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EPISODE 190: Legendary Insurance Sales Leader Alan Meltzer Shares How Philanthropy, Deep Relationships, Hard Work and Surrounding Yourself With Really Smart People Can Lead to Sales Success

ALAN’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “One, get smart, read, study. Two, there’s no substitution for perspiration, work your ass off, it’s that simple.“

Alan Meltzer founded NFP -The Meltzer Group in 1982 as a single insurance agen.

He has since grown the company to one with over 200 dedicated employees across five divisions.

Alan has earned MassMutual’s highest honor, Agent of the Year, an unprecedented 18 times in his career.

Find Alan on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us a little more about you that we need to know?

Alan Meltzer: Fred, thanks first of all for asking me to do this, I’m very honored. I grew up in Massachusetts, had a wrestling scholarship to American University, came down here in 1969. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I went to American and frankly, my family didn’t have much money, I had to work literally the first day I went to college. I started working at the mail room at American University picking up mail for the university down on Wisconsin Avenue in a truck that I don’t think had brakes, a stick shift, didn’t know how to drive it. I’m pretty lucky to be alive now.

In October of my freshman year I started washing dishes at a restaurant down the street, a place called Mr. Henry’s, there was about 5 or 6 of them. The first night I was a dishwasher, the next night I was the head chef so you can imagine how bad the food was. To make a long story short, worked at Mr. Henry’s all through college, wrestled, went occasionally to classes and really got involved in the restaurant. Ended up buying the establishment in probably 1971, I had saved $13,000 dollars while I was in college and two friends of mine owned I think a sixth of the restaurant with me. We bought it and the place did fabulous. Bought another place, bought another place, and really that’s where I learned about sales. I’ve read a couple of your podcasts, you used to be a bartender, I was a bartender, if you made people happy, if you make them enjoy the experience they come back, they tell their friends.

We had a lot of fun at Mr. Henry’s, we worked hard and the place did fabulous. In ’73, six young ladies came into the restaurant and one of them I thought was absolutely stunning so I waited on the table. They all worked for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, I was very interested in one of these young ladies, her older sister told me she was engaged to be married so ‘stay away’. Anyway, I kept on calling and made the best sale of my life, started going out with her and in 1978 after dating for 5 years she said to me, “Either you sell this dumps and marry me and do something else that’s conducive to a happily married life or the heck with you.” She didn’t say it near that nice, so to make a long story short, right around the beginning of 1978 I realized that I wanted to get married. I started studying about the insurance business, I had met a lot of people through Amy who’s now my wife 40 years later.

I enjoyed meeting these people, thought that the really successful insurance agents cared about their customer, cared about what they were doing. They were quality people, not like the stereotype insurance person I had read about. I studied, got ready to go into the insurance business, got married September 16th, 1978, went in the insurance business a little bit before that, sold the three restaurants and went into the insurance business.

The first big sale I made was with the local owner of The Stroh’s Beer Distributorship. I was a customer of his and he was nice enough to meet with me. I learned a lot about sales with him, good looking, big guy came into Mr. Henry’s maybe in 1974 and said, “Look, I want to put Stroh’s beer on tap.” I didn’t even know what Stroh’s beer was, I’m not even sure the still make it, it came from Detroit. To make a long story short, I said, “I’m not going to put it on tab.” This guy was about 6’6, 290 pounds so he comes into the restaurant and he says, “Look, I want to put Stroh’s on tap” and I said, “I’ll buy some Stroh’s, but I’m not putting it on tap.”

He brings in a case of Stroh’s right away, he starts buying anybody in the place a Stroh’s beer. I start calling people up, “There’s a guy here and he’s crazy, come on in and get free Stroh’s all day.”

To make a long story short, he was a great salesman. By 2 o’clock in the afternoon I had bought 100 cases of Stroh’s, he was sitting at the bar with his partner, 6 o’clock at night comes by and I had a great day because of him. He says, “I still want Stroh’s beer on tap.” Mr. Henry’s is an outdoor cafe, I went outside with him and by that time he had probably had a case of beer himself, I had two beers. He was Irish Catholic, I was Jewish, I was drunk, he was sober – two beers for the little Jewish guy, a case for the older Catholic guy drinking beers all day long. He picked me up and proceeded to threaten to throw me in the traffic on Wisconsin Avenue unless I put the Stroh’s beer on tap.

It was an easy sale, I decided to put the beer on tap.

Four or five years later I called on him for insurance. I talked to him as a business person and apparently his father had signed a note so he could buy the beer distributorship. If something happened to his dad or something happened to him, the bank could call the note so I insured his father for quite a lot of money, his father was wealthy. Potentially, this was before the unlimited marital deduction which basically meant that if he died there would be an estate tax. Now you can leave everything to your spouse.

To make a long story short, March 21st of 1980, my wife gave birth to twin daughters Elizabeth and Jennifer. I went out and had a couple of beers with my friend who owned the Stroh’s beer distributorship. Around 11 o’clock at night he calls me up, he was distraught. His father had been shot to death in New Orleans, five young men tried to rob him, he was a big guy like his son, protested, they shot him like 15 times.

All of a sudden, my life changed dramatically because when I went in the insurance business I was doing it to earn a living, I wasn’t really doing it as a calling, so to speak. About 3 months later I’m with my friend and he told me, “You selling me the insurance saved our company, allowed my mom to live her life out in a manner that was wonderful in Colorado” and my friend said to me, “People say to you, ‘what do you do for a living?'” and I’d say, “I used to own Mr. Henry’s.” I didn’t say I’m an insurance agent. He said, “You’ve got to be proud of what you do. Look, if it wasn’t for you, if you hadn’t sold me that insurance I would have lost a beer distributorship to the bank because they did call the note. My mom wouldn’t be living the way she is.”

My life pretty much changed there on the dot because all of a sudden people would say to me, “What do you do for a living?” and even today I say, “I sell life insurance.”

Fred Diamond: Alan, we have a lot of Sales Game Changers listening around the globe who are starting out their sales career or they’re in their first job and they’re making a living. What do you say to the young people out there who are listening or even people who are established in their career? How do you communicate that message to them that they need to view what they’re doing as their calling, like you just said?

Alan Meltzer: That’s a great question, Fred. Let me say this to you: we have too many people that come in our business and want to know what’s the commission rate, what’s this, what’s that. I look at what I do, I sell health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, home owner’s insurance, we advise people on 401K. If you first ask me what am I going to make on the sale, I don’t really want you to work here, I want you to make sure what you’re doing for the client is in their best interest. Hindsight’s always 20/20, it’s like buying a TV in 1978, people say, “Why do I need a new TV now?” because things change. You never know 100% whether you’re doing the right thing for somebody, but I can tell you this: the most important thing in our company and what I’ve done in my business is tried 100%, 180%, 200% every day to do what’s right for my clients and then the money just comes.

