The younger representatives who I mentor often ask how I became motivated so quickly. A big factor in my development was my environment and, I’ll be honest with you, I got lucky.
I came up in one of the best environments an advisor could ask for in the early years of my career. Most of my colleagues were 15 to 25 years my senior – the salt of the earth, people who lead by example, people I trusted, who cared about others, and people you would love to have in your community.
Because of all this, I trusted them completely when they told me about the importance of life insurance, and disability insurance, and saving money. And when they shared stories of what they accomplished with their clients, I soon felt as if I had embarked on a lifelong mission.
Another important aspect of the culture I came up in was high expectations. If you did not qualify for the Million Dollar Round Table by the end of your third year where I worked, you were terminated. I wasn’t going to wait until my third year.
I bought a poster board to cover my bedroom door. From the board’s lower left corner to the upper right corner, on a diagonal line, I wrote the letters “MDRT”; from the left upper corner to the lower right corner I drew another diagonal line, and I wrote “Rookie of the Year, 1990.”
I focused on both of those things. I looked at them every single day. There were many days I felt defeated and many days I worked long hours, but I never went to bed without walking past that chart.
By the end of 1990, I qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table, and I won the prestigious rookie of the year award. I qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table each year since entering the business, and even achieved “Court of the Table” on three separate occasions. All of this was achieved in my 20s.
I can’t stress enough how I owe my early success to so many people. I simply followed the instructions offered by my superiors. When I had questions, I went to my mentor who always helped me. When dealing with cases that I couldn’t quite get my head around, I worked jointly with colleagues, who were always there for me.
I remember at the end of my first quarter hearing the importance of learning via joint work. From then on, I made a point to participate in a minimum of one joint-work appointment each week. I participated in as many as four in some weeks.
During my first calendar year, I completed 84 joint-work appointments. After the 30th meeting, I felt I could sell better than some of the people that I collaborated with, which often frustrated me, but I always managed to learn one or two things from every meeting, which ultimately benefitted me down the road.
I’m the first to admit that I’m not smart enough to invent original sales concepts. Every single thing I know about sales was absorbed from others through my dedication to learning and my ability to soak up information like a human sponge in the first decade of my career.
Most of my material comes not from my victories, but from multiple defeats, the challenges and rejection I faced daily. While there were many tough days, I have such fond memories, and the experience molded and shaped my entire future.
Much of who you are today is the product of your environment. Your environment is more than just other people, but people play a big part of it. Think about the people in your life. What expectations do they set for you? How would you describe the culture they create? Are they available and able to provide you with support?
Take control and make a conscious effort to be with people who inspire, guide, mentor and challenge you to become the best you can become. Don’t limit yourself just to the people in your office. Seek others across the country or form a study group. With technology, most geographic limitations have been removed.
As you are building this environment, remember that it takes time. You can’t just snap your fingers and have all the right people in your life. But in the meantime, you can always learn from others through books, blogs, audio programs and more. Find the people who have achieved the most success in your field. Dive deep into their content and figure out what makes them tick. Commit to continually seeking these individuals out and it will have a dramatic impact on your life!
As we approach the end of this year, there’s no better time than now to spend some time in reflection and set your goals for the coming year.
Ever since my first year as an advisor, I always challenge myself to think big – and this year I want to challenge you to do the same. However, before you get started on this exercise, first you need to know what thinking big really means.
This is a topic that I talk a lot about in my workshops and training programs. Often times I ask the reps I’m working with to rate themselves on a scale of zero to ten. Ten means that you are tapping into your entire potential and zero means that you are nowhere close.
On average, most people give themselves a score somewhere around seven, a couple people will say eight. For the vast majority, I think that this shows that we are setting the bar too low.
Research shows that about the top 25% of financial advisors made over $160,490. On top of these salaries many advisors earned bonuses, so realistically you could assume the top five to ten percent are more likely earning between $200,000 – $300,000.
