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Agents of Change

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This, I have Learnt!

Administrator — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:30:44 +0000

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‘How Are You Different?’

Administrator — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:30:24 +0000

‘How are You Different?’

That question from a major prospect kick-started the agency career of

Mr D V Suresh of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Hyderabad, about 11 years ago. Looking back, it was not so much a question as a demand. One for which he had no immediate answer.

But that was a defining moment (more of that later). Mr Suresh decided, then and there, to “spend each day making myself different” from the run-of-the-mill insurance agent. And rising to the challenge of that question is something he is grateful for since; he can now see a future “even rosier than the past, though these are tough times for this profession.”

In 1999, when the Asian financial crisis hit hard, Mr Suresh had lost his business and ended up with substantial debts. He was the India distributor for a Korea-based electronic components maker and ran also his own Singapore office. “I had to wind up the office in Singapore and nearly do the same in India,” he recalls.

But, with more than a decade in business, he was not going to go back to employment. He had to be in business, but one that did not need capital investment.

His basic degree was in Commerce and he had even passed his CA Inter. That was the time the insurance industry was opening up in India and, “so I thought I would explore what this is all about.” LIC, he thought, would be the best place. And, over a mug of beer, a close friend told him: “Don’t waste your capabilities. Take up insurance agency and, once you get set up, get into some other business. So I got into it and, here I am, 11 years later,” he laughs.

From Pitroda to Policies

For over 15 years he had been in the telecom industry as an employee and then as a businessman. Sam Pitroda’s telecom mission saw coin-operated phone booths sprouting up in every nook and corner and that was where Mr Suresh had been.

From there to selling insurance policies was, well, a leap in the darkness. “I knew nothing about this thing (insurance).” So, he thought in true entrepreneurial style, “the best thing for me was to just get going!”

He went to meet a Development Officer (DO) in LIC through a friend and his first statement to the DO was point-blank: “I want Rs 30,000 a month, can I earn that?” Yes was the answer. He signed on at once.

Starting Point

That was when it happened. A friend suggested that he meet the Chairman of a multinational whom he could fix an appointment with. It was Mr Suresh’s first professional meeting with a prospect. And he did everything by the book. Having arrived at the prospect’s office with time to spare and a senior official in tow, he just waited for the Chairman to turn up.

And as this big-shot prospect strode in, he asked: “How are you different from others?”

It was in your face, as it were, and the blank response from his colleague didn’t help either. But that set Mr Suresh thinking about what this business was all about. “I just came out and, for the next six months, my only job was to become different.” For that he read books on how this business worked, attended training courses and talked to successful seniors. And there was a lot of legwork and strategising.

“I was trying to do new things in the field and I believed in one thing: To educate my customers and prospects. Be educated and educate.That has taken me quite far,” so much so that he has never asked anyone to buy a particular policy. Plus, “this is a service industry. Service has has to come from the heart.”

Small wonder, growth has been continuous and, yes, he didn’t forget to email that prospect, thanking him.

Continuous Learning

Learning has been a continuous process for Mr Suresh, who qualified for Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) for the first time in 2003 (production in the year 2002) and became a member. He has, subsequently, qualified in 2010 and 2011 and is planning to achieve Court of the Table (CoT) in 2012.

“Recently I cleared the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) exams, it gives a different perspective on your potential and abilities,” he says. It came with a price though: One and a half years of “sincere and regular studies, the sacrifice of some business, resetting priorities…”

Fresh from the exams, he recalls the ‘Challenge Status’ paper with a mixture of mild horror and glee. It was a case study with 60 questions to answer and involved calculations and a thorough knowledge of taxation, investment planning, retirement planning and risk analysis, and such.

“Many people discouraged me, saying ‘You can’t do it at this age.’ But I attempted it once and, to be honest, I feel I have a new life after finishing my CFP. Normally people start thinking of retirement at 50! Not for us financial planners!”.

“Such qualifications are a must given the changes happening in the industry. Professional qualifications mean a lot to clients. As a financial planner you open up your mind from the client’s point of view and get involved in everything from estate planning to insurance.”

“Back in Hyderabad we are seeing how best we can popularise this among the youngsters who want to take it up. In the agency profession what we have in India is quantity. That is why the regulators are gunning for us.”