Fred Diamond: Obviously you’re at the top of your game. Tell us another story about that, you mentioned the guy from Stroh’s, is he still around? Do you still keep in touch with him?

Alan Meltzer: Unfortunately he’s deceased. We kept in contact.

Fred Diamond: How about some other customers? You said you’ve been doing insurance since 1978 – by the way, for the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe we’re doing this interview today at 6:30 in the morning at your office in Rockville, Maryland. You’re well known to be an early riser, as I am. Tell us what your day looks like, do you get up at 4 in the morning? You’ve been doing this for 40 somewhat years, tell us what your hustle looks like.

Alan Meltzer: I’m committed to my business. I got four great kids, a great wife, 41 years of marriage this year, 5 grandkids which is the best thing that ever happened to me, much better than children. I love what I do, I believe in our company. Integrity, honesty, we’re philanthropic. I get up every morning pretty much 4:30, work out, try to get here between a quarter to six or 6 o’clock every morning. I have a dear friend, Steve Niel who is not listening to this probably but he’s out on Tuxedo Drive and Prince George’s county and he and I talk a lot early in the morning. There’s three or four people that I know get up early in the morning, I like talking to them.

I get a lot done early in the morning, I get my day planned, make sure that I’m ready for the day so I’m here between 6 and 7, that’s my quiet time for myself. I can say this to anybody listening to this, it caused havoc in my marriage, you give up a lot when you work as much as I did. I can remember never seeing my kids in the morning and my wife was fabulous doing that. We probably fought more the first 10 years of our marriage than we’ve fought the last 20 because I love my kids but I probably wasn’t as good a father as I could have been because I worked and worked and worked. You give up a lot when you work as much as I did. I look at athletes, we have a lot of athletes that work here. I looked at that tennis match yesterday with Nadal and Medvedev, I don’t know how many people watched it but it was unbelievable. They played for over 5 hours, unbelievable game.

I’m very competitive, I do want to win, I was a college wrestler. Everybody knows if you’re a wrestler who wins or loses, there’s only one guy with his arm raised. In my business coming in second doesn’t pay the bills so we’ve absolutely tried to win all the time. We try to outwork people, we have fabulous people working here, best places to work every year for the last 15 years, people have been here for 20, 30 years, that’s very important to me. It’s a corporate culture of working hard. I always say this is a difficult place to work but a great place to work.

Fred Diamond: Talk about philanthropy for a little bit, I know you’re on a bunch of different boards, you can even mention a couple of them if you want. How has that played in your sale success? Tell us why you’ve gotten involved with various charities. You’ve been involve with tons of them, you’ve been on tons of boards, you’ve been recognized by a number of them. Again, we’re doing the interview here today in your office, there’s a number of awards around. Tell us what philanthropy meant in your sales career.

Alan Meltzer: Many years ago a thing called DC Cares had some sort of a symposium that I actually spoke at the same time with Hillary Clinton. It was about doing good and doing good, and basically it was about giving back to the community and the community taking care of you, too. In 1974 I didn’t have any money, I owned this bar, I had a beard, a mustache, a Jewfro, whatever you want to call it. I didn’t know from philanthropy, I didn’t know from anything, my family didn’t have money, it was that simple. My lawyer’s father asked me whether I was philanthropic. I’m not even sure I knew what philanthropic meant but he told me that once you achieve a little bit of success financially it’s important to give back.

He said, “Alan, nobody ever went broke giving money away.” I started giving money and in all honesty I didn’t even know all the causes that meant something to me but then all of a sudden you start seeing something that matters to you.

My youngest son has type 1 diabetes, we’ve literally given millions of dollars personally to type 1 to help cure it, to find a better way of living and our friends have been extraordinary. Our friends have probably given 5 to 7 million dollars to diabetes over the last 31 years, it’s probably my biggest cause that I really care about because I get to see, unfortunately, my son literally taking his blood sugar 10 times a day times 7 days a week, that’s 70 times 52, you figure out the math. He’s probably taken his blood count 3 to 4 million times over the course of his life and given himself injections of insulin, which if he doesn’t do he can die.

You start looking at that, you look at charter schools, what they do. It’s easy to look at cancer, diabetes but then you look at even what happened in the Abacos. My wife and I have been fortunate enough to spend time in the Abacos, not only are they the most beautiful place but even more importantly, the people there are beautiful so we’re going to give money there. We’re trying to figure out frankly the best way to do it right now but it’s something that will happen this week.

There’s a story about a guy named Reichmann who has a big philanthropist, a Jewish real estate developer. When he dies at 85, he’s probably worth 4 or 5 billion dollars. There’s two wills and the instructions were to his children, “Open up the first will, this one first and 30 days later open up the second one.” The instructions were, “My children, I love you, please bury me in my socks.” In Jewish religion you can’t do that, it’s just a simple shroud. The children knew their father to be a pious man and they consulted with different rabbis and they said, “What do we do?” they said, “You can’t bury him with the socks.” 30 days later they open the second will and it says, “My dear children, now you know that no matter who you are or what you are you can’t even take your socks with you. Give it all away while you’re alive, give back.”

We’ve tried to do that as a company, we have a giving fund, I think the people at the company are charitable, we give time and it’s worthwhile for us.

Fred Diamond: For someone who’s listening to the podcast who might not be familiar with it like you were 40 somewhat years ago, what would you tell them to do? Just find one, get started?

Alan Meltzer: Have a passion. I’ll give you a great example, Mary’s Center, Maria Gomez is an amazing woman. I met her maybe 20 years ago, went over to her place at Mount Pleasant and I didn’t have money then, we started giving time. For the last 26 years in a row on Halloween we take out 300 young folks and their families to Butler’s Orchard, Hope and a Home, Mary Center. We rent the buses, my whole company comes out there, we cook hot dogs, it’s unbelievable. We’ve never had the press there one time, I can’t even understand that. 26 years in a row, 300 people and it’s unbelievable.

Now Mary Center is a huge client of ours so if Maria was here she would say, “Alan has been very generous” but I think she’d also say that we’ve done a great job as a steward of her insurance needs. We got in there because frankly we started giving time and effort into it, not just money. We didn’t do it for that reason, it’s an amazing place. You go to places like that, Jewish Social Services, AIPAC, the Holocaust Museum, you just think of that, these people do wonderful things. When I was in college I used to work at the DC Juvenile Center out in Laurel, I’m not sure it’s even there anymore. I chose capitalism instead of socialism so I want to give back financially, I’m trying to do the best I can.

