Leading by Example

Start by volunteering, which helps you develop trust with your clients and prospects.

By Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, RFC

s part of the NAIFA community, we have a responsibility that goes beyond simple membership. We need to lead by example and it can start with something as simple as volunteering. You can support your association by volunteering at your local or state NAIFA. You can also support your local community by volunteering your time, energy and money to organizations that matter to you and the people you serve in your business.

Not only are you doing good where you live and work, you are also supporting your business in an unseen way. When you help those in your community through your volunteerism, you develop a level of trust with your clients and prospects as they begin to see you as the type of person they’d want to rely on for leadership—and the type of person they can look to for guidance on the products and services they need for their financial security.

Ask the right questions

In addition to better serving your community, there are ways you can better serve your clients and prospects. It’s time to start asking them the right types of questions—disturbing questions that they cannot answer with a yes or no.

Insurance companies do a good job of training us on how products work. What they don’t do as well is train us to find and solve problems with clients. And that is the key. Until your clients understand they have a problem— and that you have a product or service to solve it—they are unlikely to take action.

We don’t talk often enough about the power of the living benefits that life insurance offers.

Telling them about a product first isn’t going to work, because they aren’t looking for a solution; they don’t even know they have a problem. You must use probing questions to first establish that there is a problem--one that you can solve with a product or service that you provide.

So, what does asking the right types of questions mean? Over the 50-plus years I’ve been in business, I’ve refined a list of open-ended questions that get clients and prospects to open up so that I can ask them even more questions, such as:

• Do you have enough confidence in your advisors to let me give you a second opinion?

• What are your key concerns?

• What does financial security mean to you?

• What’s important about money to you?

• What is your overall financial and investment strategy or game plan?

• What are your goals?

• Most people do not seem to understand life insurance very well. Tell me, what do you know about life insurance?

• What financial formula did you use to determine how much life insurance to buy?

• How do you feel about life insurance on your spouse?

• How do you feel about life insurance on your children?

And this is just the start. I’m happy to share the special report that I authored with dozens more questions.

These questions work once you have the client or prospect in your office. But how do you get them there in the first place? I like to use Life Happens videos that get to the heart of what we do. We just developed a new video that has brought agents and advisors to tears (and consumers, too). It’s called Life Is for Living, and you can view it at www.lifehappens.org/lifeisforliving. View it and then share it with clients and prospects.

And if you are like me and work with businesses, I’d recommend the brand-new Real Life Story video that highlights how the cash value of a permanent life insurance policy saved Michael Jaap’s company during the economic downturn. It kept both of his “families”—the one at home and the one at work—financially secure. You can view it and share it at www.lifehappens.org/jaap.

I think we don’t talk often enough about the power of the living benefits that life insurance offers. Life Happens has a host of these stories that you can share, and I encourage you to do so.

Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, RFC, is president of the Feldman Financial Group and president and CEO of Life Happens. He is a member of NAIFA and MDRT, and the recipient of the 2011 John Newton Russell Memorial Award. Contact him at mfeldman@lifehappens.org.