Making the leap: for these life producers, getting to the top required a major increase in sales, determination and skill.

What's it take to reach the top in sales in today's life-insurance climate? With so much talent coursing through the industry, Best's Review sought out producers who've recently made a major leap in life sales and asked them how they did it. Their secrets to success are varied and revealing: Capitalize on referrals, know your customers' needs, work long hours, have good assistants, cross-sell, learn from a mentor, be able to switch from one line of business to another, team with a partner and other strategies. They all, however, possess one common trait: an overwhelming drive to excel.

Marc Jacobson

Company: Marc Jacobson & Associates, Northbrook, III.; Prudential Insurance Company of America

Education: DePaul University, Chicago.

Accomplishment: Total production in 2005 was close to $2 million in first-year commissions.

Prudential's Marc Jacobson said there are two types of life agents: planners, who are mostly visual people, and salespeople, who are mostly auditory. Jacobson, who lists his greatest sales assets as "two ears and one mouth," definitely falls into the latter.

The difference between top agents and those who are pulling in $20,000 a year in compensation, despite selling the same products, is "what comes out of our mouths as far as word crafting ... it's the marketing that comes out of our lips that separates us," Jacobson said.

The 19-year veteran started out with Equitable, which later became Axa Financial, in 1988; he has been with Prudential four years.

What drives him is the looming specter of personal failure, such as when he recently delivered a $100,000 check to a widow whose annual household income had been $100,000 and who had two children in college. He wished the check had been much larger. "I took it hard," Jacobson said. "I asked her, 'Is there anything else I could have done?' She said, 'You did everything.' If she had replied anything other than that, it probably would have killed me."

Such experiences make him feel more definite about his career choice. "It just takes a couple of those instances to really solidify your purpose in life" Jacobson said.

He has always tried to study top agents to see what they do and how they do it. He's also an early riser, starting his work day around 4:30 a.m. "I tell people they can work all the half-days they want to be successful in the business: You can work the first 12 hours or the second 12 hours," he said.

Jacobson was just 23 when he left manufacturing for insurance sales; surrounding himself with great people has helped give him an edge. "That's the most important thing: Nobody gets to the top by themselves," he said. "The top agents build a team, and also believe if you don't have an assistant, then you are one--so you need to have assistants to help you get to the next level."

Cross-selling also is a key to his success: "There is only so much life insurance you can write," Jacobson said. "You need to make sure that you take care of your clients. It's more than just life insurance. If I was a McDonald's and I didn't sell Coke or french fries, I probably wouldn't be profitable,"

That goes two ways, he added. Taking care of a customer's life insurance needs but not offering disability could be tragic if the customer became disabled down the road. "Top agents don't care about compensation; they care about the clients," Jacobson said. "We just need to do more as an industry to push that down to the level of the agent."

Ellen Singer

Company: Northwestern Mutual Group, Milwaukee

Education: University of Wisconsin; Liberal Arts, French.

Accomplishment: Tripled her business in one year.

For Ellen Singer, life sales is all about people and puzzles. With Northwestern since 2001, Singer once sold commodity futures, volunteered for breast cancer research, worked in her husband's insurance business and did "a lot of sailing." Yet something was missing.

"When I was doing commodity futures trading ... the feel of that for me was more about the puzzles, and I sort of missed the people part of it. I like the connection," Singer said. Life sales affords her the best of both worlds. "The financial services part of it is the intellectual part of capital; that satisfies my enjoyment of puzzles. But the people part is the interesting part."

That's where she gets to make an impact. Singer's initial financial goals were tied to her personal goals: to make a difference while meeting industry benchmarks. She soon surrounded herself with "the right people and right tools" to have the greatest effect.

Singer's production grew exponentially in 2005 after she participated in a team executive-benefits case. "That client has referred us to all of its clients," she said.

For Singer to move up from below the top 20 of the company's nearly 8,000 representatives in 2004, to the sixth-largest producer in 2005, was quite an accomplishment, noted company spokesman Matt Braun: "To be No. 6 and to triple, almost quadruple, her business production in one year is amazing."

