Oh! To be an intern again...
I love being around interns! They bring energy, ideas and healthy ignorance for many things in life. Makes me think of my Northwestern Mututal internship over ten years ago. I was a bright-eyed 20-year old who let the summer sneak up on him. I applied to the Financial Representative internship without any idea of what I was doing. I had no idea the job was 100% commission or that I'd spend my days selling the good people of St. Louis the best whole life insurance money could buy. With all the interns out there figuring out what they can learn this summer, I'm going to reflect on the best lesson I pulled from my internship experience.
Hands down one of the best experiences of my undergraduate life was interning with Northwestern Mutual one summer. It was my first all-commission job. The first week I sat through four days of training to prepare for a license examination on Thursday night. I had $175 to my name. The exam cost me $130. That gave me some spare money to grab a suit from Goodwill, take it to the cleaners and gas up my car. I passed my exam and started making cold calls the next day. Our first assignment that Friday was to get 100 "qualified suspects." These were names and numbers of 100 people that would hopefully expect a call from us that summer. Before we could sell any insurance, we had to sell people on the idea of meeting us...hell, even just talking with us.
The following week, I ended up making a sale. It was pretty quick for most interns, plus it was for a decent amount. Of course, the sale was to myself. I needed the commission to get another suit and to pay for taking a few clients out for the ritualistic cup of coffee. I hated coffee then and still do. However, I did fall in love with something that has stuck with me ever since, selling stuff.
I'll never forget how terrifying it felt when we were given that assignment to find 100 people to call randomly. All of us interns huddled around each other, creating little cold call support groups. Very few of us really excelled at it. I've always had a way with words so I fared better than most, but it was still stressful. I ended up doing pretty well that summer, being one of two interns to get a fancy steak dinner with the Managing Partner of the St. Louis, MO office. In the end, I couldn't do the life insurance gig. I enjoyed meeting new people, learning about them and selling stuff. Life insurance just wasn't for me.
I learned a lot that summer, and credit my success to one very important meeting I had early on with Janet. She was a friend of a friend. We didn't know each other. However, after calling her out of the blue, she actually agreed to meet with me at a local bagel shop for breakfast. I couldn't believe it! I was barely a week out of training and I actually convinced someone to meet with me.
The day comes and we finally meet. I'm a little sweaty and keep fidgeting with my pen, wondering when it's appropriate for me to start writing down notes. Janet is about 15 years my senior, and I remember thinking about five minutes into our meeting, "why is this lady meeting with a 20-year old about life insurance?" I felt out of my league as she started talking about her life. She had kids. I still was a kid. She had a house. I was renting crappy college houses still. I figured she would get a free breakfast and maybe I could get some referrals for other people.
This is the point in the conversation that changed my view on that internship, and sales, forever. Janet shared with me that her husband had just left her. She had three kids and, at the time, was not employed. She was paying an ungodly amount for COBRA to cover herself and needed to find a temporary solution. That's when it all made sense to me. This lady had her entire world flipped upside down. She was embarrassed, afraid and overwhelmed with everything life was throwing at her. She needed to check something off her to-do list. She needed to know someone could be there to help her move forward. I was able to sell her a health insurance policy that saved her hundreds each month, while also getting her better coverage than before. Not to mention, legal processes like divorce can leave you with a seemingly endless list of things to do. This felt good to her to get this one done.
After meeting Janet, everything changed for me that summer. Cold calls weren't scary anymore. I didn't fear rejection from people who didn't want what I was selling. Why? Because I knew that I wasn't trying to sell insurance to everyone I met. I was looking for the next Janet who needed my help. Flipping my perspective from one of what can I get as a salesperson to what can I offer changed everything. It seems simple, but I still worked with tons of salespeople who focused on how many leads they had, their number of closes or whether they were going to sell that high premium policy next week.
The day we stop losing sleep over the success of our business and start losing sleep over the success of our customers is the day our business will start growing.
- Donald Miller
Sales is about service. I know working in 100%-commission jobs can be scary to most. However, I don't know of a better experience to learn about service. It actually makes total sense. If your client isn't benefiting, then why should you? If you find your business (whether inside or outside of a corporation) isn't thriving, perhaps it's because you really aren't focused on other peoples' problems enough.