Like most beginning advisors, Naoki Yonetani started prospecting among his friends, family and former colleagues to build his clientele. The rookie did very well selling insurance to his former co-workers and even qualified for MDRT during his first year in the profession. Then a close friend gave him a wake-up call.

“Ever since I bought an insurance policy from you, you’re no longer sociable with me,” his friend and client told him. “Did you contact me only to sell a policy? Are you not going to serve my policy?”

That feedback was tough.

“I was busy as a new financial advisor, and I neglected to contact my friends who were now my clients,” said Yonetani, a 28-year MDRT member. “I thanked my friend who woke me up. It was hard to take, but I needed his honest input.”

So, he decided to pivot and focus on client service. But during that time when he served his individual clients very well, Yonetani realized he had little time to prospect for new business, which could lead to leaving his practice and abandoning the clients he wanted to care for. So, he pivoted again, this time by focusing on business owners. He visited peers who were doing well in business markets, asked them many questions about their concerns and read dozens of books to learn more about marketing to business owners. He even suspended his own marketing activities for six months and had no new business so he could devote all his time to study.

A bookkeeper’s focus

Yonetani surmised that to meet the needs of owners and managers, one needed to understand their personal and company situations. He was able to learn about their personal challenges through his interviews and deciphered their company issues by leveraging his bookkeeping background. He pored over company financial statements and tax returns and organized that information in an easy-to-understand format for owner prospects while collaborating with tax accountants and other professionals.

“My bookkeeping knowledge was very useful,” Yonetani said. “When I presented back the financial statements entrusted to me by management, I would verbalize in short words the characteristics and problems of the company.” 

To develop a pipeline of business owners and businesses, Yonetani developed his market in regional cities, which he calls “community-rooted marketing.” He had an acquaintance in Hamamatsu City, about a three-hour drive from his home in Tokyo, Japan, who showed him around to local restaurants, bars and other points of interest. Yonetani continued visiting the area for 45 weeks per year to learn about the community and meet prospects. He identified key people, or business managers, he could work with while collaborating with other service professionals. Because the market was geographically smaller and easy to get around, he could squeeze in a few appointments per day, and his business started to flourish.

“If the satisfaction level is high, those clients who sign up with me can introduce me to fellow managers with whom they are very close,” he said.

Then another acquaintance invited him to work in Kumamoto, which is significantly farther away and would require him to travel by air. He was unsure if he could develop a community-rooted market in a faraway city, so he asked a veteran co-worker from his company’s U.S. office if trying to cultivate this market was realistic.

“It’s only 1,000 kilometers,” his colleague responded. “You can even drive. It’s just like a neighboring town.” Yonetani was surprised by the difference in the sense of distance from the U.S. but was encouraged to accept the challenge. He visited Kumamoto for 45 weeks during the first year and cultivated more business owners there.

Networking power

As for the advantages of networking with his MDRT friends and international network through his company, Yonetani said, “We live in different cultural backgrounds, and sometimes you are reminded of the differences. I was surprised that a faraway market seemed like a neighboring town to someone in the U.S. We feel like financial products in Japan are advanced, but you also get to learn about products we don’t have. There is a wide variety of marketing methods, and exchanging ideas and knowledge is a great advantage we have as MDRT members.”

Currently, Yonetani has four community markets with about 30 client companies each. Because these markets are smaller compared with Tokyo, where he has about 60 client companies, he can visit several companies in a day and balance finding prospects with serving his existing clients. “Many of our clients are good friends with each other, so we can maintain deep communication through dinners, golf, outings and trips,” he said, adding that he has never forgotten what his friend told him and is always mindful of serving existing clients.

“No matter how deeply you are rooted in the market, you should never take relationships for granted,” Yonetani said. “Insurance business starts when your client purchased the policy, closing the sale is not the end. I am proud to have a high persistence rate as a financial advisor, and I am committed to staying so.” 

Tetsuo Kageshima writes for Team Lewis, a communications agency assisting MDRT with content development for Asia-Pacific markets. Contact mdrteditorial@teamlewis.com.