The first person who interviewed Laurence Plummer for a job in the insurance industry told him he wasn’t cut out for the business. The second person who interviewed him had to go to bat for him to get the job.
A career in financial services wasn’t part of Plummer’s plan, anyway. As an all-state high school basketball player, his dream was to make it to the NBA, but injuries prevented that from becoming a reality.
Twenty-eight years later, Laurence V. Plummer, LUTCF, president of Plummer Financial Services, an independent firm of John Hancock Financial Network, has certainly proved his critics wrong. He was JHFN’s top sales producer in 2008 with his booming practice based out of Memphis, Tenn. And while he didn’t make it to the pros, his expansive client list does include NBA players.
“It definitely turned out OK for me — this was actually the right thing for me,” the 50-year-old Plummer says. “I am just as excited now about this career as I was 28 years ago. Turns out, I was born to do this.”
Where he was born and raised — Fairfield, Conn. — helped to form the basis of Plummer’s success in the financial services industry: Relationships. Growing up in an all-white Jewish-Italian neighborhood, Plummer found that he related to all walks of life.
“My best friends were Jewish and Italian. I was raised in a home where my parents didn’t have a prejudiced bone in their bodies,” Plummer says. “It has helped me in this business because I relate to everyone. I am comfortable with everybody and that makes me perfect for this business because I just
love people.”
Making connections
In 1981, Plummer joined John Hancock Financial Network after he was turned down by Mutual of Omaha. His first day on the job, he sold eight cases, connecting with people he knew from his church and asking for referrals.
“At the beginning, I was a referral guru. I asked for referrals all the time, telling people, ‘Do me a favor: I’d like to meet three people just like yourself, who you believe would be interested in doing business with me. Who are the first three people who come to your mind?’”
From those referrals, Plummer began to build relationships with his clients and with colleagues in the industry.
“Charlie Ferrara from John Hancock in New York really inspired me to build relationships with clients. The No. 1 thing he instilled in me way back in the ’80s was, if you really want to be successful in the business, you need to develop strong, genuine relationships,” he says. “That does not mean, always say the right thing and learn the language to make people feel good, but to make sure you do what you say you’re going to do, treat your clients like family, treat your clients’ money like it’s your money.”
While Ferrara help to demonstrate the importance of relationships, Plummer believes that when he met Ray Calvert in 1984, his career completely changed for the better. At a luncheon for life underwriters in Bridgeport, Conn., Plummer listened to Calvert, then a field vice president for John Hancock, give a compelling speech and he sought him out afterwards for advice. The speaker gave him two cassette tapes: “The Strangest Secret,” by Earl Nightingale and “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill.
“He said to me, ‘Plummer, I don’t want you to pay for these — I want you to turn your car into a learning center. Every day on the way to work, listen to these tapes, over and over, and if you do what these tapes tell you to do, you will be an immediate success,’” Plummer says. “I started listening to those tapes that day and tripled my production in less than a year. To this day, I can repeat those tapes verbatim. They changed my life.”
When he began to receive rewards for his production from John Hancock, and people inquired about his methods, Plummer told them about Ray Calvert and the tapes.
“I recommend them to anyone in this business, because they taught me to set goals and objectives. Every day I have a goal. Every year I have a goal, and since that year, I have never missed my annual goal. Every year, I raise my sights.”
By raising those sights every year, Plummer has reached the top of his profession, earning the “Financial Representative of the Year” award for his top performance across all financial representatives within the independent John Hancock Financial Network firms in 2008. Plummer was a close second in 2007, but took 2008 honors by a wide margin. It is the second time he has won the award, and he is the only African-American award recipient in the company’s 140-year history.
For 10 years he was also the marketing rep of the year on the managerial side before John Hancock combined its general agency and managerial agency.
While achieving the top spot is special to him (he knows the exact amount separating him and the advisor who won in 2007, on the last day: $3,727), Plummer doesn’t work just for the trophies.
“I set my goals high and go for it,” he says. “I don’t want being No. 1 to be my only drive — that’s gravy stuff. The neat stuff is taking care of your clients.”
Building a business
Plummer had to rely on his ability to connect with people and shape relationships when he moved to Memphis in 1989 to start a partnership with another financial advisor, which lasted three years before he went back to solo work and formed Plummer Financial Services in 1993.
“When I moved to Memphis, I knew one person — my partner. I had to start from scratch and reconnect with people.”
In his first two years in Memphis, Plummer’s income took a hit, dropping 70% the first year, and then back to 30% of where he was, by the second year.
However, by the third and fourth years, he regained his foothold and surpassed his previous incomes. Today, Plummer has 2,500-3,000 clients in Memphis alone, and 5,000 clients worldwide. He counts professional athletes (NBA, NFL), church officials, attorneys, accountants, doctors, small business owners and families among his clients, and this “relationship guru” no longer needs to be a “referral guru.”
“Now I’m probably the worst prospector you’ll ever meet. I don’t send out letters, I don’t knock on doors, I don’t cold call, I don’t go outside this office — everyone comes to me,” Plummer says. “Every day, the phone rings with clients who are satisfied and will send other prospects to me and 99.9% of my business comes strictly from word-of-mouth.”
Plummer credits this to the great customer service that his company provides to each and every client, and “we don’t play around with it at all. That means we return every phone call immediately. We don’t say we’re going to do something and not follow up. We never get complaints that someone’s request was not met. I look at this as more of a customer service business than a sales business.”