However, if you look at the top financial advisors in the U.S. who work with individual consumers and families, you’ll find an enormous gap. According to Forbes, the top advisor in the United States is Jeff Erdmann. He has $7.1 billion in assets with a typical household account of $36 million.
I feel fairly confident in saying that he made at least $25 million in net revenue. Are there a lot of advisors who are making this amount? No. But this is proof that it is possible.
Think about it from another perspective. The world record for the one-mile run is 3 minutes and 43 seconds. That’s the fastest a human has ever done it. At 51 years old, there is no way that I could run it under 4 minutes. However, 3 minutes and 43 seconds is the bar.
With this in mind, on a scale of zero to ten in your one-mile run, you don’t give yourself a ten unless you’re setting the world record. Makes sense, right?
The same holds true for your career. If a financial advisor making $25 million sets the bar as a ten, then how is it justifiable that an advisor making $300,000 would give themselves an 8 or 9 rating?
Now, this brings up a whole another topic that I think is a sensitive one, which is that not everybody needs or wants to be that $25 million per year advisor. For some advisors, they’ll say it’s not important to them. But I think that hurts us to think that way.
There’s a healthy balance between being happy with where you are in your life and what you aspire to be. If you feel that you never have enough, if you’re never happy, if you’re always looking for more and you never stop and smell the roses, life is pretty miserable.
It’s up to you to find the balance between feeling blessed and happy for what the good Lord gave you while simultaneously stay inspired and motivated to tap into your full potential. There’s an art to it.
But what becomes problematic is when reps immediately start thinking about all the things that they have to give up in order to reach their full potential.
They think if I were to make $25 million per year, I wouldn’t be able to have a great relationship with my wife or husband. I wouldn’t be able to have a great relationship with my kids. I wouldn’t be able to coach my son’s T ball or my daughter’s soccer.
I call that The Power of the AND versus the Tyranny of the OR. The “OR” is the bad one. In this mindset, you have to choose between the things you want in life. By choosing one, you miss out on the other.
On the other hand, there is The Power of the AND. Think about what your world would look like if you could figure out how to earn $25 million and be happily married, have an unbelievable relationship with your children, have unshakable faith, great friends, superb health, and lots of fun hobbies.
That’s a well-balanced life and it is possible! But you have to believe it in order to achieve it.
That’s a lot to think about, but the most important thing is that when you think about the bar you set for yourself, it should be a wakeup call.
Most people can only set the bar based on the environment they are in. The bar becomes whoever the best producer is at your office or that you’ve ever met. When you hear about this individual producer in Connecticut that makes $25 million, you say to yourself I never met that guy, I’ve never seen that guy, I don’t believe it.
The art and challenge of thinking big is really getting out of your normal territory and believing in what is truly possible. My wish for you this coming year is to set your sights higher than ever before and think BIG!
Over the past year, I’ve worked with about 100 financial advisors who are in my Sales Cycle Mastery program. Once a month, I meet with them in small, 10-person groups to hone their sales and practice management skills, with the goal of achieving transformational growth.
In the final class, we conduct a “Year in Review” to reflect on the advisors' results and conclude the program. I am so excited by the results.
Not only did many advisors report significant growth, but their feedback about what had the biggest impact on their business was invaluable. The answers I received were fairly universal from advisor to advisor, and the gift of their responses is what I’ll share with you below.
First, however, I want to start out with a small sample of results to give you a general idea of what they were able to accomplish and show what these actions can potentially do for you.
| 2016 Premium | 2017 Premium | Growth Percentage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisor 1 | $400,000 | $800,000 | 100% |
| Advisor 2 | $200,000 | $500,000 | 150% |
| Advisor 3 | $200,000 | $400,000 | 100% |
| Advisor 4 | $150,000 | $340,000 | 125% |
| Advisor 5 | $350,000 | $500,000 | 43% |
Having been in this business for nearly 30 years, I can tell you that these results are rare. It takes an unwavering commitment to hard work and continuous improvement.