"I think you've got to be a really, really good listener," Singer said. "It's not about you; it's not about closing the sale. It's about being a really good listener and really being mindful of what the other person cares about to make sure that you're satisfying the things that they need satisfied."

"Sometimes I think that in sales or in a sales environment, people get caught up in competition," she added. "And while I think it's important to know where you are and to be doing a good job and be doing your best ... beating somebody else cannot be the motivator; that's not going to take you down to the big dreams in your life. It has to be about you and your client; you have to keep your motivations pure."

Up-and-coming life producers who want to be in the game for a long time need to know where clients stand between those personal and financial goals. "I want my clients to be people that I know for 20 to 30 years; I don't want my clients to wander off and want to work with somebody else," Singer said. "The things that you do for your client need to be flexible, and things that they can carry throughout their lives."

The best producers at Northwestern work as a team, listen, learn and concentrate on the client, Singer said. "Our culture is about fulfilling people's needs; it's not what my first-year commissions were."

Nick and Marc Ostdiek

Company: Signature Resources, an affiliate of John Hancock Financial Network, Irvine, Calif.

Education: Nick Ostdiek, California State University at Fresno, business administration.

Accomplishment: Teamed up to refocus struggling sales efforts, and reached the company's top tier by year-end.

Brothers in both life and life sales, Nick and Marc Ostdiek were struggling with their production out in Fresno, Calif., until July, when mentor and sales manager Barry Bevan came along.

Bevan, who'd been working in Sacramento and Irvine, was happy to meet the Ostdiek brothers, in whom he saw a little bit of himself. "I got to know these fellas and saw that there was good talent here that hasn't had an opportunity to grow." he said. The brothers' combined production from January to August 2006 was just $40,000 in premium.

But under Bevan's guidance--including a 10-week course in business insurance--the brothers surged through the remaining quarter of 2006, writing a combined $250,000 in premium.

"They both qualified for Conference Level this year and neither one of them went into the year thinking they could," Bevan said. John Hancock's conference level for agents requires a minimum production of $150,000 in premium (or $80,000 in premium for new producers, such as Marc).

"The major leap in production basically was due to making a serious effort to get into the business insurance market. We really refocused our energy into developing a marketing plan, and one that has worked," Nick Ostdiek said. It took a concerted effort to "really just be more production-oriented instead of business-concept oriented."

Nick, 33, has been in the insurance industry since 1997. "It's been less than two years for me," said Marc Ostdiek, who is 29. Marc joined at his brother's insistence. "Yeah, I beat him up," Nick Ostdiek said.

After college, Nick sought insurance licenses in life, health and property/casualty, and then spent a year deciding which way to go. A friend at John Hancock told him about the company's "Fast Start" program for new producers. "At the time it was primarily a long-term-care insurance market; in my first year in the business I did only long-term care," he said.

Marc put college aside to work in the California construction industry. "After getting home physically tired and beat up, I kind of decided there's got to be an easier way to make a living," he said. "Yeah, in Fresno it gets up to 110 degrees in the summertime," Nick Ostdiek added.

Although the brothers maintain separate books of business, they've been doing "a lot of joint work this last year," Nick Ostdiek said. Their ultimate goal has been to be in the Million Dollar Roundtable, which Nick achieved this year, Bevan said.

"Starting out in this business, it was really difficult to make a sale," Marc Ostdiek said. "The team approach really enabled me to bring proven production tools on appointments, and that's really been successful for me."

Gary DiCresce

Company: Axa Financial Group

Education: Siena College, Loudenville, N.Y., Pre-law.

Accomplishment: Produced an 870% increase in first-year commissions for 2006.

Changes in tax laws helped long-time life agent Gary DiCresce rise to the top, but also nearly made him quit life sales for good. The 35-year life veteran almost retired in 2005, after 25 years as a top producer, when his then-employer, Mutual of New York, was acquired by Axa Financial Group. Instead, DiCresce reinvented himself and his practice to regain his top producer status, and his old confidence.

DiCresce began his career on April 1, 1971, right out of college when he was recruited by MONY. "It was April Fool's Day and I guess I wasn't a fool to do it," he said.

