191

The 21st Century Advisor

Sanjay Tolani, FLMI, MBA

“Why choose me?” I have asked this question myself from
the day I joined this business. Why should a client choose
me over all the other advisors in the business? With so many
advisors in the market, what makes me stand out? The day
we can answer this question, we find the USP (Unique
Selling Point) that we bring to the table in front of our pros-
pects. This business is not about selling a product; everyone
can copy that. It is a profession that requires an individual
to dedicate his or her time to ensure the well-being of the
family of another. This dedication needs to be genuine and
honest. It is a profession that manages the lives of families, to
continue when the roadblocks of life come in the way. But it
all comes down to “Why choose me as your advisor?”
My journey through this profession started when I was
just 17 years old. My father, who had a thriving insurance
agency in Dubai, asked me to take the new sales staff for
training, for which he bought a new car. So I enjoyed driving
the new car, but it came with a price . . . sitting through the
training with the staff. After six months of boring training
and pretty much the same training, it came to a point that
I knew more about the products than anyone at my office. I
felt that I could give the most basic advice to anyone. Well,
my training period and job was over, I started university, and
guess what—I did all my presentations on retirement plan-
ning. My prospect base was my classmates and my teachers,
and the best part of it was, they didn’t have a choice but to
listen to my presentation.
It was a fantastic start to a career that was quite unexpected.
None of my friends liked to save money. They only liked
shopping; all the girls in my class loved shopping—Louis
Vuitton, Prada, Hermès, etc.—it was a secret that the boys
liked it too. So I decided to meet with the parents of my
friends. I said, “I am going to teach your children to save
money.” The parents were shocked. They said, “You will
teach my daughter to save money?” I said, “It comes with
a condition. Whatever your daughter saves, you will match
her savings.” The father said, “Forget matching. I will double
it. So if she saves $500 per month, I will save $1,000 extra
for her.” So I went to the daughter and said, “I told your
father to increase your pocket money by $1,000.” She said,
“What? How did you get him to give me $1,000 extra? He
is so stingy! He wants details of every dollar I spend.” I told
her, “It comes with a condition. You save $500, and he will
add $1,000 on top of it to your account.” She said, “Really?
Where do I sign for this account?” I closed 60 cases in my
first year, and I became an MDRT member at the age of 19.
Now, year 1 was easy. How did I repeat the same and qualify
for Court of the Table? I went to the father and told him,
“Your daughter has a retirement plan. What is your retire-
ment plan?” He said, “I don’t have a plan.” How hard do you
think it was to sell a second retirement plan to the family?
And because he is older, he had to save double. That’s it. I
qualified for Court of the Table by the time I was 21 and had
done 180 cases. I qualified for Top of the Table at the age of
23 and became a life member at the age of 28.
I started working harder in this business five years ago
because of two incidents that happened in my life.
An hour before my sister’s wedding, my father suffered a
brain stroke. Yes, just one hour before. That day is still fresh
in my memory, because I was sitting in the hospital, while

Sanjay Tolani, FLMI, MBA

Tolani is a 15-year MDRT member with two Court of the Table and 11 Top of the Table qualifications. He
works with ultra-high-net-worth clients in 53 countries and has spoken at more than 100 conferences.
The CEO of Goodwill World, he has completed two undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees,
and he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in finance. His book 28,000 has sold more than 30,000 copies
worldwide and has been published in four languages.
Goodwill Insurance Brokers Llc
Pob 2948, Dubai, 2948, United Arab Emirates
email: sanjay@sanjaytolani.com phone: 971.43595566 website: sanjaytolani.com Twitter: @srtolani

View this presentation in the Resource Zone at mdrt.org or purchase from mdrtstore.org.