Not by Exams Alone

Professionalism, though, is not all about exams. Take the case of a Rs 5-crore insurance cover Mr Suresh was trying to sell to a Hyderabad family. This was at the early stages of his new career in 2000 and the client took great pleasure in asking him tricky questions and making him run around.

“But it was worth it. In those years, you could see hoardings across the city about insurance since the first few private insurance firms had just started business. The client would make a note of the news clippings and ads and say, ‘Suresh this looks better than what you gave me…’”

“I used to go and find out what the other companies were offering and learn what LIC could counter it with. This continued for two months and it was the best learning time for me. Fortunately, I had some among my prospects who kept asking me questions and I kept learning!”

Cut-throat Competition

Every agent has a horror story of pursuing that big client only to see, after doing all the hard work, the business being gifted away to the client’s brother-in-law. Mr Suresh’s story ended with his company sending another agent in an effort to close a case real fast. A case that started as a Rs 50-crore policy and stood at a stage where the client wanted similar policies for his two sons as well!

The client froze the proposal at this breach of protocol of two agents from the same company pursuing him after he had made his decision to buy and was working out the modalities. And, though he wanted the policy and his international group’s auditors in the UK had approved it, the policy, 10 years on, still remains untaken.

Mr Suresh puts down the failure to “taking several big wigs from my office to observe seniority and protocol”. Later, he reflected on the situation: “If I did not feel that something was lacking in me I would not have taken them with me. I realised I am capable of talking to any prospect at any level, so I don’t take anyone with me anymore. I decided that my knowledge and confidence would always be my only companions when I call on a client.”

The Master’s Words

Mr Suresh still marvels at the words of Mr Mehdi Fakharzadeh, the legendary Irananian insurance agent. “At 92, he says he wants to do $500 million in one year! With a couple of his own aircraft and jetting around the world at will, he still dreams… I was left wondering whether we would reach his age and still have such dreams!”

The master’s words to him, at Vancouver at the MDRT Annual Meet in 2010, still stay with him. “Son, listen,” he said, “Maintain your ethics and do business. Do it your way.”

Insurance does Pay

Decrying the current trend of overlooking insurance as an important investment, Mr Suresh says that it is like steel in a building’s structure, invisible, but giving strength to the building.

“Another unfortunate thing is that all the financial papers and TV say ‘Buy only term insurance, and not endowment’. That is a fallacy, as the 529 Plan in the US, an education savings plan to help families set aside funds for children’s college education, demonstrates. Many NRI clients have agreed with me about endowment policies giving them some money irrespective of market conditions. They do save us from the downside”.

Term cover is a must to provide for the major risk of the person dying. But what about his needs? “Can’t tell your children that the market is down, please wait, I can’t take the money out…I also explain to them that if they look at an endowment policy and take out the term component, the return is really reasonable.”

Ups and Downs

When he lost everything in his business, the family was shocked and he had very small children. “Worst, I had nasty reactions from relatives. The only people who stood by me were my father and my wife.”

“My father told me to look after the business and he would look after the family, confident that I would repay every rupee I owed. Within two years I bought a car – I was confident of my direction and it was clear you could not carry a bag and travel in a two-wheeler and do business.”

As for his wife, “she has seen the worst of times with me. The graphs are not constantly up in this business. Now she has learnt hope.”

And there have been people who had instilled in him with the same ‘habit’ of hope: Mr Suri Seeta Ram, Senior LIC Agent at Hyderabad, ‘Pappaji’ Mr P S Kochchar of LIC, Mumbai, who founded Life Insurance Round Table (LIRT), and Mr P Srinivasan, the ‘thalaivar’ who founded Life Underwriters Guild of India (LUGI).

No wonder, Mr Suresh says: “It’s been a great journey. And there is no retirement in our business…”

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Doing What it Takes…

Administrator — Fri, 13 May 2011 04:30:07 +0000

Mr P R K Nagaraju Agent, LIC, Hyderabad

‘Know what you are doing,’ perhaps best sums up this live-wire performer’s professional credo. Which, of course, means you know well what’s the latest concerning your field, which never stops changing, says K Nitya Kalyani.

Go to the big city, learn a simple but in-demand skill like typewriting and shorthand, and you are set for life.

Find out what skills you need for the next, bigger job, learn them by yourself, get to a good position in your profession, realise that you constantly need bigger and better qualifications and happily work for them to keep riding high.

From one philosophy of work to another is a huge leap. But it is one that is becoming more common among insurance agents today.

