurses who worked 8-hour shifts committed less errors than nurses who worked 12-hour shifts.
Transferability means that the original findings have been shown to work across many additional industries.
For a finding such as this to be transferrable, one would have to see similar results in different industries such as manufacturing, engineering, hotel management, newspaper production, etc. Not all research is meant to be transferrable or generalizable; however, if it is found to be transferrable it is an indicator that the findings may very well be replicable in your organization.
I am first and foremost a writer. This is how I develop my craft and hone my message. It is through writing that I start the process of putting my ideas into a form that I can take to market.
I write so that people can benefit from my past experience. Perhaps people can learn from my success and my failures.
I am a researcher. I read a great deal of academic journals because it makes perfect sense to take advantage of so much great work that has already been done. This is called secondary research. Despite so much great work being available, there are still times when I need to roll up my sleeves to do my own interviewing and data collecting. This is called primary research.
The reason that I perform research is to help an organization solve a problem with its sales force, or to help individuals produce at higher levels.
For me this is the perfect blend between work and ministry, between being an entrepreneur and working in a large company, between being a researcher and having my feet on the ground in the trenches.
Chances are that running your own business is more than just some thing that you do on the side.
It is how you put bread on your table.
It is how you pay your bills.
You have come this far, and it doesn’t make sense to quit now. The problem is that you may have hit a snag. A road block. Something that you don’t know how to get around. Maybe you just lost a big customer. Maybe you were counting on some money coming in and it didn’t happen. Now this is causing you to doubt your current path. You’ve become uncertain. Thoughts of “Should I keep doing this, or should I just quit and go get a job?” run through your mind.
Uncertainty stinks. I know I have lived through my share.
What I have found for me is that I am most uncertain when I feel isolated. Like there is no one out there who can identify with me. Worse, like there is no where I can go for help. I see others being incredibly successful. Why not me? Where’s the boundary between “persevering through the tough times” and outright stupidity?
Then there are times when the clouds part — they invariably do in time — and I can see things more clearly. I can see how my business can provide for my family, pay the mortgage, pay the bills. This space. This mental space where I can see possibilities is where I want to live. This is where I want to stay.
Here’s the tricky part. I know that cloudy days are unavoidable and that obstacles will find me no matter what. AND I know that I will go through the same cycle of doubt that I’ve experienced before. Here’s the two part trick that I know I need to master.
I have to allow myself to go through the cycle without beating up myself for being here. If the cycle is part of who I am (I believe it is part of us all), then it is only a natural part of self-management.
Make my time here as short as possible. I’ve been here before. I have learned from it. I know the short cuts out. I have to give myself some time to accept that I’ve had a loss. Mourn it. And then get on with business. I know that dwelling on my loss and dwelling on my “situation” it is what keeps me here in the loss-mourn-loathe cycle.
How about you? What helps you overcome an obstacle or setback
Currently in week 6 of my writing class. My mentor is fantastic and giving me lots of latitude on my first draft. I have tons of work to, yet it feels really good to be making solid progress.
The literature review phase is probably the most wonderful part of the research journey thus far. There is such a wide universe of research available. What surprises me is that there are many people researching the ins and outs of personal selling, and there is a great amount of rigor out there.
Right now I am exploring the literature around salespeople. In particular I’m fascinated to see the literature surrounding the failure and success of insurance producers. Until I started my research I had no idea that there is an entire journal devoted to sales — The Journal of Personal Selling.
Happy to report that I aced my final paper in my last class. I ended the session with an A. Now it is on to the next class on Contemporary Systems Management. I just looked at the syllabus, and it appears that the instructor has included a heavy dose of my favorite topic – strategy!
Aside from dissertation, I have only this class and one more traditional class to go.
