I started my financial services career as an employee selling insurance and investments for a large national company. We were able to sell insurance issued by other insurance companies but only as a last resort.
One of my first sales appointments was with a prospective customer, we’ll call him Dan, who wanted to buy a term life insurance policy. He knew how much coverage he wanted, I just needed to get him a price. When I compared “our” rates to those “last resort” companies, our rates were not very good, so I decided to give him a quote for one of the other companies.
Before meeting with Dan, my sales manager asked what I was going to present. I said I was showing him the quote from one of our “last resort” companies because it was much less expensive than our own offering. This was met with, “Um no, you need to show him our product. You will earn more and it will look better to my boss if you sell our policy.”
Being young and still pretty green, I did what he said. I met with Dan and gave him the quote for our policy. Dan said he had been checking around and it seemed a little high. Then he thanked me for looking into it and told me he was going to pass. Not wanting to lose the sale I pulled out the lower quote that I was going to use in the first place and showed it to him.
Dan looked at the quote and said, “That’s more like it, now please go. If you really wanted my business you would have showed me this in the first place. We are done here.”
I gathered my things and slinked out with my tail tucked between my legs and my stomach up in my throat. I was upset that I didn’t get the sale, but what really bothered me was I had compromised my integrity and not acted in the client’s best interest just to make my manager’s numbers look better. I told myself I never ever wanted to feel that way again, and I haven’t.
I learned my lesson. I didn’t take a lot longer to see the way I needed to do business wasn’t compatible with working for a company more concerned with sales contests than doing the right thing. I haven’t had to answer to a sales manager for a very long time and I sleep very well.
