As many of you know, I started my journey in the States as a Financial Advisor. I was hired by one of the top Financial Services Firms in the world but I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. My sales manager obviously didn’t have time to teach me how to finesse things or how to elegantly maneuver through marketing, prospecting and closing the sale, so he gave me a hammer. Not a literal hammer of course. He gave me a script and stack of old leads and taught me to hammer people until they agreed to a meeting. When they reluctantly came in for the meeting, I was given an initial-meeting script and taught to hammer them into buying a financial plan. I was good at it, pretty handy with a hammer, even if I do say so myself.
I had a really tough first ten weeks but then after I mastered the hard sell, I had a really good first three years. Everything was new and exciting and I didn’t pick my head up long enough to really think about it. I worked 8am to 8pm. I got off at 5pm on Friday (which felt like noon) and ONLY worked a half day on Saturday. It was a 60-hour week but it wasn’t bad at all.
At some point though I started to get tired. I’d outlasted literally hundreds (I’m not kidding) of other newly licensed advisors but I was done. Burnt out. I didn’t particularly like the stock market all that much (2008 had taken a toll on me) but I could’ve made peace with that. I was just worn out and needed a change.
Looking back, a different approach to selling in that career may have allowed me to stick it out. If I knew then what I know now (yes, that old chestnut) I may have made it. I would’ve had a slower rise to fame for sure. I wouldn’t have made nearly as much money in those first three years but I’d still be in the game.
This is just one of the things I’ve come to realize I would’ve done differently over the years, there are many more. How to finesse the world of sales through marketing is (unfortunately) a skill that we acquire at a price. My hope is that in these articles you might find a piece of information that tips you off to something you could change now before you too ruin a perfectly good career… (sorry, that was dramatic wasn’t it)…
Daniel is the owner of Obvious Advertising. Based in Lake Charles, La he teaches business owners to make love not war, after all it’s a marathon not a sprint. He also doesn’t mind using multiple metaphors in a single sentence…
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