Mentoring Relationship

Mentoring Relationships
Norman G. Levine, CLU, ChFC

Our industry is rapidly changing, and I think mentoring will become one of the most important future functions of the career agents system. For your information, recruiting as an industry effort is way down- training departments, almost across the board, are way down.
- A lot of companies no longer have management development and management training programs.
- Agencies have fewer second line leaders, and often no one has the capacity or the time to train new agents.
- There are a lot of alternative distribution systems currently being tested by the companies as they try to figure out some way to distribute the product cheaper than the agency force.
Product dependency
The thing that concerns me the most is that in the pat 10 years I have seen agents develop a product dependency so fierce they believe that if they can’t run a ledger sheet that beats the competition, they can’t sell.
What happened to conceptual selling?
- Love and emotional selling?
- High touch selling?
It has faded out of our system because we’re spending more time figuring out how to do a ledger sheets and proposals than we are talking to people about Love, empathy, compassion, and little red wagons. MDRT members still know how to do that, but I think it’s a very serious and real problem for the rest of the industry.
Role Models
Most of us are products of those who came before, but there aren’t enough of us volunteering to become tomorrow’s role models. Many of the most successful people are lone rangers and form their own producers groups.
Working together
We’re trying to get agents to work with other agents and get them to the MDRT. We have put together a plan flexible enough so that almost any relationship should improve the aspirant’s productivity. It is flexible enough so if they just want to meet over coffee every two weeks, that’s Okay. If they want to meet every day and have a lots of joint work, that’s okay too. Our research discovered that an aspirant in a mentoring relationship is much more likely to survive in the business and to prosper. As a matter of fact, most agents we interviewed told us that they wouldn’t have made it to MDRT if they hadn’t had a mentor themselves.
More success and retention
We’re looking at this program as a way to grow better, more successful, more profitable, and happier agents with interrelationships that will benefit just about everybody. The advantages of this program are universal, and there are no disadvantages.
-The client’s advantage is also clear.
Through the mentoring process the clients will benefit by getting a better sales recommendation, better post-sale service and a quality successor agents if the aspirants fails.
-This program is based on volunteerism by MDRT agents. We’re trying to get vertical production growth from the industry and start seeing significant increase in agent productivity.
-Comments from the pilot program we ran are interesting- there isn’t a bad one. “It’s made the business better “
“I’m seeing more people”
“I’m excited”
“I’m getting into markets I never thought I could get into”
“They love the mentoring relationship” are just a few examples

The mentoring program may well be the first step in reversing the trend of agent and agency system erosion and the start of a new field- motivated expansion of agent qualification and peer capita productivity.
This program is very flexible, adaptable system. I strongly endorse your personal involvement
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In these times, we need to position AIA has a company who provides mentoring program that ensure success. Brand the AIA mentoring image
Build this into your career presentation and look towards the BPO to structure this mentoring program in your local operation.

It’s a double edge sword that sharpens the MDRT (mostly leaders) to perform better as Mentor and position them to better attract high flyers.
The aspirant / potential new candidate will be attracted to this cutting edge approach to success.

This call for a above the line thinking and working towards win-win.
For things to change I must first change!
Look out for my next article on the application of this ………
Richaard Wong
Assistant Vice President