When you’re as family-oriented as I am you might be on these different boards but frankly, family first and doing what you can financially.

Fred Diamond: A lot of the Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast like to hear about mentors, maybe that the guest that we’ve had has had a mentor along the way. Then I’ll ask the question slightly differently but is there a mentor or two that you’ve had along the way that has significantly helped you as a sales leader?

Alan Meltzer: It’s interesting, when I first came into the insurance business it was a man named Webb Sinclair that was agent of the year for Mass Mutual in 1979. Webb told me that his wife wouldn’t allow him to come home on a Friday night unless he sold one policy a week. I’m not sure that my wife ever was quite that crazy, but Webb was a mentor. There’s a guy named Rudy Arcan, there’s a guy named Vernon Holleman, these are all insurance agents that were very successful when I was younger and I would look at their reputation. I didn’t know exactly what they were selling – there was a guy named Mel Culloden that sold me insurance. The way people spoke about them, they had esteem, they were thought of well. I’m quite sure that early in my career I was very aggressive and probably am still very aggressive. I know I am, but hopefully I’ve tempered that with a way to relate to people so that they don’t feel pressured. I know that my clients that know me love our business, love me. There’s a fine line as a salesperson to irritating people and driving them crazy to make a sale or to convey that you’re trying to do the best for them, that you care about them.

I can tell you this, in my career I probably had 25 death claims. When I walk into that house and meet the widow, the widower, nobody wishes I sold them less life insurance, it’s nobody and I’m very proud of what I do. I believe in what I do because I’ve seen the difference between what I do and a widow and her children living in a lifestyle that their spouse had – because it’s not always men making money, women make money too – they live in a wonderful world because of what I do.

Fred Diamond: Alan, before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors I want to follow up with that question. A lot of the people listening to the podcast are striving to become Sales Game Changers. You’re obviously at the top of your game, you’ve been a Mass Mutual million dollar seller for decades now. What is it specifically about you, do you think, that has led to your sales success? Obviously you’ve done so much good for so many people. If you had to really nail it down to one or two things – is it your hustle, your aggressiveness, your intelligence, your love for people, your love for insurance – what do you think has distinguished you as a Sales Game Changer?

Alan Meltzer: One, I’m crazy, shrinks would have a great time with me. I’m driven, I’m scared about being poor. If I had a billion dollars I would think I’m poor. I surround myself with really wicked smart people. I didn’t do this myself, I didn’t do almost anything myself, I’m a huge delegator. I have a fabulous team that surrounds me, some of these people have worked for me for 35-40 years – not for me, with me. There’s Greg Caroll, there’s Stuart Tauber, there’s Jack Abel, there’s Ethan Foxman, there’s Beth Robertson, Tom Cogan, Andrew Prevost, Billie Karlin. All these people have loyalty to this company, loyalty to our brand and make me look better. You’ve got to be an idiot not to hire smarter people than you and then get out of the way.

Gillette sells 30% of their sales in new products every year, so you say, “How can you do new products in insurance?” There are new products in insurance, the life insurance products from today are light years better than they were when I came into this business. Health insurance, different ways to save money on prescription cards. We just saved a client literally $700,000 dollars by changing the way they do their prescription card. The CFO sent me an email, “Probably the best decision I’ve made since I became CFO was to hire you guys.” This was a thousand person company.

Hire slowly, fire quickly. Once you get somebody that’s smarter than you working here let them do their things, delegate, give people respect, financially take care of them. Nobody has ever left this place because they didn’t make enough money. They might not like working here because it’s a tough place, they might not like me but nobody that ever produced here left because of lack of money. I do think it’s a different world right now, I can tell you that my son work very hard but he’s a much better father than me. He’s home at 5:30, 6 o’clock most nights, he wants to be with his kids. My daughter owns a restaurant, shamelessly plugged that in Silver Spring, fabulous restaurant, she’s got a little boy, she works probably 50 hours, 60 hours a week but she’s still a great mother.

It’s a little different than when I started, people my age – I’m 68 – we used to walk to school up a hill both ways with snow 12 feet high. It’s a different world and I think it’s better that way in many ways. I didn’t see my kids for breakfast ever, my son does, my daughter does. I have another daughter that is a real estate agent with two kids, works her butt off and I have another son that’s working hard as a personal trainer and detailing cars. Everybody finds their own way in life.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Alan, we’ve got a couple last questions here. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas, a lot of great tips along the way. We have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, what would you tell somebody in their mid-20’s that they should do to take their sales career to the next level?

Alan Meltzer: One, get smart, read, study. Two, there’s no substitution for perspiration, work your ass off, it’s that simple. I know one thing, at 5:30 in the morning there’s not many insurance agents in their office. At 8 o’clock at night there’s not many insurance agents in their office. Study, learn what you do for a living and be proud of it. There’s too many people that just expect things to be given to them. I make a living on commission, it’s that simple and when I own the company it’s real simple. We made money, we paid out our employees, whatever was left was mine, it was a simple formula. If there was nothing left over, I made nothing so there’s a great incentive to work hard and to work with the right people.

I’ve also been fabulously blessed by my friends who refer me to everybody, to lawyers and CPA’s in this city. I can tell you that the lawyers and CPA’s that refer us business on a daily basis, I love them, I thank them. There’s too many to name but basically we have people that look at us as a trusted adviser and that’s fabulous for us.

Fred Diamond: Alan, before I ask you for your final thought to inspire listeners around the globe I want to thank you for the great insights today. Again, you mentioned how much the industry has changed, every industry has changed, yours has definitely changed. What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Alan Meltzer: What we’re doing now is constantly looking at how we can help our clients and because of different changes and the tax laws, president Trump’s 2017 tax bill has given us a great opportunity with nonprofits. We’re working with most of the major hospital chains in Washington DC on that right now. It’s us realizing the opportunity and going for it in a strategic way to help make a difference for the client and our company. I always look at life, we want to make a difference.

Here’s a story that illustrates that. There’s two women walking on a beach and they’re maybe a mile away from each other and they’re getting closer and closer together. One of them keeps on reaching down and throwing something in the water. Finally they get together and one says to the other one, “What are you doing?” She says, “The tide has brought in all these starfish and they’re on the beach and if they’re not in the water, they’re going to die” and she reaches down and throws a starfish in the water. The friend says, “There’s a million of them, you’re not going to make a difference.” She reaches down again, she throws a starfish in the water, she said, “I think I made a difference for that starfish.” That’s how we run our business, we want to make a difference for everybody that we touch. I hope today I’ve made a difference for your audience.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought? You’ve given us so many great ideas today. Just give us one final thought, maybe something that you live by to inspire the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe.

