Ginelle Patricia Sequitin, a three-year MDRT member from Quezon City, Philippines, shares how to close bigger cases to achieve MDRT qualification faster. 

Likeability: People will only get a plan from you if they like you  

Clients will only entrust their future and money if they like and believe you. Educate yourself as much as you can about the work to inspire clients’ confidence in your abilities. Have you consistently been able to produce results for your clientele? Are you an effective advisor? How are you doing physically, mentally, and emotionally? How you see yourself influences how others perceive you. Don’t just look the part. Be the part. 

A growth mindset is critical. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Always learn from your mistakes to continuously improve.  

Strike the right balance between mastery of the craft, humility, and self-confidence. Remember, it’s their policy. Not yours. 

Connectivity: Be giving, not getting  

How well do you connect with your clients? Are you the giver or recipient in the relationship? The best relationships are the mutually beneficial ones. We’re not just here to sell. It should be our advocacy to give value to clients. We help our clients live their best lives by being our best selves.  

If you work in other industries before becoming an advisor, you have other skills that you can offer. My work relationships aren’t just one-offs. There’s a prospect who hasn’t availed of a policy yet from me, but I’m helping him find a real estate broker from my network of clients since he’s looking for property. The more clients you have, the more extensive your network is. I consider myself a connector. I don’t just share what I know but also whom I know.  

Reliability: Be an expert on what you’re selling. 

Being likable is not enough. Have mastery over insurance and investment. As Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, shared, “skill is the new currency.” We can’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution to our clients’ unique needs. The first step is to have superior knowledge of our company’s financial products to create relevant and meaningful policies for our prospects.  

To help gauge if I can offer my clients a more comprehensive policy besides what they initially asked for, I ask them a series of questions about their objectives and goals. What made them meet up with me? What kind of support do they need? I need to understand their motivations and wherewithal to help them achieve their dreams.  

Their responses give me better insights into their strengths and weaknesses, guiding me in my recommendations. I maximize my client's budget to provide them with the maximum coverage they can afford. I firmly believe Filipinos deserve more than just a one million peso coverage as inflation is at an all-time high, and it will only go up. I’d like to extend their scope beyond life insurance. Usually, my clients are often looking for variable universal life (VUL) insurance and investments. I create plans that give my clients the best of both worlds. I'm like a financial doctor who checks my patient's financial health and prescribes the proper treatment.  

A final tip, outsource some of your work to help you focus on the more critical aspects of client servicing. For example, social media management is crucial for branding and customer touchpoints. I applied something I learned from the American entrepreneur and bestselling author Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four-Hour Workweek, to help me respond to chat messages, plan my content calendar, and create content. I’ve employed virtual assistants, and I have an executive assistant as well. Be humble to ask for help and to pay for services. One person can’t do it all. 

Contact: MDRTeditorial@teamlewis.com