Fifty-four years in insurance brokerage, forty-three of those years as a member of the Million Dollar Round Table and fifty years’ service to some of his clients underpin any suggestions that John Bowden makes about effective selling and practice management.

Mr. Bowden, president of Toronto-based the Bowden Group recently shared his suggestions for success before, during and after a sale in the first of a series of interviews with MDRT practitioners by The Insurance Journal.

Before the sale

While Mr. Bowden has made many cold calls, he believes that solid referrals from satisfied clients produce better results. That means becoming referable by doing good work to earn an enthusiastic referral, as opposed to merely having the use of someone’s name as a door-opener. “You first have to do good work for somebody or some group of people and the word gets around that you do a good job,” he says. “That’s what I would call being referable.” 

Mr. Bowden also takes the “knowledge is power” approach to launching the sales process. As well as formal designations, intimate knowledge of the prospect’s environment such as conditions in his or her industry demonstrate his willingness to go “the extra mile,” he says.

Both parts come together if the advisor asks a happy client for referrals to prospects within the same industry, including competitors, giving him both a “feel” for a specific industry, an entrée to its players and understanding of their environment. One of Mr. Bowden’s specialities is brokers in the food sector, which can be seen as a sub-set of the small business sector. “They were all running small businesses,” he says.

Research extends to building up the referral process. Mr. Bowden says he sometimes finds the name of a likely prospect in the same sector as his client and asks about the doability of a direct referral. “Would you mind if I called him and told him I’d done business with you?” he asks. That takes the pressure off of the client to think of and approach a referral, he points out. In effect, a mutual acquaintance is starting the sales process, he says.

Mr. Bowden practices a type of interview process designed to increase his knowledge of the specific environment by asking the prospect how he or she got into that business. “Let them talk,” he says. “That’s fundamental. You’ve got two ears and one mouth so maybe the hell you should listen twice as much as you talk,” he says.

“It’s what we’ve discussed, how open they are or not open, how comfortable they are. How they feel about how I got them. You just read those things and the more experience you get, the easier it is to read them.”

If he encounters positive vibes, he goes one step further by asking the referee to contact the prospect, alerting him or her to Mr. Bowden’s plans to call in the near future. That, he says is preferable to another strategy he describes as: “Here’s a letter. Why don’t you sign it saying what a wonderful person I am?”

These moves have always required careful handling, given the attitude of many prospects to insurance brokers. “Rightly or wrongly, everybody thought that anyone who was in life insurance was just the lowest of the low … the scum bags.” That image has improved as many insurers disbanded their career forces, freeing practitioners from the requirement of selling one company’s products to the exclusion of products that might better fit a client’s needs. That, combined with the movement of practitioners into selling wealth protection products has also resolved some image problems, he says. 

Still, he says, the career agency system had many positive attributes, in spite of the problems. “The career agency system had very strong points. When we were recruited we were always self conscious. The attrition rate was so high we were embarrassed,” he says recalling his father’s reaction when told that his son had signed on with Manufacturer’s Life Insurance Company, as Manulife Financial was then known. “He said to me ‘You had that university education which we paid for and that was the best you can do?”

During the sales process

The need for relevant information doesn’t change even when the prospect has agreed to a meeting, according to Mr. Bowden, explaining that he does as much further research as possible before the meeting. “We used to have ways to check people out but the privacy laws make it almost impossible now,” he says adding that privacy restrictions make the initial referee more valuable than ever as a source of information.

At the first meeting, he sizes up the client while the client is sizing up him and his offerings.

Mr. Bowden looks for factors such as the prospect’s likely income level, upward mobility or, in the case of an entrepreneur, factors such as family protection requirements. “You’re spending all your time building your business and if you stop a truck tomorrow – since you’re working on your own – the income stops,” he says.

The proactive practitioner performs a great service for clients in such a case, he says. “I’m the first one that will really press things. Accountants and lawyers, if they have them, they only do what they’re asked to do, they don’t come up with any ideas. They’re not proactive, they’re sort of passive,” he says.

Service does not stop after the first sale as follow-ups fall into two general areas, including research and recommending additional products that mesh with the client’s situation such as increased insurance for a small business owner, assistance in non-fee areas such as ensuring prompt payment of claims, and linking the client to other professions as needed.

Al Emid