How to Get Sales Referrals to Do the Work for You

How to Get Sales Referrals to Do the Work for You
By Steve Kaneski | June 23, 2010

When people are worried about job security and next month’s mortgage payment, it’s not easy getting them to think about what might happen 10 or 20 years down the road. But that’s Steve Kaneski’s job. As an agent for New York Life for over 20 years, he sells life insurance, annuities, and other long-term investments to clients, mostly doctors, in the Sacramento area. And despite a 15 percent drop in the individual life insurance market in 2009, Kaneski’s business is booming. For 2008, Kaneski, who works with six assistants and three associate brokers, sold more insurance and financial products than any of New York Life’s 11,000 brokers, racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance products and tens of millions of dollars in securities.
Name: Steve Kaneski
Location: Roseville, CA
What I sell: Life insurance and financial products for NY Life
Toughest thing about my job: Getting people to focus on life and death issues — something no one likes to talk about.
Number of prospects I see in my office every week: 15-20


Steve Kaneski of New York Life

There’s no doubt that this is a difficult environment. While all of my physician clients are still employed, people are uncertain and they are all very nervous about the healthcare bill and how all of the cost containment measures might affect them. So I’m working more hours and answering a lot more questions. And this resulted in a great 2009 for my firm, as I was able to do over 300 cases, while the industry average is around 30. And for the first quarter of 2010, we were up 40 percent over last year.
A system for everything

I see clients face to face two to four times a year for meaningful reviews. I also send out newsletters six times a year and do targeted seasonal cards. And I make myself available, working three evenings a week and every other Saturday.



Many financial advisers say that they meet with their clients frequently, but most don’t have the systems and processes in place to make it happen. We do 4 or 5 appointments a day.

To make sure I’m spending enough time with clients, I’ve systematized everything I do. In our first meeting I invest a lot of time in fact-finding to determine what their goals and priorities are, since life insurance is one of the most personal decisions a person can make. I do an analysis of everything they’ve shared with us, then have a second appointment where we discuss strategies and options. Then we do a finishing appointment, where we answer questions and review what we have accomplished. Each one of these meetings often lasts two hours. This is significantly more time than clients are going to get with most financial services reps.

Referrals are the key to any business, so you want to have a lot of interactions with your clients so that you’re the guy always on the tip of their tongue, the person they go to with any insurance or financial issues. This not only helps retain clients, but they are more likely to refer me to their friends and family. Great salespeople get referrals without asking for them.
Weed out the wrong clients

To me, one of the most overlooked secrets for being successful in sales is having the right clients. Early in my career I started working with doctors because they are smart and, having gone through years of schooling, understand delayed gratification, which is what retirement planning is all about. To find these clients, we do a series of educational seminars about goal setting, retirement and tax-favored investments, estate planning, and proper allocation. I don’t mention or sell any products. Instead it’s about giving people time-tested information, and it’s a weeding out process to attract people who are motivated to act.

If people don’t have what I call “character,” then I don’t work with them. I have a silly, but effective way of finding this out. I ask them, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very important, how much do you want your partner’s hopes and dreams to be protected if something were to happen suddenly?” If their answer is less than a 6, then they don’t have the motivation I’m looking for. I can try to get them to see the benefits of life insurance, but if they truly don’t care what happens to their family after they’re gone, then that’s not a person I want as aclient.

When you work with people of character, you can have honest and sometimes difficult conversations with them about what’s important. I had a trauma surgeon in the office for a first appointment recently. He makes $450,000 a year, and for years he’d been carrying $500,000 of life insurance through another rep. This means that if he should pass, his wife would have just one year’s worth of life insurance to cover the mortgage, the student loan debt and to care for their young children. I had to tell him that he was clearly underinsured, which is hard because it implies he is either operating under a misconception or purposefully avoiding this issue. Since he identified himself as an 8, we were able to move forward and now he has $5 million of insurance coverage.

-As told to Melanie Warner