I have always felt that irregardless of the field that you are in, as long as you work with passion, it will show in the results and soon you will be noticed and you will be successful in the field. I have a personal friend who was very successful as a financial consultant and he has used his earnings to jumpstart his own cafe which you guessed it, another great success. The ingredients just do not change much. Another personal friend, my own financial consultant is already driving a car which I normally just think about. Haha. Let’s see what are some of the ingredients for a successful career as a financial consultant? The below sharing is by Crystal.
1) Knowledge & Learning
As a professional financial consultant, knowledge and learning is very important. If there are any new products launch training one should attend. Financial consultant must be clear about the products, and when there are doubts, ask the trainer. For some of the life insurance companies, they implement a concept “Take the Exam, Pass the exam, Before you do submission”. For those who failed, they have to retake until they pass. This is to prevent the potential of wrong information to clients. Learn from successful people by learning their good attitude, thinking, behavior and motivation. Reading books and attend seminar will help on this. If you want to be a successful person, you need to learn about them. It may take you just a few hours if you read about their experience through books.
2) Ethics
if you really want to do this on a long term, be prepared to be very ethical. A financial consultant ensure that the plans proposed should be what the clients want and fulfill their requirements. A financial consultant should not mislead client, hide any information and purposely give wrong information to clients. Many consultant are afraid if they tell the truth and be direct, the clients might not sign up the plan, so they choose to hide this and that. However, who can foresee the future? What if something bad really did happen? I read this from the book ‘The Secret’ and ‘Law of Attraction’. The kind of behaviour you exhibits would be the kind of people whom you will meet. I always tell myself, I must have a good attitude with positive thinking to attract everything good into my life.
3) Servicing
First, a question. Your day is full of sales appointments but you received a call from a client who told you she needs help to fetch her to the hospital to consult the doctor as she really does not know much about the process. Do you fetch her or tell her to go by herself and try to explain everything through the phone or ask her to follow your time instead? I cannot answer for everyone but for me, I will service my client first. I will call to my other appointments to reschedule them. I think this is important because in future, my future clients would also think they want someone to take care of them instead of only about sales, sales and sales. Always remember, you may be able to fake a smile here and there but if you do do not have the heart to continue doing it, soon you will be exposed. Do things from the bottom of your heart. About the client who asked me to fetch her, it ended up that it took my full day but she was very grateful and her thank you was warm and sincere. I will always remember that this is the reason why I join. Just do it well, do it with heart, somehow the money will come later.
4) Management
Management include self-management and work management.
Self-management
i) Time management – Not only to be punctual to appointments, should reach earlier before the client.
ii) Attitude & Habit – Must always have positive thinking, attitudes and habits. Any unlucky incidents happen, treat this as a new lesson learnt.
iii) Self-Motivation & Good Mood – Must always self-motivate in order to have goodperformance. Good mood is very important when meet clients. If you feel sad, please do not meet your clients, because this is unfair to the client; passing of sad energy to them.
Work management
i) Update Progress & Follow Up – When submit client documents to the life insurance company, must update the client on the progress and once the process done, inform them. If there contain any delay in the progress, should find out with the related department on what cause the delay and solve it.
ii) Promises – Whatever promise to clients, must remember and fulfill it. During the conversation with clients, sometime client will ask questions which promise feedback to them later, in order to prevent accidentally forget, the best way is immediately write down to phone note pad or book.
iii) Filing Document – Filing client document to a client personal file to keep track all the copy of the documents that submitted to the life insurance company. This could be used for future reference when need the relevant information.
There, you have just 4 key tips of becoming a successful financial consultant. The truth is, it’s applicable no matter which profession you may be in. Can you imagine that as a Graphics Designer, you always never adhere to deadlines set or always try to give excuses for your delay? Do read the tips, understand and apply them. This is not a theory, it is a tried and tested method by someone who has made it in her own career. All the best.
written by Crystal and edited by Charles. Mail her if you need help and you are based in Penang. (tcc_crystal@yahoo.co.uk)
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