An example is Mr P R K Nagaraju, Agent, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Hyderabad. Interestingly, he is better known as a leading agent of LIC Housing Finance, having taken up a full-time career in 1997 in financial intermediation, specifically in helping individuals get housing loans. Insurance was an add-on product that he sold those days since he had an LIC agency from 1994. There was no agency system for housing loans yet as competition from the private sector was still to hot up, and insurance commissions were the only means of earning. It was also a time when a ‘large’ housing loan would be around Rs 5 lakh. Today the minimum housing loan is Rs 20 lakh!

“Those days the typical housing loan application was bulky with documents and it used to take so many days to complete. I have even waited 4 to 5 hours in queue for submitting the papers!,” he says. Today the rules have eased up because builders want the money and they are hurrying up the loan companies. The procedures are the same but they are easier to handle.

Insurance too has changed, he says. “Those days we had to convince clients to buy insurance policies. Nowadays they are coming to us with greater awareness. It is easier. Once we develop a relationship with the client we have to work hard. And once they are happy with us they will, simply, seek us out!”

City Chalo!

In 1986, Mr Nagaraju and a few friends from West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh came to Hyderabad city to find jobs. He learnt typing and shorthand, the success formula of many an immigrant and worked as a steno for 10 years supporting his family of his coal businessman father, his mother and two sisters. His father passed away in 1992, increasing his responsibility at the age of about 23.

“In 1994, an LIC Development Officer offered me an agency and I, without any knowledge of insurance, took it up right away,” Mr Nagaraju recollects. His office colleagues went through the process of getting housing loans and he jumped in to help them and others like them. Soon, he was in demand and started helping people with the complicated and rigorous documentation needed for obtaining the loan which was, at that time, difficult to get.

“I used to give very good service, starting from outstanding amounts and technical documentation,” he says, but the real asset he was developing was relationships. These relationships converted into insurance policies that brought him income.

As he puts it, “Demand is there, it is easy to get housing loan business. Once that is done, to get insurance business is very easy.” And that is how he developed a clientele running into about 2,500 families and obtained loans of about Rs 2,500 crore over the years!

When he started off, housing loans were indeed a very, very tough job; no agency system or formalised remuneration system. Insurance policy commissions were the only source of income. But in the early to mid-2000s, once private housing finance companies, especially the ICICI group entities, brought in the agency system, older companies also started similar schemes.

“Now we get remuneration of 0.3 to 0.6 per cent depending on annual volumes,” says Mr Nagaraju, who was one of the top housing loan agents in India five years ago. “But for that we would have left the housing loan business!”

The flip side is that ‘”most people doing housing loans are not active in any other financial service.” The hectic schedules and the time-bound nature of the activity – you can’t postpone taking a housing loan! – make them unable to concentrate on other services, he says. “But I did not leave insurance and have done both side by side.”

More horses to ride

Among the top housing loan agents in the country and an MDRT qualifier in 2009, Mr Nagaraju is now following up on the awareness that he has to move from the ‘sales’ mode to the ‘advisory’ mode, a transformation he finds ‘fascinating’. “It’s tough to do, very tough but I have changed my approach to customers to suit theirs. I don’t ask anyone to take policies, I give them good suggestions for their benefit, and they are satisfied and recognise me the moment they receive my calls”.

These past 18 months he has been reading up for the Chartered Financial Planner (CFP) exams of the Financial Standards Planning Board (FPSB). He cleared the final exams of CFP in late April 2011; of the five papers, Insurance and Retirement are his favourites. “But all subjects are interesting and valuable and to give good service you should be good at all of them…”

“Mr Suri Seeta Ram, my senior colleague at Secunderabad LIC, was the one who motivated me to to do CFP. For about four months we studied for the exams daily in his office! Only because of him and Mr D V Suresh (also a senior LIC Agent in Hyderabad), I could complete the exams,” he says and adds, laughing, that after graduation he had not ‘exerted’ himself with academics as the “Calculations, etc. were very tough for me!”

Mr P Srinivasan, Founder-President of Life Underwriters Guild of India (LUGI), also inspired him to do CFP and increase his professional competence. “He is my guru,”

Mr Nagaraju says, and he attends LUGI meetings every year. If one can earn Rs 60,000 to 70,000 without qualifications, then it is “very worth it” to get qualifications to do better, he adds.