Alan Meltzer: Everything for me is family and money does not buy you happiness, not even close. When I can do certain things for my family financially because of my hard work, it makes up for all the hours that perhaps I didn’t spend with them. I’m trying to do a much better job with my grandchildren, I probably see my grandkids three to four times a week, I think my children think I stalk them. For me now I’m working for two reasons, Fred it’s real simple: philanthropy and family. That’s it, and I enjoy it more now than I’ve ever done, we do a better job than we’ve ever done. If I could die with one penny in my checking account and give everything away to both my philanthropic ventures and my children, I’d be a happy guy.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 190: Legendary Insurance Sales Leader Alan Meltzer Shares How Philanthropy, Deep Relationships, Hard Work and Surrounding Yourself With Really Smart People Can Lead to Sales Success first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 05:42
Name an impactful sales mentor: 11:38
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 16:57
Most important tip: 29:01
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 36:06
Inspiring thought: 37:53

EPISODE 129: USI Insurance Services’ Phil Curran Shares Three Strategies Sales Professionals Must Implement Today to Reach Trusted Advisor Nirvana

PHIL’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “If you can get to where the client includes you as part of the fabric of the organization, you understand their issues and you’re delivering solutions that really impact the business, then you’re a trusted advisor. I aspire to that, all my team inspires to it and I think if you’re in professional services, attaining that role is like finding nirvana.”

Phil Curran is a Senior VP at USI Insurance Services where he runs the DC Metro practice.

Prior to coming to USI, he was at Mercer HR Consultants, Hewitt Associates (now AON Hewitt) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

Find Phil on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you sell, what your team sells and tell us what excites you about that.

Phil Curran: What we sell are employee benefit advisory services, we’re insurance brokers and consultants working primarily with middle market companies, so typically between 200 and 2,000 employees. We have some that dip below that 200 range, we have a lot that are over 2,000 but what we’re doing is advising them on the design, funding, administration, communication and compliance related to their healthcare benefits primarily and then certain other ancillary benefits.

Fred Diamond: Who typically do you sell to? Who is your person at this middle market companies that makes these decisions?

Phil Curran: Typically it’s going to be either a chief financial officer or a vice president of human resources.

Fred Diamond: I mentioned at the beginning that you started your career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, did you also sell these types of services there or what would you do there?

Phil Curran: I’ve been doing this my whole career. Right out of college I started as an insurance company underwriter and after two years I actually moved to Mercer, was my first role in consulting and I was there for 14 years. I grew into a role similar to what I have now and then I left consulting for 3 years to be the vice president of human resources for one of my clients, and that was a multinational insurance company. I came back into consulting with PricewaterhouseCoopers, so I’ve always done this.

Fred Diamond: Again, you’re responsible for the whole practice which of course includes business development and sales. Tell us about your transition into leading the sales department as well.

Phil Curran: I started as a technical consultant and about 3 years, 4 years into my stay at Mercer I approached my boss who was one of the three mentors I’ve had over the years in the sales arena. I approached him and said, “I really don’t have any opportunities to build a book of business of my own because I spend all my time supporting other consultants. He said, “Okay, let’s change that. What would we need to do?
I said, “I need to off load some of the client responsibilities I have to give me time to develop new business.” He said okay, we hired a couple of new people, we took probably 90% of the work I did and gave it to them. I went to him and I said, “We’ve moved all my work away and now I have no work.” He said, “Yeah, be careful what you ask for.” It was a sink or swim approach to getting me into business development. I swam, but it’s not a method I recommend for most people.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you did? Again, all of the sudden you’re not having to deal with the customer anymore from the practice side and you have to go find your own deals and grow them which is exactly what you pretty much told your boss you wanted to do, so what did you do? What are some of the things that you did and what are some of the lessons that you learned when you made that transition?

Phil Curran: I had a unique advantage that I think a lot of people wouldn’t have at the time, I was in my late 20’s but I had gone great prematurely so I had clients that I acquired and then later found out how young I was and they were like, “You’re kidding, we trusted you with hundreds of millions of dollars when you were in your 20’s?” I think having gone gray young was a distinct advantage, ironically. I had a technical background and what I was taught was we’re not making relationship sales.

Nobody is hiring us because they like us, nobody’s going to hire you because of your boyish good looks and winning smile, you need to rely on that technical background to deliver the best possible solution to the client and then demonstrate the return on investment to them. If you do that, you will win new business. That’s the approach I took. Fortunately, Mercer – where I was at the time – was the largest human resources consulting firm in the world so when I picked up the phone and cold called a VP of human resources or a director of benefits, they didn’t know who Phil Curran was but they knew who Mercer was and they would take my call. That was another huge advantage and it greased the skids for me because I was able to probably get a lot of appointments that I might not have otherwise. The other things really came about through trial and error and through mentorship from other colleagues.

Fred Diamond: That’s interesting. Along the lines of that, I liked what you just said there that you really do need to understand what you’re offering the customer and you really do need to have a deep understanding of that. Tell us what you’re an expert in. Phil, tell us about your specific area of brilliance.

Phil Curran: Brilliance is probably an overstatement. I’m an expert is what are commonly referred to as health and welfare benefits. The healthcare and health benefits of employees, life insurance disability and related coverages. I’ve had a lot of opportunity to do really exciting work with large Fortune 100 companies, I had the opportunity to build the first consumer directed health plan in the country, I had the opportunity to implement integrated health and absence management programs for a Fortune 100 telecommunications company where the work that we did resulted in saving them an amount that equaled 4% of payroll which on the surface of it, doesn’t sound that big except that that 4% of payroll actually changed their earnings per share by 6 cents. The CFO loved us. I’ve had the chance to do a lot of really sexy, ground breaking, bleeding edge work with large companies but I love working with the middle market because they can do most of the things that I’ve done with large employers but they’re not 800 pound gorillas and you can form great long term relationships in the middle market.

Fred Diamond: You can bring that distinction that’s going to help them grow their business with their little nuances. Phil, I have a question for you. We have Sales Game Changers around the globe listening to today’s podcast. You’re one of the first people that we’ve interviewed in the benefits insurance space, you mentioned that you were an expert on employee health and benefits and things related to that. For the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast, how long did it take you before you truly became an expert? I know you mentioned a few moments ago that you had the advantage of turning gray early which meant that the customers must have seen you as an expert, obviously. It sounds like something you talked about but is it a 3, 5, 10, 15 year journey to be at the place where you have enough succinct knowledge to be able to provide that value?