©Million Dollar Round Table Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017

192 Focus Sessions: Client Strategies
the functions continued back home. It wasn’t until after the
wedding was over (a typical Indian wedding lasts for four
days) that I realized the kind of burden that would fall on
my shoulders. You see, my business was built with four pil-
lars in place. My father used to handle the strategy for the
company, my sister the administration, and my mother the
finance and banking, and I used to head sales and business
development. Overnight, I was alone in the office, my sister
was married and the family she married moved to India, my
mother was going back and forth between home and the
hospitals taking care of my father, and I was alone. But there
is a silver lining to every dark night: My dad had planned for
this event. He knew that someday, if something did hit the
family, we would have the right plans in place to keep our
head out of water. His key man insurance paid out. It not
only kept me afloat, but also gave me the liquidity I needed
to run my business. True friends, true and loyal employees—
hey, I realized what true means, because in a matter of nine
months, between my father’s two brain strokes, we lost 254
clients and almost $150,000 in revenue, and I was engaged
to be married and have a partner come into my life.
Every person in the world has a Plan A in life that makes
sure that his or her business is a success, investments make
money, properties provide income, and so on. But what if all
this fails? What is Plan B? We are in the business of building
the Plan B in the lives of our clients. Who else would spend
time building this safety net for these families?
The value of insurance—I truly learned the value; it was
the most sacred money I got when I needed it the most.
Thanks, Dad. If not for your vision and foresight, I might
have been lost and probably out of this beautiful business.
It was after this that I built a presentation.
Did you know that the average life span of a person is
roughly 28,000 days? You’re going to live till the age of 76.7
years. Which number sounds scarier? Which sounds easier?
It doesn’t matter, because in the end, they’re the same num-
ber! But the way the human brain perceives years and days is
very different. Days always sound shorter and easier to deal
with. If I tell you that it’s about 60 days to your big Christmas
bonus, you’re happily and excitedly ticking the days off your
calendar, aren’t you? If I tell you that it’s more than seven
weeks away, you’re a little gloomier. Nothing excites us more
than instant gratification. That’s human nature. We’ve built
a world around it, haven’t we?
Smartphones. Instant noodles. Online payments. Emails.
We cannot wait. We want it all now. The glitch here is that
all these things are possible only with money. Even for the
Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017
innovation that brought these things into our lives, there
was one invention that preceded it all: money. Whether you
call it finance or investment or wealth creation or reserves or
any fancy term you want, in the end, it’s that dollar bill in
your hand. It’s that one single unit that makes your world go
around every single day.
So back to the number 28,000, which is 76.71 years. Let’s
say it’s approximately 80 years. We like to break this into
four parts: 0‒20, 20‒40, 40‒60, and 60‒80.
1. 0‒20: We play, study, and so on.
2. 20‒40: We get our first job, we buy our first car, we get
married, and we have kids.
3. 40‒60: We might get a second job or have changed
our careers or started a business. We would surely have
bought a second car and usually a second house as an
investment, but, more importantly, our kids would be
finishing the first part of their lives.
4. 60‒80: We would hope to retire.
During 0‒20 and 60‒80, we have no income, which
is 14,000 days. We all have 14,000 days to achieve all our
dreams, our kids’ dreams, our parents’ dreams. Whatever we
want to achieve, we have 14,000 days to achieve it.
During this period of time, we have four universal fears:
1. What if I cannot work to 60?
2. What if I don’t reach 60?
3. How much money should I have to ensure that I can
retire? I mean, how much is enough?
4. How can I ensure that my kids will start life with the
right foundation?
Having done this presentation in 53 countries, I haven’t
found a fifth universal fear.
This simple presentation helps in addressing four prod-
ucts in the financial planning process:
1. Critical illness or income protection
2. Life insurance
3. Retirement planning
4. Education planning for the kids
This presentation has allowed my closing ratio to almost
hit 10/10.
Money is much like driving. Follow the holy trinity of
ABC: Accelerate, Brake, Clutch. You decide when to speed
up, when to go slow, and when to change gears.
If you lose money, you have the ability to make it again,
sure. However, what else do you lose in the process? You
lose your friends, your family’s faith in you, your self-respect,
your credibility in the world, and your peace of mind. Can
these be replaced? Probably not.
©Million Dollar Round Table