And, three years ago, he added another product to his portfolio: Mutual funds. Small wonder, his level of business now keeps his office with 11 staffers busy!

Article of faith

“I have always been happy about having taken up this profession,” says Mr Nagaraju earnestly. And to think that this was the man to whom one DO said: “You have come to this profession unthinkingly”! That bit about his having sleepwalked into the profession remains an amusing recollection for this performer par excellence.

“The simple fact is that once I entered this field I took it seriously and whatever I have to do to perform well, I am doing it,” he says.

“My best friend since starting the agency has been Mr T V Subba Rao, a sales tax consultant who started in his profession along with me. From him I learnt an important value. Do what you are supposed to do and don’t do what you are not supposed to do.” And he couldn’t agree with Mr Rao more!

There have been cases where he has convinced a prospect to buy a policy, only to have him turn around and ask for a commission rebate. “Whatever the size of the policy, I am ready to lose it on the spot, but I won’t rebate my commission because that is something I am not supposed to do. I simply tell them, ‘if you want take it or don’t’.”

One incident he recalls is a client of two years standing who called up very annoyed with Mr Nagaraju. The premium the client was paying was Rs 1.5 lakh and now he had bought a new policy from another agent who gave him a rebate. Taken aback, Mr Nagaraju explained that he was not supposed to give rebates but was bound to give good service. “If you feel that you have not received service then I will return the commission to you,” he told the client.

In a few months he got an apologetic call from the same client, saying he got a rebate from the other agent, but not service, and that he would be only be too happy to be get service and not rebate from Mr Nagaraju!

Servicing the client well and giving product information without hiding anything, are his two professional tenets. And that has taken Mr Nagaraju far: He has floated a private limited company that has a turnover of Rs 35-40 lakh now and, in five years, he wants to increase it ten fold.

Expertise rules

For a person who has always been keen to hone his professional skills, Mr Nagaraju is only walking the talk when he says: “Expertise rules”. For example, he has renovated his office which is in a prominent location on the main road. It is architect-designed and “the Rs 50,000 I paid for professional advice resulted in my getting ‘everything good’.”

“I have visited numerous homes and buildings since 1997 since I handle housing loans and I could have tried to do something on my own, but I am not an expert. I believe that whatever the services we access, take them from the experts in the field. If you want title clearance, go to a lawyer and you can be at peace.Similarly, when people want financial advice, they should think of coming to you…”

“In loans, say, if one friend helps another, complete and up-to-date compliance of rules and procedures is not guranteed. Rules change. Some gaps can crop up. But if you go to an expert who has been doing just this for 15 or 20 years, he will definitely be up-to-date and that will be your strength,” he adds.

As for new agents, Mr Nagaraju’s bottomline is: Start doing housing loans. You will get enough referrals and happy clients to easily establish yourself in the insurance agency business.

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Administrator — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:30:13 +0000

There are many with lots of money but who don’t know they are under-insured. The real pity is that even the intermediaries don’t recognise this home truth, says this very successful sports hack-turned-insurance agent says K Nitya Kalyani.

Mr Sutram Suresh, Agent, Life Insurance Corporation of India, Bengaluru

From writing about cricketing celebrities to selling insurance! Trust Mr Sutram Suresh to know what the name of the game is! Just a few years into his agency, he does not amble along at his own pace. He achieved his Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) qualification in his second year of full-time agency and has qualified for Top of the Table (ToT) in 2010!

After changing his profession, says wife, Mrs Vanitha, a software professional, “he has started thinking big, very big!”

Mr Suresh, who spent 17 years as a sports writer, says, “I wrote my first newspaper article before I wrote my school final exams.” And the real opportunity came on the back of a failure, when he flunked the second-year pre-university course examinations and had to wait it out for one year to do them again. He spent it most fruitfully, writing on sports for various newspapers and magazines.

Later, armed with a journalism diploma from Mysore Univsersity, he got a job in Times of India (ToI) in 1988. The next 17 years were spent writing and reporting on cricket, tennis and all other sports so much that “I knew all Karnataka sportspeople, but more importantly, they knew me,” as he puts it. This life’s passion came to a sour end in early 2005 when he was superceded for his boss’ job in spite of his service and track record.

