 
By Janet Arrowood
Mentors are a common phenomenon in most sales-oriented industries, including financial services. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a new advisor just getting started or have some experience but want to further develop your potential. If you are part of a quality mentoring relationship, you can reap unlimited benefits in your financial services career. Isn’t that something you want to be a part of?
Getting started
If you are a career agent or producer, you will likely be assigned a mentor. If you aren’t assigned one, look for someone in the office who can work with you. Ask for help. If you are an independent producer or advisor, you’ll have to work harder to find a mentor. Ask your broker-dealer or primary insurance company for some referrals. Consider joining a producers’ group and look for a mentor there, or look into YAT’s new Online Mentoring program being launched this fall. (See box.)
Coming Soon: Online Mentoring |
Many young advisors dream of experiencing the kind of success that only comes after many years in the business. If you are one of those people, you may want to keep an eye out for YAT’s new Online Mentoring program that is scheduled for release after NAIFA’s Annual Convention and Career Conference in September.
The YAT Online Mentoring program is designed to give young advisors the opportunity to forge relationships with more experienced advisors and learn from them. Young advisors will have the opportunity to communicate with their mentors via email or phone calls as determined by the mentor. This program also provides the opportunity for young advisors to receive additional support in the early years of their careers in the insurance and financial services industry.
If you are interested in this opportunity, stay tuned to the YAT listserv for more details and the official release date. We will also post more information at our website, www.naifa.org/yat, as soon as it becomes available. |
People like to be asked for help. Very few successful financial advisors are going to turn down a request for assistance—mentoring—because they do want to help you succeed, and they know there is value for them as well.
Mentoring techniques
To find the best mentor relationship for you, you need to understand how mentoring can take place:
- You may have regular, scheduled meetings, reviews and discussion sessions.
- Your mentoring may include going on sales calls with your mentor.
- Your mentor may also be your product and sales trainer.
- You may “meet” with your mentor online
In addition, mentoring can be formal or informal.
Formal mentoring
Mentoring usually works best as part of a formal, structured training program. If you are going to work with a mentor (whether one of your choice or one assigned to you), it pays to meet regularly to set, discuss and validate goals. In a formal mentoring program, your mentor often goes with you on client appointments, helps you collect and analyze data, works with you to develop appropriate recommendations and helps you close the deal. In return, the mentor normally splits commissions and fees with you.
Informal Mentoring
Informal mentoring can occur in many venues. As a member of a local NAIFA, you usually have monthly meetings and the chance to talk to and learn from many people in different specialties and career stages. People love to talk about their successes, so all you have to do is strike up a few conversations at each meeting. Once you’ve started a relationship, ask for help. Set up meetings for coffee, go on joint client calls and do after-action reports so you’ll get the full benefit of the person’s experiences and knowledge.
You probably attend a number of other industry-related events—LUTCF classes, CFP classes, producer group meetings, broker-dealer meetings, insurance company presentations and continuing education programs, for example—and these are great places for informal mentoring.
A two-way street
Because a mentor wants to reap the personal and professional benefits of a mentor relationship as well, he will only pursue it if he sees several important traits in you:
- Commitment to the profession and the relationship
- Ambition and a desire to help others
- A sense of personal responsibility—do what you say you will, when and how you say you will
- A willingness to work hard—setting 12-15 appointments a week, etc.
- A willingness to listen and learn and try new approaches
Ten things to look for in a mentor
Mentors can make or break the careers of newer financial advisors. While there are no hard and fast rules for being or choosing a mentor, here is a checklist of some traits and attitudes that can make for a great mentor-mentee relationship.
| Mentor Skills, Experience and Traits |
- Working in the market(s) you want to target
- A pattern of personal and professional success
- A commitment to you and the profession
- Confidence
- In-depth industry, sales and product knowledge
- Willingness to share experiences
- Availability
- Honesty and reliability—very high ethical standards
- Support and encouragement
- Flexibility and adaptability to change
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So, should you have a mentor? Absolutely! If you already have an assigned mentor, take some time to evaluate the relationship. If it’s not working, ask your manager for a new mentor. If you don’t have a mentor, maybe it’s time to go looking for one.
Become a mentor
Here’s a telling line from a 1950s musical, and it’s still true today.
If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught.
—From the song “Getting to Know You” from The King and I
You may have looked over the mentor skills list and thought, “Hey, that’s me!” When you’re ready to become someone else’s mentor, you reap as many benefits as the mentee. You have a lot to share. You can bring along someone who may one day be working with you and bringing you new ideas. When you have spent five, 10 or 20 or more years in one field, it is easy to become stale. Having someone with a fresh mind around is a great way to take a whole new look at a business you know very well.
If someone helped you grow, help someone else grow—MDRT
If no one helped you grow and you grew and succeeded anyway, you can and should still help someone else grow!
Here are just a few of the benefits a mentor will experience:
- You get to watch someone else grow, learn and succeed.
- You can expand your own market.
- You reinforce your sense of accountability.
- You increase your focus and productivity.
- You start to look at products, clients and markets in a whole new way.
In a true mentoring relationship, both parties learn, grow, gain focus and succeed. It’s quite possible to succeed entirely on your own, but why would you want to? Remember, people like to help—but it’s up to you to ask, make the commitment and follow through.
Janet Arrowood is the managing director of The Write Source/Continuing Education Unlimited Inc. She can be reached at info@TheWriteSource.org.
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