I'll discuss why networking is so important if you're in sales, especially if you're a financial advisor, broker, agent, planner, or product wholesaler. The reality is that you won't be very successful in your business, practice, or job if you don't know how to connect with people you meet for the first time, develop relationships, and add value to your clients.
After reading through this section, you might discover that you weren't as good at networking as you thought. (This is the most common revelation financial advisors share with me after they have attended one of my Knock Out Networking seminars or keynote talks.)
Of course, you might also realize that you're better at networking than you thought you were.
Even if you are a knockout networker, you might wonder why you don't connect with as many prospects, clients, and referral sources as you would like. Or why they might not connect with you.
Remember, networking, like boxing, is about the connection. And in Part 1, you'll learn how to make more of them in the opening rounds.
Ding‐ding!
CHAPTER 1 Networking Is the Key to a Successful Career: (Especially in Financial Services)
“Networking allows you to build strategic relationships where you can ‘nest’ and become a valuable resource within target markets.”
—Susan Cooper, Managing Director, Prudential
Why Financial Advisors Should Network
A position in sales is hard. Really hard! Especially sales positions that offer a very low barrier to entry, high turnover, an expensive product, compensation that is commission only (no salary), an important product that is often intangible and difficult to sell, limited training in sales and marketing, and very little risk to the organization.
Welcome to the insurance and financial services industry! If you're a financial advisor, broker, planner, agent, or rep, you know what I'm talking about.
Of course, sales positions in other industries offer similar challenges, including real estate and distributors that sell products through multi‐level marketing (MLM) channels, but sales positions in insurance and financial services are like no other.
When you think of major insurance companies and financial services firms, you can't help but picture well‐known logos posted on the sides of office buildings, nice dark brown furniture, waiting areas with actual printed copies of the Wall Street Journal on the coffee table, flat‐screen televisions with MSNBC and ongoing stock updates, conference rooms, and lots of people walking around in business suits.
Everyone here must make a lot of money!
But the reality is that a very small percentage of insurance and financial services sales producers become successful. And by successful, I mean growing a thriving practice, business, or career where you can come and go as you please and the money keeps coming in.
Industries like banking, private equity, technology, pharmaceutical, telecommunication, food and beverage, and even wholesaling financial services products like mutual funds often provide a generous salary to salespeople with a commission structure. The salary component alone changes the game completely. In these types of positions, you're more of a corporate employee than a sales producer, business owner, or entrepreneur who needs to sell to survive. Of course, positions in some of these industries are in high demand, so in many cases (though not all) there is pressure to succeed.
I'm not judging. It's just the way it is.
In fact, in many industries, you can be a bad sales producer, or worse, not care that you're a bad sales producer and get away with it – for years and years and years.
As a trainer and coach, I've been hired to consult with banking teams whose sole purpose is to provide loans and other related banking services to either businesses or individuals. Some of those bankers have been allowed to remain in their positions for years and fail. In fact, I know struggling bankers who have been in their roles for over ten years.
Here's the thing. If you're a financial advisor, broker, planner, agent, rep, or other type of sales producer in the insurance and financial services industry, you must be successful at producing sales, otherwise you won't put bread on the table. Simple as that. No salary. No income. No commission. No más.
It's the same story if you're an entrepreneur or business owner starting a business from scratch. Being on your own with no salary puts a lot of pressure on you to sell – and sell now.
Networking is the answer!
The need to make money now makes networking so important – essential, really – to a sales producer in the insurance and financial services industry.
As a financial advisor, once you learn about the products and services you'll need to sell, pass a test, and earn a designation or two, you're all alone out there. Once you talk to your family and friends about buying life insurance from you or having them allow you to manage their money, invest their money, take their money, and even borrow their money (until you get your practice off the ground), it's all about you asking for other people's money. And that's the only way for you to make your money.
As a financial advisor you must network to be successful. In fact, financial services firms should make networking acumen a requirement. I'm not sure why they don't.
If I was managing a firm and recruiting, hiring, training, coaching, and retaining productive sales producers was important to me, I would assess a candidate's ability to communicate verbally, to network, and to build relationships.
Many firms assess a candidate's natural market (their friends and family), and their network (often called their Project 100 or 200, depending on how many people are in their network). What happens when a brand‐new financial advisor runs out of family and friends to sell to?
On the other hand, if an advisor or sales producer has the skills to network (or works with a firm that helps them develop those skills), they can develop their own database ‐ forever. The “teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” proverb comes to mind.
Think of how much better prepared a financial advisor would be if armed with the ability to go to the right places, say the right things, and meet the right people, all while developing the right relationships.
Financial firms are doing new sales producers a disservice by not teaching them how to network to grow their business. And that is why most of them fail.
Top Producers Should Network Too
Top producers are the financial advisors (or other sales producers) who generate the most sales. Obvious, but thought I would put it out there like a stiff jab. Top producers win all the awards, go on all the trips, get the corner offices, have the ongoing praise and respect of management, and don't have to do anything they don't want to do. Meetings tend to be optional for them, so when a top producer goes to an office meeting or event, it's a pretty big deal.
In fact, top producers rarely need their managers for anything. That's why they're top producers.
Top producers set their own hours, play as much golf as they want, get the support of management for almost anything they want to do, have the admiration of their peers, and get the attention of any product wholesaler (those selling mutual funds, retirement plans, annuities, exchange traded funds, etc. through financial advisors) they want.
Top producers also tend to make a lot of income. So there's that.
Where do I sign up?
It's a pretty cool deal. Not bad being a top producer. But also not easy. It requires a lot of work and being a top producer is well earned. If