Ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels trying to build a client base, but nothing seems to stick? You’re not alone. Many reps struggle with turning connections into lasting relationships, and it can be frustrating. But what if you could change that? What if you could transform your approach and start seeing real results? That’s exactly what Steve Rizza dives into in this powerful session. With over 30 years of experience, Steve shares the secrets to cultivating a thriving client base, from becoming a client yourself to mastering the art of referrals. It’s not about selling; it’s about building genuine connections and providing value. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level and create a network that works for you, this is a must-watch. Tune in now and discover the strategies that have helped Steve and countless others succeed in Primerica. Don’t miss out on this breakthrough moment!
Video Transcription:
You.
All right? How are we feeling? Good.
Excellent.
If you don’t know me, my name is Steve Rizza.
I’ve been with Primerica since 1993.
I started part time.
I used to work in the field of television production.
I worked for channels like News Twelve, CNN, Court TV.
I was invited to a meeting, so I ran into a friend on the train and I decided to give it a try.
And I was thankful that they decided to take me.
And we got promoted to vice president in the beginning of 96.
And first month we met Bob Gerby.
He’s a vice president.
Along the way we met someone named Nilsa who invited Jenny Escobar to a meeting.
So she’s a vice president.
She recruited Amadeo, he’s a vice president.
And hey, are we where we want to be? No, but thank God we’re not where we used to be, right? That would have been pretty bad if I look back.
So make no mistake about it, okay? This is a distribution business, and you could distribute more stuff with more people, right? You with me on that? So what I’m going to talk about, though, is the client side of the business.
So there’s nothing wrong with making money while you’re building your business, while you’re building your team.
Right? So where’s my presentation? There it is.
Which one is it? Wrong way.
All right.
Cultivating a client base.
Okay.
So I’m going to give you a few keys here, a few thoughts.
This is not, by the way, a directive on how you should do things.
This is just things that I’ve done over I’m in my 30th year.
So these are things that we’ve been able to do that we’ve found to be successful.
Okay? So first and foremost, if you want to develop a client base, you should probably become a client.
Right? It is hard to convince people to do things if you’re not convinced.
Now, does that mean you have to buy our products to do our business? No, but everyone you should be a client in some capacity.
So how can you be a client? Well, we have life insurance, right? When I came on board, I wasn’t technically in the five point market where you’d get life insurance, but we got a half a million dollar policy.
Why? Because I knew it was going to be less expensive over the long run.
If I got it when I was younger, when I was healthy, it would be a lower rate, plus it would make me more convincing.
Okay, so we got life insurance.
The next thing, if you don’t want to get life insurance, man, at least open up a mutual fund.
I mean it’s eighty three cents a day is the minimum to get started.
If you can’t do that, then you really need the opportunity.
Right? What else could you do? Prepaid legal.
You could be a prepaid legal client.
Any young person should have that okay? Because the ODS of you getting in trouble are pretty good auto and home insurance.
Just do a quote, see if we could save money.
Right? Rob, how much did Lori save? She saved a thousand.
A $1,000.
That’s big.
Do a quote.
We have identity theft, dividend, home security, senior health care, small business income, small business insurance for a business owner.
So become a client in some capacity.
I’m not telling you to go out and buy life insurance, okay? But I will tell you, get a mutual fund.
If you don’t have a mutual fund, at least a mutual fund, you need to do that right away.
Number two, it all starts with an appointment.
Couple of quotes here.
Art Williams, and they might not be word for word, but Art Williams, the founder of the whole company, said the only way you can fail is if you refuse to schedule an appointment.
And then Ryan and I had the opportunity to spend some time with Bobby Boissan.
Now, if you don’t know who Bobby Boissan is, the first thing I would tell you is to get your hands on the book coach and read all about the history of Primerica.
So you kind of know what your roots and your foundation are.
But Bobby Boissan is one of the first people that Art Williams recruited.
He was a basketball coach.
And Bobby Boissan, next to Art Williams, is probably the wealthiest person ever in Primerica.
So he’s a billionaire.
And Ryan and you know what’s? Kind of like the Secret.
And he said this very profound he said the only time the whole okay, the only time something good happens is when one human being speaks to another of human being about scheduling an appointment to either recruit or sell, and everything else is nothing.
So if you’re not doing that, you’re not doing the business.
Imagine you owned a food truck, okay? Do food trucks work? They do, right? You own a food truck, and you go to a place where there’s a high traffic area, and you open up, and no one’s coming.
There’s people going by and stuff, but no one’s ordering food.
Do you just sit there and do nothing and say, oh, I guess this doesn’t work.
Now, what would you do? You would maybe cut up some sandwiches and give out free samples and flag people.
It you’d figure out how to get someone to buy your stuff.
Well, this business is that way.
It just doesn’t come.
You got to figure it out.
But if you do that long enough, it will come to you as you develop your client base.
Wrong way.
Okay, whom do you do appointments with? Start out with your top 50.
We talk about top 25.
I think a top 25 is BS.
You go to anyone’s social media page, and you look at how many people they know, and it’s like 501,000.
So 50, top 50, then break that down to the hot ten and then the easy three.
You know who the easy three are? You ever watch Seinfeld and Kramer just busts in and he doesn’t ask if they want.
He doesn’t wait for Jerry to ask him and say, Would you like something to drink? He busts in, he goes right to the kitchen, opens up the fridge.
Those are the easy three that you could do that with.
We all have them.
We all have them.
Now.
What do you say? There’s a couple of things you could say.
Hey, listen, I’m starting in a new business venture, a side hustle, a new career.
I have to get field training certified.
I’d rather do it with a friendly face.
Can you help me with my training? I’m going to bring someone over.
You’re going to ask a ton of questions.
