Build Stronger Relationships: Lessons from the MDRT Podcast 2022
We love checking in with the MDRT Podcast to see what great tips and strategies we can learn from top producers.

It’s been a whole year since we last brought you a roundup from the podcast. (Where does the time go?) As we wrap up the year, let’s take these new tidbits as lessons learned and inspiration for 2023. You can listen to the MDRT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart Radio. All the quotes below came from these episodes:

Here are some words of wisdom we think you’ll find helpful.

Referrals & Relationships with Centers of Influence (COI)

  • Renee Hanson, CFP, CDFA: “In evaluating relationships, I liken it to dating. And early on, you should set expectations, so that you know if you’re going to go on a second date or a third date. There’s nothing wrong with being authentic to your style and your personality and your business. By setting expectations and asking your COI, ‘What type of client do you work best with?’ allows you to say, ‘These are the types of clients I work best with.’ …you’ll probably look for not only a professional expertise, but you’ll also look for a personality match…you’re expecting a relationship that will start partly on personality. So don’t be afraid to be authentic and be who you are. Tell them the things you do well, the type of people you work well with, and understand what they do so you can have a mutual relationship and have that second, third, fourth date.”

  • Alessandro M. Forte, DipPFS, CSP: “…the exponential growth of our business has come from client grading. So we take a general view that our A clients are the clients where there is future opportunity. Put simply, they’ve got more money to invest, but the relationship with them is really strong. They love us, we love them, both parties know it…but they are going to become advocate clients as well. The B clients – and this is where a lot of advisors when they hear this are surprised – are not my next batch of wealthy clients. They are actually ones where there may not be any future opportunity, but they love us and we love them. In other words, the best clients we have in our business are where the relationship is the strongest, not where they’re the wealthiest. And the reason I say this is because when you build relationships with a COI, if the relationship is really strong, and you only get one introduction, I bet you that’s going to be a fantastic introduction. So from my perspective, it’s better to have one really good introduction a year, if that’s your measure, than it is to have half a dozen because they feel obliged to give you those introductions.”

    • It’s better to have one really good introduction a year, if that’s your measure, than it is to have half a dozen because they feel obliged to give you those introductions.
  • Tristan Karl Robert Hartey: “We’re talking about making sure you really know what your right-fit client looks like. The main 6 [criteria] I use are trust, like, and respect...So you then have connections, culture, and follow-up. Now, the key point about the connections is…how well connected are they? The culture…does their cultural fit match our company cultural fit? … And the final one is follow-up. Do they do what they say they’re going to do? There’s no point in getting an introduction or giving an introduction from your own side to someone else in the hope that you’ll get something back if they never follow it up. It’s only going to make you look bad. So we added all those together and the main thing it did was get rid of 60% of the people I was spending time with. It was quite sobering, really, because I like some of these people, but in a very brutal way, they were just not useful because they were not able to give me introductions in the way that I wanted.”

Handling Difficult Clients & Conversations

  • Edward M. Burnett, RICP:  “I had a client transition into more of a financial planning role. So the client is questioning, ‘Why am I going to pay you a fee? You have my insurance, you have my investments, you have all these things, and why am I now expected to pay a fee for the plan?’ We’d had a call to show a demonstration of what a plan can do, and how all-encompassing the planning process is, versus a product process where you reach out to me and there’s a specific concern that needs to be addressed with a particular product. We did the right thing for the client and put those products in, [and discussed] how do they link, how do they inter-react, how they work with your budget, how do they work with the tax planning, is there a special needs situation for one of your children or grandchildren?, how is that all coordinated – that falls in a more all-encompassing planning relationship. So the client has to understand that there are different roles we can play. We’re open to all of those roles and those expectations, but we need to define and lay those out to manage their expectations to what you’re doing for them. It’s a process…with technology changes and clients’ expectations and the flow of financial information that people get, they’re just overwhelmed, overloaded. I think it’s all the more important that we lay out what they can expect from us and set some boundaries as to what those expectations are and what our obligations are to the client.”