Phil Curran: To be able to claim real expertise, I think you could probably do it in 2 or 3 years of really immersive experience in highly technical work, but we have a lot of producers and sales people in my practice that come to us with far less technical expertise but they’re still extraordinarily effective as salespeople and strategic consultants for their client. They leave the really day-to-day, nitty-gritty to our technical resources. I think you can achieve that level of competence and mastery within a couple or three years.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned a couple questions ago that you had three mentors who helped you. Why don’t you tell us about one or two of them or all three, if you’d like, who helped you grow your career? Tell us about the impact they had on you.

Phil Curran: One of them I think probably doesn’t even realize what kind of a mentor he was to me, his name is Mahan Khalsa. Mahan was hired by Mercer to come in and do sales training for principals at Mercer and he taught us a highly consultative method of selling professional services because most sales training that I have been able to access individually was really more product sales and overcoming objections and highlighting the advantages of my product, and that doesn’t work extraordinarily well in professional services. Mahan taught a methodology that I found to be totally congruent with professional services but also with my own value system, and it was one that stressed understanding the client, understanding their issues, their objectives and delivering exactly the right solution to them. I had the opportunity to go through training with him 4 times over about a 15 year period at a couple of different firms. His firm has since been acquired by Franklin Covey and every salesperson that I have ever had working with me, I’ve always recommended or just gone out and bought his book and given it to them. His book is called Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.

Mahan had a huge impact on me as a salesperson. Second person would be a colleague that I worked with at Mercer when I was first getting involved in business development and we were peers but I came to the role from a technical background, he came to the role from a sales background and his name is Paul Bodkin and Paul taught me a critical lesson. I had been taking a prospect out to lunch having great conversations, giving them great input and we were doing this about every three or four weeks for probably about three or four months and I felt like it was going nowhere. Paul said, “Take me with you next time.”

I took Paul to lunch the next time we did that, we had a great lunch, we had a great conversation. The check came and as I reached for it, Paul clamped his hand down over my wrist and looked at the prospect and he said, “John, this is becoming a social thing. Is there some work we could be doing for you or should be picking up the tab once in a while?” I would never word things in quite that way, but Paul taught me a critical lesson. First of all, the guy laughed and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, we do need some help with our international benefits” and they were a client by the next morning with a signed engagement letter.

Fred Diamond: Who paid for that lunch, by the way?

Phil Curran: I definitely paid for it.

Fred Diamond: That fits in perfectly with the book title you just said, Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play. It’s a very interesting comment by Paul. I remember one of our Sales Game Changers that we interviewed, “We have enough friends and we love to be friends with the people that we’re working with” and then become our customers and we’ve had some people that we’ve interviewed who’ve had 20, 25 year relationships with people. Especially those who sell to the government where the government customer is growing with them and it’s a great story, if you will but when we’re doing the work we’re here to sell you a service, provide you value. Let’s engage in those relationships. That’s a great story.

Phil Curran: Paul taught me to ask for the sale. The last really was my boss throughout most of my tenure at Mercer who is the south east region head named Larry North. Larry was one of those people that did it all well and he had his own style, but what I really learned from him was because he gave me the opportunities to develop new skills and develop my own style, what I learned from him was you can’t look at what Larry does and replicate it. He’s one of those charismatic people that could say anything and chuckle and you’d laugh with him. I don’t have that personality, so what I learned was that I had to adapt all of this to my own personal style.

Fred Diamond: Those are three great stories, there. Phil, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Phil Curran: The fact that I have salespeople at two different ends of the spectrum. In our business, when you acquire a new client they become your client and our producers are compensated based on their book of business. At one end of the spectrum, I have producers with $4 million dollar books in business, at the other end I have new producers who don’t have any clients yet and are still trying to develop them. At the one end of the spectrum with the new producers, we realized that for professional services it takes time to build a pipeline that is going to begin consistently producing revenue and it’s not unusual for a new producer to come to us and take 6, 9, 12 months before they have their first sale.

I am constantly in the role of coach, task master, confessor, therapist and I have to adapt to that on a constant basis. At the other end of the spectrum, I have very accomplished professionals with big books of business and the challenge for them – for some of them, some of them are just totally self-drive, but occasionally you get somebody with a nice, big book of business, they’re making a really good living and they’re comfortable. They’re willing to just sit on it and for them I have to get dynamite underneath their rear ends, blow it up and get them moving again. Those are probably the two biggest challenges is constantly motivating the already very successful people while comforting the ones that haven’t had that taste of success yet.

Fred Diamond: I want to ask you a slightly different question here. Again, we have a lot of Sales Game Changers listening around the world who sell tons of things, typically business to business enterprise type selling. You talked about the two ends of the spectrum. Today in 2019, what makes a good sales professional in your space? Again, in the employee benefits and insurance space. Interestingly you talked about you and Paul or Larry North and the differences in how you all were and you all have become very successful but what makes a good sales professional in this space?

Phil Curran: Balance. I teach some of this to my people, I show them a chart that basically looks at the intersection of IQ, EQ and XQ. IQ being critical thinking ability, not just pure brain power but critical thinking ability. EQ, Emotional Quotient, the ability to read other people’s emotions and tailor your approach to them. When you combine the two of them, you get the ability to have really good discussions that uncover root problems, challenges for the client and begin to develop great solutions to address those problems, then you have to couple that with execution capability. When we see somebody who has that kind of balance where they can do the critical thinking, say the hard things in a soft way and then deliver on them, then we’ve got somebody who’s going to be really successful.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you take us back to the biggest win or the most specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of? I said biggest, it doesn’t have to be the biggest but what’s the one that you’re most proud of?

Phil Curran: It’s not the biggest, but it’s one that I’m really proud of from a sales perspective. Quite a number of years ago – I’m living on past glory – one of my colleagues had a client in Atlanta that was a specialty psychiatric hospital system. They had a subsidiary business that provided managed mental health care. We read about it in the Atlanta Business Chronicle that they were spinning off that business and at the same time acquired that subsidiary’s two largest competitors, so at once they were being spun off from their parent company and merged with their two largest competitors to form a company that had about 60% market share in their business.

I walked in and said, “Are we talking to them about the HR integration post-transaction of all these companies?” He said, “I didn’t even know this was happening.” It happened that he had a relationship with the CEO, we called the CEO of the hospital system. He said, “Here, talk to my senior VP of strategic development in charge of transactions.” We called him and he said, “Yes, we’ve hired consultants.” I’ll tell you how old this was, “We have Coopers and Lybrand handling all of the post-transaction integration except by the systems work, that’s going to be done by Anderson Consulting.” We said, “You should be looking specifically at human resource consolidation, are you?” and he said, “Why should I?”