It’s also worth mentioning that many advisors in this program did not experience any increase in production. Some even went backwards.
However, every one of them still felt that they had made tremendous progress and were confident that the numbers would reflect it going forward.
With this in mind, here are six steps that these advisors took to achieve transformational growth.
People don’t run businesses. Systems run businesses. People run systems. Put another way, you have to STOP winging it in your business.
For example, think about time management. Can you imagine a surgeon showing up to the hospital thinking, “Hmm... what should I work on today?” That would be absurd. Their day is planned down to the minute.
In order for you to maximize your performance, you’ll need a system for time management. You can see an example for time management here. But you’ll also need a system for prospecting, phoning, conducting your meetings and more.
Implementing systems to run their business, in a consistent manner in every segment of the sales cycle, was one of the biggest takeaways from advisors in my program. Once the system was in place, all they needed to do was get out of their own way and follow the system.
Most financial advisors are Type A personalities and are always running a thousand miles per hour. However, in order to experience true growth in your business, it’s imperative you take the time to work on your business, not always in it. I call this “Critical Think Time.”
Critical Think Time is all about setting aside time to think about your business and process an idea that you feel can give you substantial growth. This was covered more extensively in a recent post, and you can click here to learn more about Critical Think Time.
Have you ever been in a client meeting where you thought to yourself, “Let me feel this out and if everything goes right, maybe I’ll ask for a referral.” Then, when the time came to ask, all sorts of reasons popped into your head for why you shouldn’t ask for it, such as:
“The client would be doing me a favor”
“I don’t know enough yet.”
“I haven’t added value yet.”
These mental traps plague countless advisors, preventing them from reaching their full potential. You have to develop an empowered mindset to overcome it. With this mindset, your beliefs are that you operate from unwavering honesty and integrity, bring tremendous value simply in the questions you ask and provide a gift to people your clients care about by taking their referrals.
These beliefs cannot be faked – you have to believe them in every fiber of your being. When an advisor has these beliefs, you can see their back straighten, eye contact intensity increase, and their voice strengthen. It makes everything they do more effective and their job more fulfilling and enjoyable.
You can no longer do the things that got you to where you are today in order to reach your full potential in the future. Anytime you build a new system or begin a new process within your business, it will feel uncomfortable.
Think about how you felt the first day of school, when you started a new job or tried a new sport. You have to learn to embrace this uncomfortable, yet exciting feeling in order to achieve growth in your career.
Especially in today’s age, it’s important to find moments in your life to slow down. One example of this is the previously mentioned concept of “Critical Think Time.” Critical Think Time requires time away from working in your business, but the ideas that result from it can dramatically improve your efficiency, helping you grow faster.
Another example of slowing down to grow faster is in your fact finding, asking deeper questions in order to truly get to know your clients. Most advisors simply ask for basic financial numbers. They get a financial snapshot of their client, but they miss the story.
Truly understanding your clients takes additional time and energy. However, it can have a huge impact on the quality of relationships and help you create better referrals with greater ease. Click here for more on this example.
You can no longer do the things that got you to where you are today in order to reach your full potential in the future.
When first building their practice, most advisors bring on as many clients as possible. However, as the business starts to grow, the focus must shift from quantity to quality.
While everyone’s practice is different, consider the example that the number of clients an advisor should have should max out at around 400. However, the quality of those clients should continuously grow. The average caliber of the individuals that come into your system continues to increase, while the individuals that no longer meet your minimum criteria are substituted out.
Under this method, your practice continues to grow in terms of enjoyment, fulfillment and revenue, but it doesn’t necessarily increase your work load.
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The common thread that runs through these six steps is that they all involve running your business with a high level of intentionality. Taking time for critical thinking, developing systems for your business, developing your core beliefs; these are all things that are easily lost amid the daily shuffle.
