Friday, February 10, 2012

Kevin

Yesterday I met with my dad’s financial advisor. First thing I noticed as I was sitting in his waiting area across from his receptionist was how small the room was. His office consists of 3 spaces: Reception area, hallway/closet area, and his office. When Kevin walked in I didn’t think he was the financial advisor. He was wearing kaki shorts, a green shirt with a kaki vest over it and some sneakers. It looked like he was about to trek up a mountain.

He had kind, blue eyes. Not warm, but attentive. Graying light brown hair, and a relaxed disposition that reminded me of my step-brother who is a little too lax with not enough energy. In my notes I wrote: Relaxed, talks slow, Virgo? He sat me down on at a round table beside his desk like the one Ayu has in her office. Looking at the scattered papers on it, I immediately noticed an ING account and an account for some company called Phoenix. Looking around some more I also I.D.’d some Allianz materials. So he was associated with at least 2 of the same companies I was appointed with.

He sat down and started talking: “Usually when I sit down with a client for the first time there’s several things I like to go over...” He wasn’t talking to me as if I was a client, but as if I was a new employee he was explaining the rounds to. How whipped out a folder and started going over the contents. “First I show them my resume.” He showed his experience going to college getting degrees in financial advising, working for an insurance company called Farmers, and then his experience as an independent broker working for a broker dealer called Investicorp. He asked me what company I was working for and I showed him the handout sheet they give to us at WFG.

It shows WFG is owned by Aegon –a billion dollar company out of the UK that owns many many many financial companies including ING, WRL, Prudential, Pacific Life, Nation Wide and so on. He pointed to the ones he was appointed with and verified that they were good products. He says he initially wanted to be a stock broker, but after he found out about stocks realized that it involved too much work tracking stocks each day. He now focuses mainly on real estate management, life insurance –aka college funds, retirement plans, “mortgage protection”, emergency funds, and every other thing life insurance can be used for. “I usually sell Variable life and annuities. Most companies these days are pushing for IULs to be sold, although I guess it’s good considering the stock market isn’t doing well right now. But there is a cap on growth potential for it, although there is no risk of loss either which is good”.

I was happy that a guy who had 25 years experience being a financial advisor was sharing so much information that our company has already taught was good. Then he asked me, “So is your company one of those pyramid ones?” I was kind of annoyed by that, because pyramid schemes are illegal and for the zillionth time ours is Network Marketing –not even Multi-Level Marketing- but I just said yes to save time. He didn’t say much about that business structure, but he did mention A.L. Williams. He said A.L. Williams founded a company like that back in the 80s. Back then they said to buy term and invest the difference. He said after A.L. Williams established the pyramid structure people started recruiting like crazy and soon there were too many insurance agents. Then the states started enforcing law codes and 52 hour testing requirements for the agents to receive licenses to “weed out” people who weren’t serious about the business. I told him our company requires us to get licensed within the first month. He said that was good and asked if I had gotten my Series 60 license yet. I told him in our company we hold off on getting that until we’ve mastered selling life insurance and annuities. He said that was all anyone really needed to focus on these days anyways because no one could afford selling stocks. J

Then Kevin started telling me about his early experience in the broker-business. He said he started fresh out of college. He joined Farmer’s and the required him to make a 100 Project. Basically write down the names of 100 people that you know. For us it starts out as 10 and then goes on to 25 and expands from there as you get more referrals. He said the first people he talked to were friends his age and his family. He said it was good for friends to start off retirement early and on the right track. But he said he ran into trouble with the older crowd because he didn’t have enough “gray hairs” in their eyes to be trusted with their finances. “It wasn’t until I was 35 that I really started to become successful in the business. I had to gain some gray hairs first.”

“If you’re not making at least 10 appointments a week, you aren’t going to make it in this business. When I worked at Farmer’s we were required to have at least 15 a week, otherwise we’d have to come in and work on the weekend.” He said it was easier selling insurance at Farmer’s because once you sold home insurance and car insurance to a client, it was easier to lead them into retirement planning through life insurance. He said that when he became an independent broker, he used several methods to gain warm leads. The first was sending out mail inviting new home owners and business owners to contact him if they were interested in asset insurance (life insurance). He said sending out 25 of those a week usually brought back 1 or 2 clients. He said 15 phone calls will lead to 10 appointments will lead to 6 actual appointments will lead to 2 actual sales. He said it was a Number System –which is exactly what WFG says.

He also said that he got really good at helping out specific businesses like doctors, nurses, and roof repair men. After a while he could call himself an “expert” at helping out people in those fields. “Pick a Target Market. Find a company you can gain interest in and find out about. Then research what the best kinds of financial plans are for those sorts of businesses. Then approach that kind of business and say you’ve had experience working with that sort of business before.” It was clever. He said he used to get a lot of his business with managers from Enterprise Ren-A-Car. He also mentioned cross directories/ inverse directories where he could get lists of people who had recently purchased new homes. New home owners would be interested in “mortgage protection”.

A lot of what he said was copy/paste what my company had already taught me. It was incredible. He then showed me other materials he used to help out with financial planning. Financial Life Strategy chart –which I already have from WFG. Charts to take down name/ number/ and description of recommended referrals –which I already have from WFG. Workbooks and retirement guides from Allianz –which I don’t have but could get since I’m appointed with them. Nation-Wide Retire Sense sheet –which I don’t have but could get. I should get appointed with them, they are an affiliated company. Other wise it was the same lines and suggestions that had already been covered by WFG.

The last thing he told me was that I should shadow Ayu until I was a little more comfortable going it alone. He said he had shadowed his manager for 2-3 years before he went out alone. He said he wanted me to make a list of contacts, keep calling them for the next 3 months, and tell him how things went for me. He wants to check in again at the end of the quarter. It was great to hear a confirmation that I am on the right track and the company I’m with is solid. Looking at where Kevin is at, I still see that he can’t retire and leave his business to run on its own because it is just him. In WFG we can build a team that can function without us being there eventually. There’s more business to be had there and there’s more life there. It’s not a boring, stuffy office –there’s a lot of people and friends together. There’s a lot more help and assistance as well.

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