My colleague looked at me and I jumped in front of the phone and I said, “There’s a conference board report that came out last year, they interviewed over a hundred CEOs who had gone through corporate transactions and what they found was that less than 20% of corporate transactions achieved the desired economic objectives. When they asked the CEOs who had not achieved their desired objectives, what were the principle reasons that you didn’t? The top 5 reasons were all people related. If you are not engaging human resource experts to make sure that the people issues around this transaction allow you to succeed, then you’re going to fail.” We were in his office the next afternoon, the day after that we delivered a proposal and we managed the post-transaction integration of human resource functions. It was an 8 month project that paid us over $1 million and a half dollars and that was about 20 years ago.

Fred Diamond: That’s great for a couple different reasons. One is you knew something that was going to be of value to the customer. I’m just curious, 20 somewhat years ago was the engagement successful from the customer perspective?

Phil Curran: Very. They had some specific – as they said – synergies that needed to be achieved as the result of the HR integrations and we exceeded them by almost 50%. More importantly, we set them up to have a fully functioning HR function in an organization that didn’t have one and was merging with two other organizations, one without one and one with an HR function that just wasn’t capable for an organization of this size. Strategically and economically, it turned out to be an excellent outcome for the client. A thing that I’m proud of is that it would have been really easy to say, “Sorry we came to the game late, good luck” but we kept at it and we were able to wedge ourselves in even after advisers had been selected.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever think to yourself along the way, “It’s too hard, it’s really not for me, I’d like to go back into the practice side”? What do you think?

Phil Curran: No, I really never have. I get a real thrill out of the hunt, very few things give me more satisfaction than going out on sales calls and acquiring new clients. Part of that is my approach is you sell the way you serve. I’m not going out selling to you, I’m going out consulting to you and this will sound bad, but I think anybody that has been in an advisory role as long as I have and been successful has a good, healthy ego. I go into every conversation with a client or a prospective client knowing – not thinking, not believing but knowing – that no one is going to give them a better result and a better outcome than I am. I’m happy to serve, I’m happy to deliver those solutions to the client and if they choose to go a different route I’m sorry for them. [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: Phil, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Phil Curran: First and foremost, remember that selling is an honorable profession and you can sell professionally. The way I approach it, the way my team approaches is as I’ve mentioned before, sell the way you serve. We work with a prospect as we would with a client and we work to uncover the root issues that they are trying to deal with. When a prospect or a client tells us a problem in their employee benefit area, we try to understand how that is impacting the business and we dig deeper. We do a lot of questioning to get at underlying issues to understand barriers to successfully implementing a solution and then we deliver to them exactly the right solution.

The way I’ve defined, the way my team defines exactly the right solution, it’s nothing more than the client needs but nothing less than what’s possible. If we do that, if we really get at their problem, we present exactly the right solution and we help them understand the real return on the investment. Not just, “It’ll save you $2 million dollars in your medical plan and you’re only spending $100,000 to get it” but look at what does that also do to your business. Then we have the ability to really create strategic as well as financial impact for the client. I think that for most salespeople, if they will do that, they transform themselves from selling a product or selling a service to potentially becoming a trusted adviser.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Phil Curran: I was an athlete through college, I’m not anymore. I write fiction, I have two published novels and my family is critically important to me. We spend lots of time together, I have two grown daughters, two grandchildren and I have two younger sons, one that’s a senior in high school and one that’s in eighth grade. My sons play rugby and hockey and we are incessantly at sporting events. My wife and I fortunately both love sports, I grew up a huge football fan, hockey fan, my wife is a huge hockey fan and we’ve both come to love rugby. I played rugby in college and men’s clubs after. For me, it’s all about stepping back away from and recharging, for me is family time and a little bit of introspective time where I indulge my artistic side and I write.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Phil Curran: My success is really dependent upon the success of all the producers that work in my practice, my major initiatives are helping to make sure that every time they go out on an appointment, they’re as prepared as possible. USI is terrific about having institutionalized certain processes to ensure that, but going into 2019 I’ve worked with my team to re-tool the way we do it. Our thought is that ever first appointment is gold, and we’re going to treat it that way.

We meet and all the producers on our team listen in while every producer with a first appointment presents the client, the business issues, the solutions that they’re thinking might resonate with that client and all the other producers share their collective knowledge about, “I used to have as a client a company that that vice president of human resources used to work for, I know that they’re particularly concerned about these issues”, “I used to call on that company, I know that their CFO likes to see…”

By the time we pool together out market intelligence and our collective benefits knowledge, we’re able to prepare that producer to go in and have a very successful first meeting. One of the things I’m really proud of is that for our practice, we have a metric that looks at every time one of our producers goes out on a first appointment, how frequently does that company become a client within 12 months of that first meeting. For our practice, that metric is 11%. I think that’s pretty great, it’s higher than our company average, it’s certainly much higher than industry average but my goal is to improve that by 15% so I’m looking to bump that up to 12.65%.

Fred Diamond: What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Phil Curran: There aren’t many legal things you can do that give you the kind of thrill that sales does.

Fred Diamond: Being a published author, by the way, is one that would definitely give me a lot of thrill so good for you.

Phil Curran: Thank you, that was a great charge seeing the first book that comes off the line. The thrill of the hunt is part of it but also one of the things that when you’re at a leadership role at USI, you are a part owner of the firm. If you’re not growing, you’re dying so I have a significant portion of my retirement future tied up in the success of USI, and while the company provides fantastic tools and I have fantastic people working with me, it’s up to me to make sure that they’re properly trained, executing and meeting all the goals that we have set for them. I have the advantage of that incentive of being a part owner but honestly, I’d be doing this even if I weren’t. I love doing it, I am blessed to have stumbled into an industry that I love right out of college.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire our listeners today?

Phil Curran: Fred, I think at least within professional services, the term “trusted adviser” is bandied about a lot and everybody says that they are a trusted adviser. I’m going to push back and say, “No, you’re not.” A gentleman named David Maister actually wrote a book called The Trusted Adviser and I think Maister is fantastic when it comes to professional service for management. What he put forward I think really transformed the way I look at the client adviser relationship – and this is what we aspire to, knowing that we’ll probably never really get there.

The relationship exists on two dimensional plane and a client can hire you either just for task completion or they can open up the kimono, share all their secrets, allow you to really see everything that’s driving their issues and collaborate with you, that’s their choice. The adviser can either just deliver technical expertise or they can make the effort to understand the client’s issues and deliver something that is a real business solution. If all you’re delivering is technical expertise, you’re a hired gun.

