My top three things in order to hit Top of the Table: No. 1, know what you need to do to get to Top of the Table. And No. 1 is more important than No. 2 and No. 3. Inasmuch as, if you don't know what you need to do to do it, you'll never get there, in my opinion.

No. 2, for me, having days when we focus and all we do is see clients. So, we know how many days that we have in order to see clients. And we plan that throughout the whole of the year. So come January 1, I know exactly how many days and opportunities I have to see clients. And therefore, that enables me, coming back to No. 1, to put ourselves in a position where we can have the plan in order to hit Top of the Table.

The most important thing, if you want to hit Top of the Table or you want to do any level of business, is pick up the phone. It's really simple. You know, there isn't this kind of magic answer, in my opinion. It is about doing the right things. So have a plan. Really try and focus on seeing clients on certain days as preferred to every day and pick up the phone. Make sure your diary is always full and therefore, by having that level of discipline and focus will enable you to hit Top of the Table.

I'd never heard of Top of the Table when I first joined MDRT. So, I suddenly found out about this new world of Top of the Table, and it actually opened my mind about what could be achieved. And the reason I think that's really important is that I was writing at the time the level of business that I thought I could write and I thought was possible because that was relative to the people that I knew at the time and my peers. So, when I got to MDRT for the first time and suddenly found out about this new thing called Top of the Table, I put myself in a position where suddenly I had the belief that I could do it, and it opened my mind to what actually could be achieved by seeing others that do it. But the most important thing for me was, as soon I got back to the UK, was writing a plan. What do I need to do differently from what I was doing that day, that week, that month in order to be able to achieve Top of the Table.

So, the key for me was always knowing my numbers. I knew how many people I would see in a week. I knew what my closing rate was. How many appointments do I have to do in order to get a client to sign up with me? I knew what my average case size was. So therefore, by having that core data, which I think is a really important place to start, it then enabled myself to come up with a plan fairly easily. I suddenly just knew how many people that I needed to see. So, year one, it was really simple for me to try and get to Top of the Table inasmuch as I knew I needed to see this many people, and if I sold to that many people, this is how much business I would write. And therefore, if I wrote that much business, I would be Top of the Table.

After that, you then tried to evolve it, try to hone in by being a bit more sophisticated in the way that you operate with clients. I think your mindset is really important. It's not even a question mark in my mind that I will do Top of the Table every year.

Transcript

Proven strategies for achieving Top of the Table every year

Author(s):

Simon D. Lister, Dip PFS