Code of Conduct

Carry your own personal code of conduct in your heart — it is easier to access that way.

By Scott Brennan

Irecently read a restaurant review of French Laundry on its 25th anniversary. The company’s meticulous founder, Thomas Keller, operates a three-acre culinary garden across the street from his famous eatery in Napa Valley.

Visitors can sample strawberries right off the vine.

The review noted that when vines struggle, the roots dig deeper for resources and this strain produces a more interesting flavor, with a deeper complexity. The same is true for humans in general and for salespeople in particular because adversity is usually good for the soul.

But what is adversity? It means different things to different people. For one person, it might be as minor as missing a sale you spent hours pursuing. For another, it might be the heartbreaking death of a loved one. People grow when they struggle; so does their faith.

Doing the right thing

There is an element of courage in every call and in every sale that we make. For example, many years ago, I had the good fortune of taking an application for life insurance on the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. It was managed by the same company that oversaw a lot of professional tennis players and PGA tour players. Their posters were all over the walls both times I visited their offices. It was rather heady stuff for a young man attempting to write an important piece of business at that time in my career.

A few days before I was ready to deliver the policy the sports agent representing my client told me, in a rather matter of fact way over the telephone: “We are going to need 25 percent of this case if you want the business.”

There is no right way to do a wrong thing.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I reminded this man that the state I live in, Indiana, and the state he worked in, Ohio, and the state where the application was dated and where the client lived in, Michigan, had anti-rebating statutes. He calmly responded: “We do not want a rebate; we just want a piece of the action.”

When I asked if he had a license to sell life insurance, he said he did not need one.

It took only a moment for me to respond that I would not be giving them anything, that I had earned the right to get the business, and that his request to be paid off was dirty. I did not get this case.

Did I want the business? Yes, of course. However, there was something bigger than a piece of business hanging in the balance. Always trust your gut. When you know something is not right and your instincts confirm it, then there is no right way to do a wrong thing.

Another case in point

Fast forward 25 years. A tough man who already owned a million dollars of life insurance with me needed more. However, he emphatically stated that the only way he would buy more coverage from me was if his lawyer in Manhattan approved of the idea. This seemed easy enough. His need for more life insurance was present and my client was doing very well for himself.

The next day, over the phone and after exchanging pleasantries with the lawyer, he asked a question I had not expected: “How do you feel about revenue sharing?”

“Revenue sharing?” I asked, hoping it was not what I was afraid it was going to be. “Yes,” he replied, “I am going to need a piece of your commission.”

I told him I would keep my commission and he could keep his hourly fee because at the end of the day, both of us would certainly earn them. Once again, although I did not write the business, I was better off in the long run.

Once you have a minimum standard of behavior set for yourself, the pressure is off. When you are asked to do anything that you should not do, the response is easy: “No, that is not going to happen.”

A friend of mine was being considered for a top job at one of the biggest life insurance companies in the country. Toward the end of the interview, they brought in a psychologist to visit with him.

At the end of their session, my friend asked the psychologist why she has spent so much time asking questions that dealt with his integrity. She calmly informed him that if he got the job and then decided to leave, it would not be because he did not like the job, it would be because someone asked him to do something that was unethical.

Someday, someone will ask you (perhaps more than once) to do something that is unethical. Do you want to simplify your life? Carry your own personal code of conduct in your heart. It is always easier to access that way.

How to Prevent Services from Killing Sales

With a revamped sales process and a sales coach, you will have more success with your cold prospects.

By John Pojeta

If we don’t approach our sales process as a strategy for long-term growth, we’ll eventually stop growing. We see this every day among advisors: their businesses eventually reach the point where they spend so much time working on services that it’s hard for them to pull away and focus on sales.

In the early days of advising — and this is how I started as well — we have to hustle and scrape to build our book of business. If we start within an established firm or institution, we may be tasked with cold calling or with attending several networking events a week. Today, we are also sending emails and making LinkedIn connections.

For a new advisor, the ratio of sales to service skews heavily in favor of sales. As we close more business, we start to provide more service. That’s out of necessity, of course, because acquiring clients naturally means following through on delivering the promises we make.

Eventually, though, that ratio shifts to the point at which a veteran advisor is doing almost no sales whatsoever. The book of business is so big that the advisor can spend every business day working with the clients he or she already has. When sales meetings do come up, they are probably referrals, which are mostly “lay-ups” as far as sales are concerned.

The problem a service-focused advisor faces is the difficulty of again talking to cold prospects, which adds an additional dimension of frustration to any marketing initiative. Yes, you have new prospects in the door, but is it worth it if you can’t close them?

If you invest in finding new prospects, you should also invest in improving the sales process that you use to close those prospects.

If you take our advice and implement a growth plan that brings you a regular stream of new opportunities over a long-term timeline, you will have to address your sales process. Here’s why:

• Your sales skills, in general, may have dulled over the years. If you’re not actively meeting with cold prospects on a regular basis, you may lose some of the skills you acquired in your early days.

• New markets or new audiences may require a shift in the story you tell. If you’re meeting with different people than you’re used to, you’ll have to alter the script you’re used to using.

• Cold prospects do not have the built-in warmth and trust of a referral. For someone who hasn’t met with a cold prospect in a few years, this can be easy to forget.

• High-value prospects already have an advisor; so, your sales process needs to unseat the incumbent. What can you or your firm offer that no one else can?

Whether you end up working with an appointment-setting firm like the PT Services Group or not, you should consider investing in a sales coach if you want to grow. For our part, a sales coach is part of an appointmentsetting program. But the more important takeaway is that if you invest in finding new prospects, you should also invest in improving the sales process you use to close those prospects. Otherwise, you are going to be frustrated with the results, no matter how good your marketing plan.

With a revamped sales process and a sales coach by your side, you will see greater success with the cold prospects your marketing strategy brings in. With increased sales, your services will no longer kill your growth.

John Pojeta is vice president of business development at The PT Services Group. He researches new types of business and manages and initiates strategic, corporate-level relationships to expand exposure for The PT Services Group. Pojeta joined The PT Services Group in 2011. Before that, he owned and operated an Ameriprise Financial Services franchise for 16 years.