Unfortunately, this is where a lot of professional service firms are and I had a client point out to me one day that if you’ve ever watched any western movies, you know that hired guns are a dime a dozen, very often die and so they’re just dispensable. If you move along that spectrum, somewhere in the middle is where most professional service firms exist and most advisers exist. You’re a steady supplier, but you’re really not part of the fabric of the client organization and you’re really not delivering business solutions but if you can get to where the client includes you as part of the fabric of the organization, you understand their issues and you’re delivering solutions that really impact the business, then you’re in a trusted adviser role.

I aspire to that, all my team inspires to it and I think if you’re in professional services, attaining that role is like, “I’ve hit nirvana.”

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 129: USI Insurance Services’ Phil Curran Shares Three Strategies Sales Professionals Must Implement Today to Reach Trusted Advisor Nirvana first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 057: GRIT, Tenacity and Solid Planning Have Helped Dario Campolattaro Reach the Sales Summit for a Quarter Century

Dario Campolattaro is the CEO for Summit Insurance Services. He’s responsible for the leadership, direction, strategy and growth of Summit Insurance Service.

Summit Insurance Services provides insurance consultation and support for employers of 50 to one thousand employees in the Washington DC metro market.

With his team, Dario has positioned Summit as subject matter experts in health and welfare benefits along with healthcare reform.

Summit helps its clients in three key areas: Negotiating plan design and pricing, communication and support and compliance.

Find Dario on LinkedIN!

Fred Diamond: What exactly do you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Dario Campolattaro: The primary function of what Summit Insurance Services does is consult and sell insurance to employers in the DC metro market. Again, it’s probably about 50 to a thousand employees, we work with those employers to develop, execute, support a comprehensive benefit package for their employees.

Fred Diamond: What type of companies do you typically sell to? You gave us the number, but what type of industries do these companies usually fall in?

Dario Campolattaro: It’s really across the board, Fred, so if you think about any business that has insurance for their employees – and that’s a huge issue for most employers nowadays, both for keeping and attracting talent and most importantly for managing their cost – we work with restaurants, we work with government contractors, we work in telecom, IT, construction, you name it, we help those employers. If they have insurance for their employees, we’re a consultant that can help them.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you first got into sales as a career. Have you always been selling insurance? Tell us how you knew that sales was the career for you.

Dario Campolattaro: I wish I could say I grew up as a little boy wanting to me an insurance salesman but that’s not necessarily how it happened. I fell into sales early in my career about 22 years old, I stumbled into an opportunity to work for an insurance company out at Baltimore, MAMSI health plans and it took me a little time but then maybe over the course of some years I figured out that maybe I had some skills in this space and really learned the trade. I wouldn’t say I was a natural born salesman.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you recall from your early days that you still utilize today?

Dario Campolattaro: I think the biggest one is just tenacity. I learned early on in my career that sometimes hard work can trump talent when it comes to sales, the person who wants it more can win and I kind of hold true to that still today.

Fred Diamond: Give us some examples. What would that look like in your day to day or for some of the sales professionals who work for you, what would that tenacity look like?

Dario Campolattaro: I think it might vary for industries, certainly, but for us it’s really connecting with as many people as possible on a daily basis either through phone, LinkedIn, social media, networking events and telling our story, telling our value proposition and how we can help them. The consistency and the tenacity in doing that every day for a long period of time is probably one of the biggest challenges in being able to be successful in this business.

Fred Diamond: You’ve been in insurance sales how long now has it been?

Dario Campolattaro: 25 years.

Fred Diamond: 25 years, congratulations.

Dario Campolattaro: Thanks.

Fred Diamond: You must have seen tons of people who haven’t made it, but then there’s also a whole bunch of guys like you and ladies who have made it. Is it a huge drop off? Is it one of those industries where people just maybe start and just kind of keep dropping off like flies, or what have you seen?

Dario Campolattaro: I think in insurance sales specifically I think there’s probably a pretty decent amount of churn. I think some people in their careers often times I’ll talk to people and they say, “Oh, yeah, I tried insurance or I thought about going into insurance.” There is a pretty high level of fall off, I think like most sales jobs, somebody has to give it a fair 3 to 5 years to really feel and determine if they’re going to be successful in the industry. It’s really about sticking with it and just persevering through those kind of tough first couple years grinding it out.

Fred Diamond: We’re going to ask a question later on about the career in sales and how hard and challenging it is but since you brought it up, did you have those moments along the way where it just wasn’t looking like this was the best thing for you to do as a career?

Dario Campolattaro: Absolutely. A few times I remember early on in my career when I first started sales we started putting our goals together. One of my first managers said, “Hey, we’re going to do our goals.” One of my first goals was I wanted to be in that job in six months and I was really questioning if I was going to be there in six months and then the next time a year went by and I was there, and I put that same goal on my list and continued to push through and keep that up.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about you specifically. What specifically are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Dario Campolattaro: I’m brilliant in many ways, Fred.

Fred Diamond: [Laughs]

Dario Campolattaro: I will tell you that. But I can only take a couple minutes here to tell you. I try to position myself as a strategic partner to my clients really helping them develop a benefit plan and design that is both competitive and attractive in keeping talent, and equally important – sometimes more important – is keeping their cost down. The rising cost of healthcare is astronomical and what we try to do and personally is try to consult in how they can manage those benefits and keep their cost down while still attracting and retaining talent.

Fred Diamond: I imagine over a long 25 year career that you’ve had some very impactful sales career mentors. Why don’t you tell us about a mentor or two and how they impacted your career?

Dario Campolattaro: I can think of a few and often times I think about mentors or a role model and sometimes I struggle to find those people but there are a couple people that made an impression on my mind. One of them was one of my first CEO’s and he really instilled the notion of goal setting and writing those goals down. One of the old things I remember and I’ve never fact checked this, but if you write a goal down you have an 80% chance of hitting that goal. I’ve always been a big believer in writing those goals down, both professional and personal goals and visiting them periodically throughout the year and updating them every year.

Fred Diamond: What are two of the biggest challenges that you’re facing today as a sales leader?

Dario Campolattaro: I would say personally my biggest challenge right now as a sales leader is finding good sales producers. People that are willing to put the stick-to-itiveness into the profession of sales. Sales is a very challenging but very rewarding business. Finding those people that are willing to have that grit and that fire in their belly to be successful seems to be a little more difficult to find.

The other one which is closely related is keeping those people. At times what I’ve discovered is I can help identify some of that talent, nurture them over a couple of years and either their patience runs out for the length of time it takes to be successful at this business or they choose to go back to a prior career that they had that was more comfortable. Again, not everybody’s cut for sales.