When clients walk through the doors of Plummer Financial Services, they receive a complete financial analysis covering a wide array of products from mutual funds to estate planning to annuities to life and disability insurance. However, in that first meeting, Plummer is only focused on data-gathering from the client; he will not give any advice as far as purchasing any products or services.
“I tell my clients, ‘I want to know where you hurt, what are your goals? Why are you here? What is it that you want from me that will help you meet your objectives?’” Plummer explains. “Most of the time, people will tell you exactly where they hurt and what they want. I always say, ‘People hate to be sold, but they love to buy.’ So I’m not going to sell them anything in the first meeting. I need to understand their goals and objectives first.”
With a complete financial analysis, Plummer is looking to make sure his clients’ portfolios are situated to their needs now and in the future. He does not focus on one particular product and is pretty balanced across the board, although one day he would like to have someone in his office to deal strictly with long-term care insurance, which isn’t currently one of his main products.
Riding out the storm
While many people have been hit hard by the current state of the economy, and financial advisors are facing upset clients with plummeting portfolios, Plummer’s close contact with his clients has aided him through this time.
“The worst thing a financial advisor can do right now is run from their clients and not communicate,” he says. “I’m staying in touch. I’ve gone through compliance and sent letters out to our clients, basically letting them know that I am aware of where the market is and the trouble we’re going through, and if they want to talk to me, I am here.”
And when clients set up appointments to see Plummer, he has found that those meetings have actually generated a lot of sales.
“After you educate them and show them how bad the market is, this is actually a wonderful time to buy or make necessary adjustments to their portfolios. Once you remind your clients of why they purchased what they purchased and that they are still in it for the long haul, they’re OK,” Plummer says. “My concern is making sure that we’re still on track for where they’re trying to go. I can’t control what’s going on, but I can control what I recommend. I’m not going to promise anything except that I will continue to do the right thing for them.”
His second job
A large client base for Plummer has been pastors and church officials. He has been endorsed by The Church of God and Christ, which has six million members worldwide, to provide financial services to its members. Since 2002, he has helped about 400 pastors and bishops put together their financial portfolios, which can require special consideration for what products are best for them.
“Most of the pastors or bishops are full-time in the ministry and many of their wives are homemakers, so they are often in need of survivor benefits in case something happens to their husbands,” Plummer says. “In the church world, your income shuts down for the most part, so we do a lot of key man insurance and protect the church in the event that a pastor or bishop dies. Then there are funds to take care of any debt left as well as give a check to the beneficiary, so she is taken care of. Many pastors and bishops die prematurely, so we need to have key man insurance set up.”
The church and clergy are important parts of Plummer’s life. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all bishops, and he became close friends with Bishop G. E. Patterson, of The Church of God and Christ, when he moved to Memphis. The relationship with Patterson — “he was my pastor, my friend, my mentor” — led him from being a church administrator, to the national provider of financial services, to his role currently as senior pastor of the Love Fellowship Ministry, home to 400 members.
“That’s the second job I have. It’s not paid, it’s just my way of giving back. It’s not something I planned on, to be honest, but I felt I could be a help in a spiritual perspective to people.”
With two jobs vying for his time and attention, Plummer still manages to balance his work and personal life, an ability that he attributes to his relationship with Dan Sullivan and his Strategic Coach seminars.
I was a slave to my job from 1981 until I met Dan Sullivan in the ’90s,” he says.
In 1996, Plummer was referred to Sullivan and began flying to Toronto every three months to attend the seminars. Those seminars taught him to have “Buffer Days,” “Focus Days,” and “Free Days,” and he has followed that plan ever since. Plummer works Monday-Thursday, is done with work by 4:30 p.m. on those days, and hopes to be down to three days of work a week by next year.
“You don’t have to kill yourself, working seven days a week, then die and not enjoy your money or your family. Work smart, not hard. Ray Calvert made the baby in me jump. Dan Sullivan took me to a whole other level.”
Working four days a week, Plummer knows he can leave and the office will be taken care of by his staff, who run a “well-oiled machine.” Along with an administrative staff, Sheila May is his personal assistant for all life insurance issues, Juandalynn Rhodes is the compliance officer, handling the investment side, and Plummer’s daughter, Letitia Plummer-Ray is his vice president, learning the business to one day succeed him.
Plummer is working to bring in a couple brokers to “take the business to another level. I want to have a succession plan in place so when I walk out the door, Plummer Financial will still be around forever. I’ve been in the business for 28 years and I hope I have some good time left, but one thing I won’t do is kill myself and work until I retire and die — I’m going to enjoy this life.”
Enjoying that life means spending as much time as possible with his family. Married to wife Nadine for 25 years, they have four children: Letitia, Lauretta, L.V., and Laurenz, and he makes sure to never miss any of his children’s functions.
“A lot of my free time is family time. If it’s not family time, it’s church time. If it’s not church time, it’s Plummer Financial time.”
Amongst all that, Plummer does find time to fit in basketball, which he still plays, along with golf, which he recently picked up and is now “hooked.”
Moving forward
As he looks back on his time in the business, Plummer does not take his success for granted.
“It’s all about the relationships. The clients are what make you who you are, and if they’re happy the rest is easy. Even in a bad market, for them to stay with you, that says a lot,” he says.
While Plummer will stop working in time to enjoy retirement and the fruits of his labors, he is still looking to the future, with goals to expand his firm and bring in three or four producers to help him, “capitalize on the markets that I’m in and give even better service than we give now.
“I don’t get complacent in this business because even having a great year, that’s over, that’s history, and now I have to do it all over again.”
Laura Graesser is Associate Editor of Life Insurance Selling