I was talking recently to an insurance agent who specializes in working with high-income professionals and entrepreneurs. He’s quite selective and does very well, making sure that prospects understand his expectations and ways of doing things before he takes them on as clients.
Even so, however, he agrees that entrepreneurs can be a tough sell. He lives by two rules:
1) Full disclosure: He makes sure clients understand what he sells, why he sells them, and where his income comes from. And he makes sure that he personally owns every product that he sells. If it’s not good enough for him, it’s not good enough for his clients.
2) Options: Once he understands his client’s needs, he researches them diligently and presents three or four different ways the entrepreneur can achieve his or her objectives. That gives him a chance to educate his clients by going through the alternatives, and, presumably, gives the entrepreneur a comfortable feeling of having some control in the process.
You can frame the planner’s conclusion:
“To get an entrepreneur to buy anything, you have to have full disclosure and options.”