The second incident, which happened just a few months
before my father’s brain stroke, that changed me was this: My
best friend got married and had two beautiful kids. One day
she called me and said, “Sanjay, my husband has no insurance.
Please, can I bring him to you so that you can give him some
advice?” When was the last time you had clients calling you
and saying, “Hey, please sell me some life insurance”? So she
brought her husband to the office. We spent a couple of hours
together, crashed out options and comfort levels, and made a
decision to buy a policy. Well, we started all the paperwork
and had things moving. The husband said that he would go
home and send the check to my office. After he went home, he
called me and said, “Sanjay, my checkbook is empty, and I am
traveling tomorrow for 10 days. By then, my new checkbook
will be here. Would it be OK to send the check to you when I
come back?” “Well,” I said, “I guess that would be fine.”
After seven days, I got a call from my friend. She said,
“Sanjay, we had a car accident. Luckily, both the kids don’t
even have a scratch, but my jaw, hands, and legs are broken,
and my husband is in a coma.” I was speechless. I had noth-
ing to say. She then called me the next day and told me that
her husband had passed away.
I felt so helpless and so weak for a moment. I was only think-
ing about what I could do to help and protect her and her kids.
But I was helpless. The application was incomplete, the money
was not with it, and I could do nothing. If he had paid me only
$320, I would have paid out over $700,000 to his wife and kids.
Today, even at 3:00 a.m. if that friend were to call me, I
would pick up the phone and do anything for her. I feel so
guilty even today. So when a client tells me, “Let me think
about it,” I say, “You have three weeks to decide . . . no hurry
. . . but let me submit your case.” At least I will not be having
the guilt that he liked the advice but we didn’t have enough
time to implement it, because none of us knows how much
time we really have. We even have a free look period dur-
ing which we would return 100 percent of the premium. I
say, “You have three weeks, so go ask anyone you feel needs
to be part of this product—your wife, your family—but if
something happened today, I would be guilty.” How many
of you are ready to live with this guilt? To date, this guilt has
absorbed my thoughts, and I still wonder, What could I have
done different to have changed the outcome of that event?
We have the power to protect. Please don’t live with
this guilt. Forget cold calls—take care of your family and
friends first.
If you see your friends making a mistake, would you
not correct them? So then why are you not correcting their
©Million Dollar Round Table
The 21st Century Advisor 193
mistake of staying unprotected? Is it purely because you
don’t believe in your own product and probably don’t even
have the right amount for yourself? You are the doctor—if
doctors do not believe in their own medicine, how do they
prescribe the medication to their patients?
When we travel in an aircraft, the flight starts with a
safety video, one part of which says, “If the cabin pressure
falls, and the oxygen masks are released, help yourself even
before you help your own child or someone else.” If you are
not protected, how do you expect to help others?
First, do your own review and then for your full family.
Show this to your clients. They will buy because they like
to copy. It is a human tendency, copying. In this business,
copying is allowed, so please copy!
We are in the business of life insurance, not death insur-
ance. We protect lives, not afterlives.
One of the key things to remember during the twenty-
first century—and I cannot emphasize this enough—is that
clients have access to information that sometimes we might
also not be aware of. How do you continue to be competent
as an advisor in a market where clients are better informed?
That is where being a member of MDRT helps. MDRT
gave me that cutting edge. When we get to meet the best of
the profession from all over the world, we get ideas of how
people do things differently and what makes them unique in
their own market.
People today have access to knowledge but many times do
not have the commitment. Insurance is not a priority for your
clients. It is our job to help them understand this priority.
I had a client who asked me, “Sanjay, how do I know your
company will pay the claim?” The simple test is to die and
check, or to see from other people’s experiences.
How many of you drive a car? When was the last time
you checked to see if your airbag saved your life?
If you want to test it, crash your car, and we shall know
the outcome. Or we can see other people’s examples. Our
product is the airbag in the lives of our clients’ families. The
airbag should protect them in the time of a sudden crash.
The driver and the front-seat passenger also should wear seat-
belts to protect them in case of sudden halts or jolts in life.
We call that “income protection” or “critical illness.” These
sudden stops can be very dangerous, and hence the seatbelt
protects us.
My dream is to be the best in this profession, and it is the
belief that I am the best that makes me the best. It is inside
us, which tells us that we are the best. There is no one better
than you because there is no one like you. No one is like you.
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194 Focus Sessions: Client Strategies
Everyone is different and unique. So how do you compare to
others? You need to compare yourself to yourself and become
a better you.