  • Maria Josefa Garcia: “Sometimes a client calls and complains and is really irate and you’re taken aback and it’s like, ‘Now what do I do?’ Knowing in the back of your mind, almost to the point where you start doubting yourself, you think, ‘Wait a minute.’ Then you go back and review the policy, and you’re like, 'Okay, this was done.' The few times there have been complaints, I obviously bring it to the compliance officer, and we go through everything, but it’s a very intimidating time because I know I did the proper thing, but somebody is accusing me. And that, to me, is very challenging because in my mind, in my heart, I know I did the right thing – but part of me panics. And compliance is there holding my hand, like, ‘This is what we can do next,’ and...those are the things that have thrown me off balance in my career. [Now, my changes include] just documenting everything. Putting notes - and that’s where I’m going into technology, where now we can do it on the computer. I’m still writing them in the file, like 'I had a conversation, this is what happened.'”

  • Stacy L. Kahan, CLU, RFC: “Today, I had a conversation with a client and her husband who were both declined for insurance, and what do you do? Well, you’re very organized when you get on the phone....I told her I loved her and we’ll figure it out, but she’s not healthy and she has a number of steps she needs to take - and her husband - in order to be insured. And those are not fun conversations. But going in, you have to meet expectations and say, 'This is iffy, I’m concerned about your build, about your meds, about your family history.' And keep communicating as the process is going on. That was 4 applications declined - but the conversation is, ‘What is the solution?’ The solution is, 'Who cares about the insurance? Let’s make sure we get you healthy, and in 6 months when you’ve lost 30 pounds, which was the beginning of the issue, we will have another conversation. So I’ll be following up and checking in to see how it’s going. I’ll be your wellness coach.'...So it’s not going to happen today, but we’re helping these people move along to build healthier lives where they can then buy insurance in a favorable manner...it’s all great when you’re selling it, but when you’re now telling them you’re not good - and that’s a personal thing at this point - you need to hear the reaction of that person so you know how to respond appropriately. And you have to have empathy…It’s our job to understand that medical history, set it up up-front, but when you bring bad news…I think it’s [about] being very prepared at that meeting, that conversation, and starting with, ‘I feel terribly about this.  I understand, but let me tell you how, what, and why we’re going to fix it.’”

    • We’re helping these people move along to build healthier lives where they can then buy insurance in a favorable manner.
  • Xiao Chen: “When I was a novice in the industry...generally when I meet a client, I take their chat – do you have a clean bill of health? and everyone says yes, right? - so, in the early days, I took that at face value and I submitted the application. I ran the illustration with the best rating, and of course, some got declined, some got tabled. So in some of the cases, the client put me to blame, too, so it was something I had to realize. The solution to that going forward is during the application process, I have to make sure, I have to really dig deep: ‘Are you sure? Did you have this done?’ After I started doing that, these scenarios of disaster stopped coming up. So I was grateful for that. That’s a big lesson in human nature.”

How to Bring up Insurance with Prospects…and Family

  • Matthew Richard Duffy, LUTCF, FSS: “If I’m at a social gathering, I’m never going to bring our products and services into that conversation. But if somebody mentions investments or insurance, or anything – if they even hint at opening that door – I’m going to jump on it like a tiger. But the way I do that is I do it with a story, every single time. I don’t ever say, ‘Come in and let’s talk.’ If somebody says, ‘Did you see what Tesla stock did this week?’ I’m jumping into that conversation with something like, ‘Man, I had a client in last week that had bought some Tesla,’ or whatever, and make sure they know that I’m active and engaged in whatever it is they’re talking about. I spend a lot of time at the golf course and the country club, and if somebody talks about the bank or a CD, I’ll say, ‘Man, I had a client that was getting .8 on a CD and we showed them how they could get 3.5,’ or whatever it might be...We’re in a storytelling business, and any opportunity I  get, no matter where it’s at, any situation, if I get an opportunity to tell a story, even if it’s 15 seconds, I’m going to tell it.”

    • We’re in a storytelling business, and any opportunity I  get, no matter where it’s at, any situation, if I get an opportunity to tell a story, even if it’s 15 seconds, I’m going to tell it.
  • Carla Brown, FPFS: “We have a standing joke in the office that every time I go to a family event…I come back with a new client. It’s an interesting conversation at a funeral sometimes…I got into a conversation with my cousin’s new husband about the business he’d set up and it emerged that they’d not done any financial planning and he said he’d give me a call on Monday.”

