Why in the world would a young man earn a degree from a premier business school, plus an MBA from another esteemed college, and then become a rookie career financial representative with Northwestern Mutual Life?
That’s one obvious question David Fain, the aforementioned agent, was not asked during his presentation on “The Art and Science of Client Building,” at the National Underwriter Sales Mastery Forum Sept. 26-28 in Las Vegas. So I posed the question to David afterwards. His answer revealed trigger points for choosing an insurance career despite all the education that can prepare a person for a bigger splash in the business world.
“When I was a senior in college, my mom was diagnosed with a rare neuromuscular disease similar to ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease,” David said. “My dad had purchased a long-term care insurance policy on her. That policy sustained my family during the seven years that she was sick, before she died. The policy paid more than $142,000 in benefits.
“Seeing the impact this policy had, it was like a light bulb went on. I saw an opportunity to be in business for myself, doing something that directly benefits people, and that doesn’t require any capital — just personality, grit, and determination.” If you want to add “intelligence” to David’s criteria, he had that, too, with his degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s famed Wharton School, and the MBA from Babson College. David, now age 37, had always dreamed of going into business for himself — but not in insurance, even though his father, Robert, has been in the business in Providence, R.I., for 45 years.
Once David decided to become a financial professional, he asked his father: if you were entering the business today, where would you start? “Without hesitation, he said Northwestern Mutual,” David said. “He recommended Northwestern for two reasons. First, their training is exceptional. And second, as he said, ‘They have figured out what you need to do to be successful.’”
A lifelong Rhode Islander, David moved to Chicago after business school because his wife Lisa was in law school at Northwestern University. That meant David had to start his career in an unfamiliar market. He has qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table each of the five years he has been in business, concentrating strictly on three risk-based products: life insurance, disability income, and long-term care insurance. His ultimate goal is to become a true million-dollar (as in first-year premium) producer.
He may well get there if he can emulate the success of his favorite role model, another career agent who did pretty well: the late, great Ben Feldman. David’s affinity for the Feldman approach springs from another piece of fatherly advice. “My dad was at the MDRT meeting in Boston in 1966, when Ben spoke,” David recalled. “I studied his talk and asked my dad, has anything changed since then? And he said, ‘Not a single word.’
“The ideas of protecting against living too long, dying too soon, and becoming disabled, have been consistent through time,” David continued. “As technology has advanced, and people have become more educated, and the media have inundated us with information, the perception is that maybe things aren’t so simple anymore. But in reality they are simple. That’s the beauty of Ben Feldman’s language, which he refined for so many years. You listen to it 40 years later, and you learn how to focus on simplicity. I work hard every day to use plain English in describing what insurance ‘can’ versus ‘will’ do for families. I want to make things simple and easy to grasp, so I slow down and concentrate on only one or two things in a conversation with a prospect. That goes from the first phone call straight through to writing an application.”
David makes a minimum of three prospect appointments each day, fed by the 50 phone calls he makes every morning to referred prospects and current clients, most of whom are physicians and attorneys — his target market. One secret to his productivity, he told his Sales Mastery Forum audience, is to cluster appointments and minimize driving between them. He typically drives to one location and walks to several prospects’ offices from there. That’s not difficult to do in a major metro area like Chicago, although he believes producers in most areas of the country can find similar concentrations of target-market prospects in office complexes or industrial parks. “If I prospect correctly and wisely,” he said, “I can cut out the stress and aggravation and wasted time of sitting in traffic.”
I had one more question for David, also unasked by the Forum audience. Are Northwestern Mutual agents, as “captives” in a career-agency system, really captive? “Yes, we are,” he answered. “I sell primarily for one company and I make that very clear to my prospects. One of the reasons I joined Northwestern Mutual is because I could represent them, but the competition couldn’t. I really have the competitive advantage. It is important to me that I can always make recommendations that are genuinely in the client’s best interest.
“At the end of the day, I have to ask myself, have I helped the people I’ve met today to protect themselves? Are they better off because they met me? That’s the important thing.”