He quit the job in late 2005 but through that year he was thinking back on what he had in hand. He had an insurance agency that he had started in 1999 under persistent pressure from a Development Officer (DO) in Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Mr S S Mani. He had set off to a blazing start then. His first policy fetched

Rs 92,000 in premium and the next two had a combined premium of Rs 4.25 lakh! His branch’s news bulletin called him the “New Opener in the Team,” and compared his work to Sachin Tendulkar’s high scores.

His secret weapon was Jeevan Shree and Keyman insurance using Jeevan Shree. “I might have qualified for MDRT that year, but no one guided me about it,” he recalls. And after that he turned into a quota agent, barely doing enough to keep his agency licence alive. In fact, at the end of his first financial year as an agent he got an urgent call from his branch, saying he had done three lives and had better do nine more before March 31.

Mr Suresh walked into a hotel whose manager he knew and got him to round up 10 employees who bought policies!

He survived, and continued with barely surviving because he never thought of insurance as a career. But when things started going wrong in ToI, he began thinking of becoming a full-time agent and attended a Datacomp training course where

Mr Mehboob Charania took classes for three days. That, and a meeting with Mr Ranjan Nagarkatte, then in-charge of Southern Region’s sales of Datacomp (himself a hardcore cricket buff),boosted Mr Suresh’s self-image.

“I felt there was something to do in this field and that I would fit in as a full-timer,” says Mr Suresh and so the decision was made.

He dusted off the software package he had bought from Datacomp to qualify to attend the training. Having no computer of his own, he borrowed his DO’s hardly used laptop and started selling Retire and Enjoy, the best-selling combination of InsureMagic software of Datacomp. In five months, he had sold 375 policies, of which 17 were Retire and Enjoy and two, Child Secure.

“I was convinced that every Indian should have a retirement policy and a children’s policy and I owe my success to Datacomp and their software,” he says.

Only in late December 2005, he had received a stern letter from his Branch Manager, pulling him up for doing only seven lives and warning that he had to do 12 lives in the financial year if he wanted to keep his licence.

“Hundred days later,” recalls

Mr Suresh, “I got another letter from the same person congratulating me on selling 375 new policies and collecting Rs 10.3 lakh premium and saying that I topped in the number of lives covered by the branch!

Mr Suresh is a firm believer in Whole Life policies. No Term policies for him because “they are designed to die before you do and my duty as an insurance advisor is to cover every Indian till 100 years of age.”

He rarely does Unit-linked Insurance Policies (ULIPs) “as security for the family comes first”. After a Whole-Life policy, he encourages investments in real estate and trade in stock markets if the clients so wish, but not before. He himself does not do General insurance or mutual funds but passes on referrals to colleagues. He also does commodities trading for clients.

First MDRT

In 2006, Mr Suresh qualified for MDRT for the first time and went to Denver, Colorado in the US, for the Annual Meet in June 2007. “It really opened my eyes. Once you attend an MDRT meet, you don’t need a booster injection. Meeting the top producers of the world who inspire you and are willing to share their secrets and best techniques with you just makes you want to qualify and come back every year!”

“That is where I met ‘thalaivar’ Mr P Srinivasan whom I have always admired, and also Mr R.K. Shetty, the most hardworking, most blessed yet most humble agent,” as he put it!

Not to speak of the 28-day around-the-US holiday he had with wife, visiting the Niagra falls, Las Vegas, San Francisco and stopping at London on the way back home to visit an NRI client! A privilege that he never got as a sports journalist, he recalls.

Serial achiever!

So it was MDRT every year after that and, to cap it, a Top of the Table (ToT) in production year 2010, which has a target commission income of Rs 45.55 lakh. This year he plans to attend not only the MDRT annual meet at Atlanta, Georgia, but also the ToT meet in Indian Wells, California, in September.

Change the game

Life is very different for Mr Suresh now. From a gross monthly salary of Rs 26,000 as a sports writer to his first five months as a full-time agent was itself a sea change. He made a year’s salary in commissions during that time!

“Better money, independence, no signing the attendance register and my own office and staff some day to dream of,” says he, and the risk of resigning the ToI job with a wife and two little daughters to take care of, did not seem too scary! “I had the confidence that the sky was NOT the limit to earning in this field,” he says, recalling his crucial decision to make that journey from ‘ToI to ToT’!

