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Life Health > Annuities

Knowledge Is Not Power

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(Related: Kobe Bryant’s Work Ethic)

I recently worked with Ron, an advisor in Cleveland. Ron is one of the most knowledgeable advisors I know. He has every designation you can think of. He studies tax law so that he can advise his clients of the tax consequences of everything he recommends. He reads insurance policies and annuity contracts cover-to-cover, and he learns everything he can about his clients, because he’s not satisfied just finding a suitable solution or plan for their particular situation. He tries to find the perfect solution or plan for them.

But despite all his knowledge, Ron was struggling to provide for his family. He was living proof that knowledge is not Power. Applied knowledge is Power. Power comes from reaching out to lots of people and offering to share your knowledge. And that wasn’t happening for Ron.

Ron didn’t need more information. He already had enough information to be incredibly successful. What he needed was a transformation. He needed to be taking relentless, persistent, intensely focused action to get himself in front of clients with that knowledge.

The specific strategies or systems he used were less important than the level and intensity of the action he took.

In my experience, there’s only one thing that distinguishes top advisors from the rest of us, and it’s not the system or strategy they used to reach that level of success. It’s their access to relentless, persistent, intensely focused action — every hour of every day.

Top advisors seem to have access to that kind of intensely focused action, but clearly, Ron did not. And without it, he couldn’t apply his knowledge on a massive scale.

But I know one thing from my years of studying success and performance in advisors: All success comes from within, and access to any level of action comes from how the world is occurring to an advisor.

Top advisors see the world as one in which they can be — and deserve to be — successful. They wake up on Monday morning on a mission to accomplish something and they just don’t stop for anything.

Ron’s world was obviously not occurring to him in that way. In his view, this business was a struggle and the best you could do was to survive. In survival mode, everything is a threat. With that view, access to action was limited for him and depended on how he felt at any given moment.

I suggested to Ron that if he wanted to be successful, he needed to make changes in how his world was occurring to him and that he could start by speaking, acting and reacting as if he thought he was the best advisor in Cleveland. Not the way he would normally act, react or speak, but how the best advisor in Cleveland would act, react or speak in the same situation.

I also had him ask his existing clients to share with him the value they get from working with him and made him report their answers to me, so that he could see in himself the value they saw.

The impact of just these two changes was almost immediate. Ron was in action — using a couple of the strategies he had learned to increase his business. He was no longer struggling to support his family.

If you’re anything like Ron, take these same steps:

  1. Start acting, reacting and speaking as if you were the best advisor in your community, and
  2. Ask your clients what value they get out of working with you.

Let the confidence you develop in yourself from acting and speaking like a top advisor and from listening to your clients talk about your value inspire you to take the action you need to take in order to be successful… And you will be.

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Sandy SchusselSandy Schussel has been a coach and practice development consultant for insurance and financial professionals for the past 20 years. He is an approved MDRT coach and has served as the national sales training director for First Investors and Foresters. He is the author of two books, The High Diving Board, about overcoming fear and Become A Client Magnet, about attracting and keeping clients. Schussel‘s scheduling calendar is available


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