I’m going to learn.
It’s for me, not for you.
Can you help me? People that care about you will help you.
Okay.
Another way that I’ve had success with is, hey, do you know exactly what I do with someone that I know? No.
Can I stop by and show you what I do so you could send people my way? That’s it.
No more complicated than that.
You could do appointments with your new recruits and teammates.
Everyone who comes on board that comes onto your team should do their own F a.
And then here’s, very important.
When you have people on your team that come on board and they do the F A, and they become clients, a lot of them quit.
They lose focus, but they don’t have to quit as a client.
So if people leave, stay in touch with know and keep them on track on their plan, even if they leave.
As far as doing the business, make sure they’re funding their IRAs.
Make sure they’re putting their money in their kids education, savings accounts.
Very important referrals.
That’s who you do appointments with.
Who do you get referrals from? You get them from your family members.
You get them from friends, the recruits, the top 50 list, right? And you get them from clients.
You need to have a minimum number of referrals that represents your fee for service.
Right? If you sit down with a client and they do life insurance, mutual funds, prepaid, legal, the company pays you the money.
You’re going to still work for the client.
They can’t pay you money, so the only way they can pay you is in the form of referrals.
Everyone’s got a different number.
Use a number that you’re comfortable with.
I like to say I need five to ten good referrals.
If it’s a single person, I need five.
If it’s a couple, I need ten.
Two times five is ten.
Why? Because if I see five, if I call five to ten people, I’ll get to see two or three.
I perpetuate my business.
I don’t have to advertise.
And that’s how we could keep expenses down to our clients.
When you do appointments, act like the person that you would be excited to refer people to, right? You have to be that person.
So how do you do that? Dress well.
Be prompt.
Be genuinely interested in some of the things that they’re interested in.
Have commonality.
Definitely be respectful of people’s time.
If you’re going to be late, tell them.
But also when I say be respectful of time, get to the point.
Do what you dare to do.
Don’t tell a life story.
Don’t do that.
Make people feel like they’ve known you forever.
When you could get to that point, it gets easy.
Man, you ever have a conversation with Joe Cardino and you don’t really know him too well, and you left and you feel like, man, I feel like I’ve known Joe for like, years.
That’s how you want to get.
And man, do what you say that you’re going to do.
And if you do that, you’ll separate yourself from most people, because most people don’t do what they say they’re going to do.
This one’s a pet peeve.
Always answer calls, texts, and emails and return messages promptly.
It’s not okay to not get back to people.
That’s just not okay.
Especially if you’re young.
Ghosting people is bad.
Don’t do that.
If you are young and someone sends you a text, leaves you a message, sends you an email, call back, answer the phone.
It’s not okay.
It’s not professional to do that.
And if you don’t get back to your people soon, another advisor will.
That’s just a fact.
And I’m wrapping up here.
Implement a diligent follow up system, okay? Contact your clients at least two to three times a year.
Birthdays are good.
Anniversaries kids birthdays.
Every time you speak to a client, take great notes, hey, I’m thinking about retiring, or they just had a baby, or, I’m expecting.
When is the baby due? Oh, in August.
Guess what you should do in September? Good time to open up an education fund and handle client requests promptly.
See, it doesn’t mean you personally have to handle it, but get it handled promptly.
How about this one? Invite your clients to events.
Right? The office picnic.
I had clients at the picnic that we did, right.
When you do an awards banquet, a party, invite the clients to events webinars that we do.
So get your clients involved in your business, especially on a fun side.
Stay current with product knowledge and technology.
Why is this so important? Well, the longer your clients stay with you, the more life events and changes that they’ll experience, the more new products and enhancements we’re going to have, which makes you have more solutions for them.
So they’re going to stay with you longer and wind up referring more people to you, and in the end result, you make more money.
See, you got to know when the Roth IRA or the IRA contribution limit increases, okay? The people that were doing 166, 66 a month 20 years ago should be doing more now because it’s more than 2000 a year.
You got my point, right? Know the products.
Because guess what? A new solution might pop up that’s now appropriate for a client where maybe it wasn’t before or their situation changed.
So here’s an example of cultivating a client base.
Okay? I come in the business 93.
I’m playing softball.
I’m on a softball team.
I tell everyone about my business.
They look at me like I have four heads.
Eventually, a few of them come down to the meeting.
One guy, our second baseman Wayne, he says, when you get your investment to and he actually came to, like, four meetings and decided, you know, it’s not for me.
I want to focus on my law career.
But when you get your investment license, I want to open up accounts for the kids.
So we did that, and he referred me to his brother Glenn and his sister in law Doreen.
And we opened up an education savings account for them and did life insurance.
They’re no longer clients.
Wayne is no longer a client.
His kid used the money.
The kids went to college, and he did what he had to do.
Glenn and Doreen referred me to Billy and Lisa.
They are currently clients.
We did education savings, life insurance, and a rollover.
They referred me to Neil and Ellen.
We did life insurance.
They’re no longer clients.
They referred Chris and Denise life insurance, 529 plans, and a rollover.
They referred me to her sister Gail.
We did 529, and Rollover referred me to Angela Marissa life insurance.
Rollover referred me to lose.
We did 700,000 so far with her.
She referred me to Iris.
We did 450 for her.
And we actually recruited her daughter, who went to PFSU, passed and didn’t get her license and decided, I don’t want to do that, but we continue to go.
And that started in 1995, and it’s current.
Okay.
And I could give you a list like this, pages and pages of different people, because we just do the things that I shared with you.
And I’m not telling you have to do that, but those are some things, if you kind of worked it in, I think it could help you grow your client base.
So I hope that was helpful.
I appreciate the time.
Let’s have a great rest of the day.
Thank you so much.