But success did not come easy. He did cold calling for 99 per cent of his sales. Yes, doors did get shut on his face, “but once you expect that only 2 of 10 calls end in sales you appreciate the third and the fourth as God’s Grace!” And being comfortable with computers helped. The second year he got a loan from his branch to buy a laptop. Armed with this and the software, he went on a selling spree! Today, he says, he is one of only two ToT agents in the South Central Zone and one of only 52 in LIC, qualifying with bonus commission included.

HNI and NRI

Mr Suresh has segmented the market his own way. During his travels each year he identifies potential non-resident Indian prospects. He has developed strong relationships, for instance, with a community of NRI doctors in Rochester. “NRIs are keen on making Indian investments, especially in LIC, once they hear of the sovereign guarantee,” he says. “But they don’t have a trusted advisor. Once they do, they will invest huge amounts and also refer you to their friends large-heartedly.”

India-based high-networth individuals (HNIs), obviously including sportspersons, are his core clientele. Ms Malathi Holla, the para-Olympian medalist, Mr Ashish Bhalla, hockey Olympian, Dr S.N. Omkar, Yoga guru to the Indian cricket team, are all his clients, and last year, leading to his ToT qualification was getting Rahul Dravid as his client.

Mr Suresh used to know him during his Ranji Trophy college days and recently renewed their acquaintance, ending up becoming his advisor. Sports people do know him, and how!

Less is more

Interestingly, he achieved his MDRTs with about 40 or 45 clients and his ToT – with a target six times that of MDRT – with just 54 clients. His next stop: ToT – it can’t be anything less – with just two clients. And he knows the prospects to tap for that!

“We agents underinsure our clients,” scoffs Mr Suresh. Just like the Titanic which had on board the statutory minimum of 500 lifeboats while more lifeboats could have saved more people!

Section 80C is a limiting factor for the agent, he says, since “they try to sell till the limit under the section is reached and then give up”.

Look at it this way, he tells his clients: “If you are worth Rs 100 crore, you have done a lot to achieve that. You can create yourself wealth of another Rs 100 crore for just five to seven per cent of that value by paying premium on a Life policy!” This is very, very possible in India, a growing country.

“Celebrities know about LIC but don’t know its true strengths.” So he tells them about the Rs 10 lakh crore Life fund and the sovereign guarantee…. “People are there to invest but there is no one to guide them.” For that, agents have to turn professional. “You should have sufficient knowledge, but many go by rebate. I tell these agents that it is better they quit and do something else instead. It is because of rebate that people think they are doing us a favour by buying a policy”.

He has lost quite a few clients since he refused to give the rebate they asked. But he has winning responses to their demands too. “Nobody from my DO to Chairman has told me to give a rebate. If they ask me to, then I will,” he told a client. And to another, “If I give you a 20 per cent rebate, will you give me 20 per cent of your policy proceeds?”

Another advice of his to young agents: Look at higher targets and don’t stop till you reach them. Do or die.

Happier Whole Person

“Earlier, I spoke to celebrities only because it was my profession. Today I think of their welfare and am closer to them,” he says. At the same time, “I give more time to my family. I am happier!”

Premium

“Premium is a magazine I read regularly. The Role Model column is really inspirational,” says Mr Suresh. “I get to know a lot of things about the success of people who are already up there. This is one magazine that is doing more for the industry and doing it professionally!”

The Boss!

Wife Vanitha observes: “After becoming a full-time agent, he thinks real big. He pulls out old policies and says, ‘Let me propose Rs 100 crore for this client’”. He is hardworking and sincere, filling in each form painstakingly even in the middle of the night and spurning her offers of help!

And persistent. There is a prospect he has been dogging for nine years. “And he still hasn’t given up,” she says proudly.

For his part, Mr Suresh says his colleagues point out that he has a very good DO in his wife! She sets his targets and even dangles the carrot – to appease him and his ‘thalaivar’, who both want her to became an agent. She has said that once he does his ToT, she will also become an agent!

Well, her time is now!

K Nitya Kalyani

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Administrator — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:20:24 +0000

Time was when Mr Mahesh Pai searched for ten rupees for petrol for his lowly two-wheeler. Now, with the right attitude and years of hard work, he zips around in a swanky Mercedes Benz!

Mr Mahesh Pai Agent, LIC, Panaji, Goa.

He has only rich customers and his goal is to expand his business by having fewer customers. “My average sum assured is Rs 1 crore,” says Mr Mahesh Pai, an Agent of Life Insurance Corporation of India in Goa, and his target for 2011 is to limit the number of his new policies to just 30 or 40.