This is the best profession in the world. I have enough
qualifications to do any business in the world. Why am I in
insurance? It is only because it is the best profession—not the
second best, but the best. There are only two professions in
the world that help families: insurance and charity. Which
one would you like your family to depend on?
Every one of us has the duty to spread this information. But
we cannot do it alone. Our time is limited to 24 hours, and we
only have two hands. We need the right people with us to help
spread the wisdom of what our business does for society. This
is where a team plays the role; representing and making copies
of yourself is key to spreading the goodwill our profession does
for society. Consider having seminars at universities, even at
high schools. They are also a very good ground for building a
recruiting drive, getting young, energetic students to under-
stand what our profession is truly about.
Every team leader wants his or her team to have Top of
the Table members. But building a Top of the Table team
needs commitment, clarity in purpose, and, most impor-
tantly, quality advice given to clients.
Building a Top of the Table team also needs a continuous
sharpening of skills, such as staying updated on our profes-
sion globally, trends in our business model, and products
available to clients.
Can you imagine going to a doctor and the only medi-
cine the doctor gives everyone is Panadol: for a headache,
Panadol; for a stomachache, Panadol; even for liver dam-
age, Panadol. How long do you think this doctor will stay
in business? In our profession, we have to get training on a
regular basis to ensure that we are not becoming Panadol
salespeople. Panadol is not the cure for every disease. So as
doctors of our profession, we need to focus on advice and
what the best cure is for our clients’ financial symptoms.
So stop selling products and start fulfilling dreams.
Dream bigger for yourself and for your families, and some-
times even teach your clients to dream.
As you guide a team, keeping the motivation of your team
guided in the right direction is one more important factor.
Imagine your team facing objections, excuses of why not to
be in this profession. As a team leader, knowing and recon-
firming the reasons for being in this profession is key.
Every day, knowing why we get up, why we are in this
business, and why we have chosen to be one of the best in
this profession is key to staying focused.
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It is very important, as managers, to continue training
on products and how products can be designed to help
the clients of our team members. Managers today are life
coaches, helping advisors to build life in the value systems
of this profession. Every day, our team will be engulfed in
a negativity of rejections. As managers, we need to help our
team understand that rejection is not toward them but is
toward the priorities our clients and prospects might not
find as priorities.
We all know that 85 percent of decisions are made by
emotion and 15 percent by logic. Every company says that
we have the best customer service. How many say that we
have the best customer understanding? How many of us
spend time understanding our customers? And the only
people you can really understand are people around you—
your family and friends, not random strangers on the road.
If each one of us takes care of our family and friends, a
majority of the people in the world would be secured. We
cannot make everyone happy, but we can surly protect the
ones who are nearest to us.
As advisors and team leaders or managers in this century,
we need to be aware of what the new competitive trends
evolving are. We all know bancassurance is becoming a big
distribution channel, markets are converging, and products
are becoming global.
Many clients have started expanding businesses, sourcing
from different countries, banking in multiple jurisdictions,
and having access to financial products in those different
countries. How do we compete on a global scale as indi-
vidual advisors in our local markets?
I have had a very interesting case, a client who is not a resi-
dent of any particular country because he travels so much, so
finding his true residence becomes an issue. How would an
underwriter price such a policy? How many documents and
compliance issues would need to be cleared? As the world
becomes smaller, such cases will become more popular. Are
you geared as a team, as an advisor, to service such clients?
Today, I work with clients in 53 countries and am spe-
cialized in understanding the needs of this unique market.
We all have to identify our own unique skills. “Why choose
me as an advisor?” is becoming a big question today. We
need to build our teams and guide our teams with the right
value systems and the right training, and, most impor-
tantly, we need to understand where our clients are getting
information from. It is becoming a smaller world and,
even more important, a world where information is easily
available to everyone, so the twenty-first century is about
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 The 21st Century Advisor 195

distinguishing ourselves from everyone else around us to seatbelt our clients can find in their journey of life. MDRT
stand out and be recognized. is the quality standard for this business. Today, we have to
We have made the choice to be in this profession out of make the decision to get not just to MDRT but to the top
true love and commitment. Let us be the best airbag and of this industry!

©Million Dollar Round Table Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017