Goose Bay Labrador may seem an unlikely place for an Ottawa-based independent advisor to make sales calls, and ‘Have Gun Will Travel' may seem like an unlikely sales motto for an advisor anywhere. But Michael Currey sees Goose Bay as an integral part of his practice and a major success story in competing with local bankers. To sum up his business style, he enjoys evoking the Have Gun Will Travel slogan familiar to fans of the television series that was popular in the late 1950's and early 1960's.

Mr. Currey, President of Michael D. Currey Insurance Agencies Inc., says his sales figures have established him as a Life Qualifying Member of the Million Dollar Round Table since 1980 and Top of The Table member every year since 1996, the year in which he also became the first Top of the Table broker at Empire Life.

His ‘anytime-anywhere' or ‘Have Gun Will Travel' approach caused him to rush to Goose Bay in February 1998 after learning that the Department of National Defence had privatized the service functions of the Canadian Forces Base there. This meant that non-military employees had received severance packages eligible for rolling over into Registered Retirement Savings Plans and that their pension plans also needed attention. The trip required longer than planned since he had been asked to go for three days but spent six days there. He went home and returned two weeks later, signing 400 clients during the two trips. He continues travelling to Goose Bay approximately once a year for client visits.

Mr. Currey believes that he overcame resistance from two major Canadian banks that had locations in Goose Bay. "They were all miffed and they were trying to tell people that I wasn't licensed up there," he says, suggesting that the bank employees wanted responsibility for the funds that flowed from the severance packages. "They just didn't want somebody else in their backyard so to speak," he recalls. "They basically said that I wasn't licensed to be up there." He did have his insurance license.

Goose Bay remains his most lucrative market to this day, but he also travels regularly to Toronto and other cities.

"I'm willing to go anywhere to help people if it means selling insurance, doing investments and taking care of them, whether it's in Ottawa itself or anywhere else," he says, adding that his company has 12,000 clients.

His strategy to do business anywhere also includes most any social situation where he has the opportunity of meeting new people. He has started sales pitches in elevators and while on airplane flights talking to fellow passengers. "In the airplane when I'm in business class flying to Toronto, I will start up a conversation. I've insured many people like this."

Mr. Currey is also open to doing business with clients from all walks of life. He rejects the popular rush to attract high net worth clients, although he does have high-earning professionals on his client roster.

"I've never gone looking for the pie-in-the-sky clients," he says, referring to the high net worth category. "I think too many people waste their time on that."

Nor do his strategies preclude other niche targets. "My clientele is people, from the car lot attendant to the bus boy, to the waiter, to the cook. They all need insurance and people basically forget about that."

His travelling strategy means that he only goes into his office ten times a year. "That's no exaggeration," he says. "Unless people actually want to see me here, I'm on the road. I don't make money sitting in my office and I'm knocking on the clients' doors and seeing them... Mr. Currey believes that meeting clients in their homes saves time lost in paper chases. "People have all their stuff at their place," he says, explaining that office appointments seem unwieldy when he needs a client's documents. "Then it's a second or a third appointment."

When you're willing to go out of your way, insurance sales have unlimited potential. "There's a hell of a lot of business out there for people who are telling me all the time that they're starving to death in this business, or there's no business to be had," he says.