He started out in executive compensation plans. When the Employee Retirement Income Security Act was implemented, many companies terminated their pension plans, and executive compensation became more popular. "ERISA, when it was passed, gave me an in-road," DiCresce said. "It was like being Sam Walton and having an unlimited territory of people that didn't know what to do."

A chance meeting in New York led to "a guy in Arizona who needed insurance," who also headed a major U.S. company. "He said, 'When you're out in the area, come visit me. I have 11 children and I need some insurance.' I ended up selling them $150 million in insurance in 1974," DiCresce said. To secure the deal, he and his wife had to dine with each of the children. "So it was 11 interviews."

"That really helped me get my career going," DiCresce said. "It really gave me a lot of confidence."

DiCresce spent his career prospecting--the "joy" of life sales--at many of his wife's charitable events, meeting people he'd not otherwise get the chance to, and soon making them both friends and customers.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 again affected the executive comp business, noted DiCresce's Albany, N.Y., branch manager, Bob Woodcock, regional executive vice president for Axa Advisors LLC: "The tax laws changed and the vast majority of people that had business in those markets either got out of the business or found another way to approach it."

So DiCresce transitioned into estate planning. "He also got creative in the way he presented some of the deferred compensation options in the much narrower field of operations that still existed after the tax laws changed," Woodcock said.

By the end of 2005, Woodcock's support and Axa's guaranteed products brought DiCresce literally back to life. "I became more involved and diversified rather than being afraid to talk to people about insurance," DiCresce said. "I might be a dinosaur, but I've always thought of insurance as a way of guaranteeing a future benefit to an individual family, regardless of what market forces take place."

"I'm glad I didn't retire," he added. "I really think I've helped people over the last two years."

Ted Welch

Company: Guardian Life, Atlanta

Education: Valdosta State University, Marketing; minor in Finance.

Accomplishment: Increased new production by more than 250% in 2006.

Ted Welch always wanted to know how others create wealth. "Growing up, I had a desire to know how you really make money and make it work for you," he said. "It's always been a passion of mine to learn how to do that."

As managing partner for Strategic Wealth Group LLC in Valdosta, Ga.--a satellite of Guardian--Welch does just that. His life career began in May 1995, when like many life agents, a friend brought him into the business.

"This friend is in our firm today," Welch said. The entire learning and interviewing process took about nine months. "Being the entrepreneurial person I am, I wanted to have the ability to move. I like freedom, but I'm also a disciplined person. I'm not afraid to work hard, but I want to play too."

Life sales became the best of both worlds. He soon hired a part-time assistant, who became full-time. "I was able to delegate certain responsibilities to her, and that freed me up to do more of the things I love to do."

But what did he love? That answer would come after attending a President's Council meeting for Guardian's high-earning producers. There he met Dan Sullivan, cofounder of The Strategic Coach in Chicago, an entrepreneurial guidance group.

"I hired them and started attending their coaching sessions," Welch said. There he had to delve into his personal and business goals. "What am I passionate about? What are my unique abilities? What do I love to do on a daily basis? And if I do this every day, would my business production go up?"

Welch decided he wanted to focus exclusively on "tier one" clients--the high-end customers.

"Everybody is important, but not everyone wants the same service level," he said. "It's not work; it's fun. It developed a career for me. I love the relationships, I love seeing how people manage their money. I love handling those money-related issues for them."

Anybody can sell life products, but using unique strategies--that added value--helps his business excel. "By meeting with my clients on a quarterly basis, there's a relationship; I'm involved in their lives, he said.

Learn More

Northwestern Mutual Group A.M. Best Co. # 69515 Distribution: Independent financial representatives

Prudential Insurance Company Of America A.M. Best Co. # 06974 Distribution: Career agents

Axa Financial Group A.M. Best Co. # 70194 Distribution: Career agents, financial advisers

John Hancock Life Insurance Co. A.M. Best Co. # 06601 Distribution: Independent agents, career agents, broker-dealers, wholesalers and financial institutions

Guardian Life Insurance Company of America A.M. Best Co. # 06508 Distribution: General agencies, satellite agencies, financial service professionals and broker-dealers

For ratings and other financial strength information about these companies, visit www.ambest.com.