Having bought his dream car, a white Mercedes Benz Kompressor, 18 months ago and having completed the requirement for Top of the Table (ToT) in 2010, Mr Pai’s financial year-ending pressures are minimal. It may be March 2011 but he goes about his work as if there is no deadline to meet. “It’s just like the rest of the year,” he says.

Jeevan Samridhi is a good policy, he says, referring to his company’s newest launch. “People now want a guaranteed return product and short-term investments of four to five years.”

What about tax-savings? It’s that time of year, after all.

“I never sell on tax-saving basis,” is the answer. “I only sell investment policies to my clients who have full Life cover and only for the purpose of deploying the money that may be lying in fixed deposits or savings bank accounts. A new policy is just a catalyst for reaching out and getting additional business. For the client the coverage is only a top-up.”

And there is another reason. “I sell it because otherwise someone else will sell it to them!”

Tools of the Trade

Aggressive as he is, Mr Pai is aware that his best weapon is a lot of patience and a high level of updated knowledge. His clients are doctors, advocates, chartered accountants, top police officials, barge owners and mine owners, “who are very busy.” So he has learnt to wait till they can give him their ear! They themselves are very knowledgeable, so he has to beat them every time with his better knowledge! Premium magazine is an important part of his armoury to keep updated. (More of that later).

Starting Out

In 1992, when Mr Pai graduated with distinction in B.Com, he joined a CA’s office as an articled clerk. When he got his first salary cheque, he was shocked. It was Rs 400! He talked to a colleague to find out if any zero was missing…The colleague showed him his own cheque, it was for Rs 450. He was expecting at least Rs 5,000 as salary.

He struggled with the cost of living, quitting after two years of no major rise in pay or perks, to take a sales job at Sai Services, the Maruti car dealership. “I found out only much later that CAs pay very low stipends and it was not my boss’ mistake,” he says.

At the car dealership, he says, as others watched the clock and left for home at 6 pm, he would be talking to customers and making deliveries of his sales till 7 or 8 pm. In laidback, easygoing Goa, that was exceptional!

Watching this attitude, his friend – also named Mahesh – told him to try his hand at insurance agency since he was persistent and dedicated to selling. “Do your best there and you will definitely come up.” That was in 1994.

That idea was a turning point for Mr Pai who relates that he mentions his friend’s name in every conversation about his early days since, “without his guidance, I won’t be here.”

Different ball game

But selling insurance was a very different game. “The initial years were a real, real struggle,” he says, but dismisses it as normal for anyone who gets into a new business. As a part-timer it was tougher. “Through the day you are working and in the evening you go home, freshen up, take your bag and go out to sell insurance, returning at 11 pm.”

And insurance was a peculiar product to sell. The buyer had to be comfortable with the seller to begin with and then all the hard work of actual selling began!

Yet, says Mr Pai, his attitude of service helped and he was selling Rs 5 lakh Jeevan Shree policies – very big indeed those days!

“I was top-listed in Goa very soon and things started changing from the initial days of struggle,” he narrates.

In a few years, he realised a home-truth that all agents discover. As a part-timer he could give only so much service and customers tolerated it and gave him business out of obligation, but were unlikely to give him any serious business.

“I realised I was not interested in getting business out of a sense of obligation. I was not that type.”

At around that time he stumbled badly and lost everything he had and more. As a matter of helping people he would get them bank loans since he had a very good relationship with bank managers, and help with all the documentation. During these do-gooder days, he signed as guarantor for a friend who needed a loan. The next thing he knew, the friend’s business failed badly and the bank manager was visiting “my home to collect the loan”.

He started paying off what he could of the loan using all the insurance commission that he earned. But it was not enough. This started affecting business and renewals suffered.

Court notices followed, he had no money to pay the rent, provision shop bills were overdue, and one day, he found he had no money to put petrol in his two-wheeler. He stayed home literally because he could not go out and, “when the bell rings you don’t know who it is, you can’t answer it and I had to tell my wife to tell creditors I was not at home. But they knew I was ….. It was a terrible, terrible life.”

“My wife searched here and there and found ten rupees in coins,” he narrates. She gave it to him to put petrol. Mr Pai hesitantly asked the local petrol pump attendant if he could buy petrol for Rs 10. To his great relief, the man said yes!