  • Yakov Baylis, CLU, ChFC: “I felt it was important to take care of family first when you’re in the business. Looking at the situation with my parents, I saw my father didn’t really have enough benefits. He really wouldn’t talk to anyone about benefits because he didn’t want more, but I could give a push as his son. He listened to me and got a lot more life insurance coverage, and got long-term care even though he always told me, 'I’ll never do it, I don’t want it. If I were sick, I wouldn’t want to live that way.' ...And I just kept pushing him and eventually he said, 'Yes, okay.' And he did it. And fast-forward a few years later. My dad’s a doctor, an anesthesiologist, and unfortunately he was told he had to retire, he got sick, they said he had a rare illness...and it was downhill from there. He wasn’t able to work, and soon he was under for a claim for long-term care. And that plan that they weren’t paying much for pays for his nursing home today. The life insurance…unfortunately, doctors gave up on his life. The life insurance living needs claim paid out 99% of the benefit. That’s there in focus and going off your way to make sure the job gets done to take care of your own family.”

Determining Who’s a Good Fit to Be a Client or COI

  • Carla Brown, FPFS: “I’m definitely at that state in my career now where I only want to work with nice people. Back in the early days, when you’re setting your business up, you do take on some clients that perhaps you regret further down the line. You shouldn’t have said yes, you should have said no. But I think you can very quickly spot who’s going to be easy to work with and who’s going to be difficult to work with. …But if we have a client who I think we are going to be a good fit for but who is a little bit resistant, maybe, then I’ll say to the client, 'Maybe we aren’t right for you. Maybe you need to find someone who can do X, Y, or Z,' and almost make us a little bit unobtainable. And that seems to then change their mindset, as soon as we start to back off. They then think, 'Oh, no, I actually do want that.' ...But on the whole, if I find a client who I think is going to be hard work, or if I see that he hasn’t treated the team very well in the dealings that he’s had with them, if he’s not spoken to people very nicely or something like that, I don’t have a problem saying to them, you know, 'We’re not for you, why don’t you go and try somebody else.' I’m comfortable enough within the business now that we’re in a position we can do that.”

    • I think you can very quickly spot who’s going to be easy to work with and who’s going to be difficult to work with.
  • Matthew Richard Duffy, LUTCF, FSS: “It’s nothing for us to need to fire a client. If they’re not nice to our staff, I literally have zero tolerance for that, none whatsoever. But the other thing I’ll say is that I was interviewing for a producer position earlier this week. I told him that at the corporate level, our company is pretty conservative about who they’ll take on as new clients and at our local office, we’re more conservative than they are. We’re very particular…you can’t get there on day one of the business. But 20 years in, we’re not just begging people to walk in and do business with us. We’re going to do business with people that are nice, that want our advice, and that are going to stay, they’re not price-shopping, etc. It takes awhile to get there. I don’t think you can come into this business with that attitude. You’re not there, but you’re close when you can tell someone, 'You’re not going to be the right fit for our office.'”

  • Alessandro M. Forte, DipPFS, CSP: “...only time and experience, I think, tells you instinctively that this is a relationship that is going to work or it isn’t. I think we all struggle not just with approaching someone in the first place, but also with that kind of periodic check-in where you feel instinctively that something isn’t right, you don’t quite know how to approach that, that question around, 'Am I doing something wrong? Could I provide a better service?' ...Maybe it’s just about finding a niche. It’s maybe just finding an area of specialty, then you don’t have to say yes to every opportunity. And you know what? Authenticity and honesty goes every bit as far as academia and experience and knowledge and longevity in the business. Sometimes you have to say, ‘This doesn’t work,’ whether it’s a client introduction, whether it's a new commercial opportunity. However attractive it might be, if it doesn’t fit, then be honest enough to say because you’ll get more traction and gain more credibility and you’re much more likely to retain a long-term relationship if you’re very transparent about it.”

That’s what we found most helpful in recent episodes of the MDRT Podcast!

Which of these tips or strategies resonate with you? Share your favorite tidbits in the comments!