But you should heed the wisdom of these financial reps who were able to make big leaps in a single year. These practices worked for them and, most importantly, are backed by proven results.
Most financial advisors are Type A personalities and are always running a thousand miles per hour. However, in order to experience true growth in your business, it’s imperative you take the time to work on your business, not always in it. I call this "critical think time."
Critical think time can make the time spent working in your business more efficient, productive and profitable. It creates a greater sense of intentionality to your actions, rather than just reacting to daily unimportant time wasters.
Throughout my career as a rep, manager, speaker and consultant, critical think time has always been the fuel for my business. As a rep, I’d sit down and think of ways that I could expedite referrals or think of great questions that I could ask during my fact finding meetings with clients. This allowed me to build deeper relationships with my clients in less time and build my practice at a high level. The entire framework for my consulting business today, P2P Group, is a result of my critical think time.
This past month I concluded one of my Sales Cycle Mastery programs. It’s a one-year program where I meet with a small group of top advisors once a month to teach my sales approach. As they reported their results, we received incredible feedback, some of which was on critical think time. One rep told me that it was, “Hands down, the biggest takeaway from the training and a complete game changer.” It’s allowed him to become a more effective leader and build better relationships with his staff.
There are also numerous examples of some of the world’s most successful business leaders who use concepts similar to critical think time, from Warren Buffet to Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Despite the enormous demands on these individuals, they still intentionally set aside time to think. There’s no excuse for why you can’t too.
At the end of the day, I simply recommend that you give critical think time a shot and commit to doing it for a period of time. It can completely transform your practice and your life and the cost of NOT doing it – missing out on transformational business-building ideas – far outweigh the minimal time investment.
The first step to employing successful critical think time in your business is to schedule it on your calendar. I schedule a couple hours a week for it, but one hour a month should be the minimum.
You should do it in a distraction free environment, such as a Starbucks or hotel lobby. If you do it in your office, make sure you’re in a closed off space and people know not to interrupt you. Disconnect from your phone and email.
I always get a smile on my face when I convince reps to try it. They do it and then they come back to me and say that they did it, but once they started the process they didn’t know what to think about! So the real question is, “What is critical think time?”
It is setting aside time to think about your business and process an idea that you feel can give you substantial growth.
Throughout my career as a rep, manager, speaker and consultant, critical think time has always been the fuel for my business.
Ideas like this often can’t be conjured on demand, so you should not go into this process simply with good intentions. Ever since my days as a rep, I always kept a pad of paper in my desk drawer. I would write ideas down as I thought of them. When my scheduled critical think time arrived, I had a list of ideas that I could choose from and I would pick one to work on.
There are countless ideas that you can think about, but here are a few questions you could use to get started:
1) What is it I need to do differently in my networking or prospecting processes to double my average income in the next 6 months?
2) If I was given $100,000 tomorrow, how would I invest it in my business? What return on investment could I expect from it?
3) Hypothetically, consider “billable hours” spent on revenue producing tasks. These billable hours consist of every hour spent with a client and one hour for every 30 prospecting calls. What is my billable hour percentage over the last 90 days?
Ex. An average of 10 meetings (10 hours) and 150 calls (5 hours) per week = 15 weekly billable hours. Based on a 50 hour work week, your billable hour percentage is 30% (15 / 50 = 0.3).
4) Once the billable hours have been calculated, what do I need to do to double my percentage of billable hours?
5) If I were to fire my staff tomorrow and was forced to hire a new person next week that costs double the salary, what would I look for in their traits and skills sets? Does my current staff person have those skill sets?
After you’ve concluded your session, you need to meet back with your staff and share with them:
• What it is that you are going to do
• Why it is that you are going to do it
• How it is going to benefit them
• How you need their help to make it happen
Last, but not least, you need to agree with them on how you are going to meet on these objectives on a regular basis and bring that sustainable change to life.
Critical think time can be an incredibly powerful tool. Implement it in your practice and watch how it can transform your true potential into real performance.