Fred Diamond: If you were to hire some people today, what are some of the things, more specifically, that you would look for in the sales people who would be successful long term working for a company like Summit Insurance Services?

Dario Campolattaro: There are some of the basic ones that would be very personable, outgoing, some of the basic sales traits. I think right now the profession of sales you have to be much more consultative. You have to be good at listening which again is not a characteristic most sales people have, but then at some of the more basic ones I would say tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, grit I mentioned earlier and probably most importantly somebody who’s disciplined in practicing their skill set every day for a long period of time.

Fred Diamond: For someone who would come into a company like yours, how many – just to give our audience, the Sales Game Changers listening today – how many new clients would they need to bring on in a continual basis to have a successful career in sales?

Dario Campolattaro: That’s a tough question to answer simply, but I would say it doesn’t require a tremendous amount of new client acquisition, it’s really about bringing on the right client and the sales lead for employee benefits and employee benefit consulting is pretty long. But I would say if somebody’s bringing on a new client, one every other month, six in a year, they can have a pretty good career in this business. If they keep that up it has to continue because in insurance you’re building up a book of business so you have to do it year in, year out.

Fred Diamond: Dario, take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of. Take us back to that moment.

Dario Campolattaro: If I go back to my career, my #1 win was a car dealership I had in Baltimore, that’s a pretty interesting part of the Baltimore market. It was a car dealership and I was green as grass at that point. I was probably 23, 24 years old calling on the controller of a large automobile dealership meeting with the owner of the dealership and pretty intimidating but through just sticking with it, being available, responsive, present in front of the client allowed me to win that business. I remember fondly, it’s a great win.

Fred Diamond: One quick question as it relates to that. I have to imagine your industry as extremely competitive.

Dario Campolattaro: Absolutely.

Fred Diamond: Obviously people who watch TV know of a lot of big brands, if you will, but also on the B to B side there’s a whole bunch of other companies that offer the types of products that you do. Besides the tenacity and grit and process, what are some of the things that would lead someone to leave their insurance provider for a company like yours?

Dario Campolattaro: I think the good news about our industry is there has a tendency to be complacency. Our objective is to help the client who’s being under-served and identifying that client not necessarily pointing out why they’re being under-served but demonstrating to them all the ways that we can help them. The insurance industry today has become very complex with healthcare reform, compliance, regulatory challenges and our job is to really help fill those needs and ensure that we can protect our clients and win them over based on some of the services that they’re not getting today from the current consultant and the broker.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales? Earnestly, was there ever a moment where you really said to yourself, “This is just too hard, it really isn’t for me”?

Dario Campolattaro: I guess the honest answer, I’d say yes. Probably in those early years, again no one’s growing up and saying, “I want to be an insurance salesman” when they grow up but insurance has proven to be a great field for me and it serves many people well. It’s good work. I think about a couple times absolutely I came to crossroads and saying, “Well, maybe it’s time to look somewhere else.”

The IT industry has boomed and at times I’ve looked out the window a bit but insurance has been steady-Eddy on both a few different economic downturns, insurance continues to be a very stable industry to be in.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned that one of the biggest challenges you face is finding good sales producers and then of course retaining them. Give us a little bit of a commercial here on the profession of insurance sales. Why would someone who has an option who’s 22 or something or 23 who’s considering sales, why would they want to sell insurance as compared to IT or media services or something like that?

Dario Campolattaro: I think that’s a two part question. One is the company I work for which is Summit. We have a lot of great ways that we support our producers, train our producers and give them a career ahead of them and that’s really the cornerstone of this industry, it’s a career. It’s not something somebody’s going to trial on for a year or two and try something else.

We want to really partner with somebody that’s going to have a long term, thriving success in this industry and it’s stability, it’s building a book of business so as you’re selling, you’re getting basically annuitizing your business which gives you up time potential down the road. It really elevates who you’re going to be working with as far as in the market place.

Fred Diamond: Dario, let’s get some of your tips on how the Sales Game Changers listening today can get ahead. First, what is the most important thing you want to get across to selling professionals listening to today’s podcast to help them improve their career?

Dario Campolattaro: Absolutely. I think one of the key things I would say to a junior, an up and coming sales person is you’ve got to have a business development plan. I think one of the biggest challenges in this industry or really in any sales industry is who are you going to be telling your story to. Who are you going to sell? But more importantly, how are you going to do it and how are you going to get in front of them and present that value proposition. I would say you’ve got to have a plan, a BD plan and you’ve got to work it pretty aggressively, long term.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things you do specifically to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Dario Campolattaro: I would say twofold. One is I currently and actively develop business so I want to stay in front of a customer. I want to be able to say to a sales person that I know what they’re going through because I’m going through it, too. That’s first and foremost.

The other is I like to sharpen my pencil by getting out in the field and developing new business, too. So I have a book of business that I manage and service but I also like to get out and shake some hands and try to bring in some business as well.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Dario Campolattaro: At Summit I’m excited because we try to stay forward thinking so the insurance industry is a relatively stagnant type of industry, not one that I would say is forward thinking. At Summit we’re trying to be innovative, dynamic, fluid, forward thinking, flexible and these are terms again that aren’t normally related to insurance. And we’re doing that through being very consultative, being subject matter experts in the key things that clients are looking for and really sum it up to ability to negotiate pricing and plan designs, support and response time and then most importantly right now is compliance.

Fred Diamond: Sales is hard. People don’t return your calls. You talked about the need to continually be tenacious and it’s hard to be tenacious. People don’t return your calls or your emails. Why have you continued? What again is it about sales as a career that keeps you going?

Dario Campolattaro: It’s definitely the hunt and then the win, but it seems to be that as I look back on those wins the hunt is almost the better part and really the pursuit of chasing that prospect, and it is hard. I grew with it, Fred. The sales industry is a tough industry, I don’t care what you’re selling, I think it’s going to be difficult but if you have the tenacity and the passion and really the desire to be successful, I think it’s one of the few professions that still allows somebody to do that that maybe doesn’t really have a professional background, so to speak.

Fred Diamond: Give us one final thought to inspire our listeners.

Dario Campolattaro: My final thought on that would be if you’re going to choose to be in the sales profession, you have to practice your art, your craft. You have to understand your products, you have to be accurate, incredible and I think most importantly what I try to talk about with my team is you’ve got to elevate your game. How do you differentiate yourself against the other person in your field and elevate your position in front of your prospects.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 057: GRIT, Tenacity and Solid Planning Have Helped Dario Campolattaro Reach the Sales Summit for a Quarter Century first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.