While hiding inside his home from creditors “I cried to God, asking why I was suffering when I had not cheated anyone or done anything wrong. Then I took stock of all that I had. The only thing I had was the insurance agency and my skills.”

And that was the resource he decided to use. With Rs 10 worth petrol in his vehicle tank he went to his nearest client and poured out his woes, asked for business and assured him he would give him the best services.

“Don’t worry, ” said the client, and pulled out his files and gave him a couple of policies for Rs 10 lakh sum assured each. “Then things started changing for me,” says Mr Pai.

Lifelong Learning

So he embarked on lifelong learning and started working 14 hours a day and ending the day reading books on positive thinking two hours a day. The first such book was ‘Success through Positive Mental Attitude’ by Napoleon Hill and it is his favourite to this day. What the book taught him was “all people who were in deep trouble are rich today.” Reading this, he thought, ‘I am in that category.’

It was around that time that his Development Officer told him about the Life Underwriters Guild of India (LUGI) and urged him to attend its convention being held that year, 2002, in Goa.

Mr Pai had an immediate reply: Yes, I want to, but I don’t have any money. The DO paid for him and opened a new window for him! He started getting a grip on the business.

He learnt from LUGI that his level of knowledge was not at all enough to do serious business and meet his loans and other liabilities. The best he could do was sell Rs 5-lakh or 10-lakh policies and take home Rs 10,000 or 20,000 a month.

LUGI and the best speakers spurred on Mr Pai, who was already on fire. The same year he qualified for Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) and became a member. He has qualified every year since, achieving his Court of the Table for three years and achieved ToT in 2010. “LUGI taught me what agency was and where I could reach.”

Looking Back

Today, Mr Pai says, “I restrict myself to lower number of life policies but write policies with higher premium. Clients are not difficult to convince because they consider me as a friendly consultant. And I don’t talk business with them till I know everything about them financially so that I can give them the right policy.

“If you clearly tell your doctor the details he will give the correct medicine. Or the medicine may not work and you will badmouth the doctor!”

Mr Pai does some General insurance but only for his clients so that they don’t have to go elsewhere. His hesitation about building it up? “Hospitalisation policies are difficult from the claims point of view, and one does not want to lose goodwill,” he says. Yet, when he gives a Life policy, he gives a Health cover too.

Housing loans is another business he does. Why, when the commission is very low? “It is not for remuneration, but you get access.” At the end of the process, I get a good client. My housing loan default rate is zero. I know how to do my financial underwriting, after my earlier experience” he smiles!

“But then, in Goa, if you want to know anything about any individual it takes only 10 minutes. Everyone knows everyone else, whether it is good or bad.”

Grow Your Clients!

“When I say I have High Net-worth Individual (HNI) clients, they were not always HNIs. When I met them, I knew they were going to grow. I made sure they were going to grow so that I can grow with them.”

“They are ordinary people but I get involved in growing their business, studying what they do, giving them suggestions and supporting them through their ups and downs. The result? They normally expect that an insurance agent comes only to take business and leaves. But when I help them grow, they never forget me when they get big and never leave me!”

Read, Learn, Grow

LUGI really opened the world up to me, says Mr Pai. Thereafter he would visit all the stalls and buy up books and CDs on sales and selling skills and, yes am a keen reader of Premium magazine.

“I am NOT saying this because I am talking to you, I am telling you, Premium magazine is The Best!”

“I like Mr Gopinath’s columns about attitude and I read Role Model avidly. I have every issue of Premium magazine in my collection,” he adds. “I read it in the evening when there are no distractions. Even if I read only one or two articles a day, small, small things give me ideas. What are these successful people doing? What can I learn from them?”

“It is enough if I pick one point. My God, it is that valuable to me. I don’t dare read it during the day because I may miss out something!”

And he quotes: I remember one agent saying, “I decided to be at the top where there is no competition. Only at the ground level there is a crowd.”

Recalling his poverty-stricken childhood, Mr Pai relates how his father’s business ventures went from failure to failure and how his mother used to work as a servant maid to educate her six sons while the boys sold vegetables and collected firewood from the jungles to help.

When Mahesh, the youngest, was 15 years, his elder brothers started working in the Army and in State Bank of India and money started coming in.

“From there to here, it has been sheer positive attitude all the way,” he says. Besides, of course, the philosophy that helping your clients grow means you will also grow, one way or the other.

K Nitya Kalyani

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