As you might imagine, Steve Kaneski, who runs Kaneski Associates Financial & Insurance Services in Roseville, Calif., is a busy guy. You don't earn a top sales ranking from a major carrier unless you are working your tail off. Kaneski was gracious enough to spend a few minutes recently to respond to questions that provide an insight to his success.
Kaneski's practice specializes in working with medical professionals, and after almost 20 years, he has been able to grow a clientele in excess of 400 doctors and dentists -- also notoriously busy people. "Therefore, we have to be more responsive and sensitive to their time and issues. I still work three evenings a week and every other Saturday to make myself available to their schedules," Kaneski says.
The married father of three (his wife and partner Channa manages his work schedule) remains committed to helping clients understand how to more effectively manage their assets to achieve their financial goals. Read on for insight into how he does it so well.
-- The Editors
1. Life Insurance Selling: How did you decide to get into insurance/financial services as a career?
Steve Kaneski: After an internship with the now defunct Kidder, Peabody & Company, I realized I loved the financial services industry and helping people understand what it might take to reach their goals, but I also realized that I didn't like the transactional nature of the securities industry. My father, after retiring from the Air Force, went into the insurance industry, and I had always admired the relationships that he had built within our community. I called him one night and asked what he thought I should do, and he suggested I talk with one of the large insurance companies, as they had diversified their offerings to include registered products. After looking into several companies, I realized that New York Life was the right one for me.
2. LIS: By any measure you would be considered a success as a financial services professional. What have been the key factors in your becoming successful in this business?
Kaneski: Originally, I thought that I was younger, faster, stronger, and smarter than my managers and the 160 years of experience that New York Life brought to the table. After I realized I wasn't, I started doing things the way I had been taught in New York Life's new agent training and career school. We systematized everything we did, from prospecting for new clients, through seminars, to the education process for those prospects and the introduction of products that might help them reach their goals. We even created processes and procedures so that we could see those valuable clients on a systematic basis, and do meaningful reviews at least once a year and with many, quarterly and semi-annually. So the key factors are that I finally started listening to my management and worked very systematically.
3. LIS: Do you set goals for yourself -- such as lives sold -- and how are you doing vs. your current goals?
Kaneski: After understanding that the industry's long-held belief that case rate was important, we developed goals around activity, or how many times we were touching potential clients and clients. We did not measure product sold, but activity. Activity creates opportunity, and as we would help our clients, we would meet our goals.
4. LIS: How do you identify prospects and turn them into clients, and what kind of service do you provide to existing clients?
Kaneski: The key to our success has been being able to meet great clients and potential clients. I work on the belief that I can't teach character, but I can teach people of character how to reach their goals. So all of our systems and processes are built around the question, "how do we find those people of character?" Early on, I started doing educational seminars and we found that people who were interested in learning more would attend. As we presented our workshop, then asked those who had attended if they would be interested in getting together to learn more, we in fact were refining who we would be talking to. We would then send a multi-page questionnaire and ask that they meet us at our offices, and by the time someone had jumped that many hurdles to meet with us, we knew we had a person who was ready to work toward achieving their goals. Once you have gotten the attention of a quality person, you obviously have to have developed appropriate discussion points that would help them discover what their needs and wants might be. We use a financial tool called the "EKG" to help them determine how much additional savings might be appropriate, take them through a risk tolerance discussion and onto asset positioning models.
5. LIS: Tell us about one of the more interesting cases you personally have handled recently -- how you reached the prospect initially and developed the case.
Kaneski: Although I work primarily with physicians who are somewhat insulated from the recession, the market's downturn obviously affects their wealth and their mindsets. Recently, I was interviewed by Smart Money magazine to describe how we had helped a pair of doctors plan for retirement in such a way that they were not dependent upon withdrawals from the market. When we first met this pair of doctors in 1996, we had done the base level planning that included whole life insurance to help them maximize the pension plans that they enjoyed from their employer. With the market's downturn, their significant guaranteed pension obviously reduced their reliance on the market, but still they needed additional income from their investments. We discussed alternatives to making income withdrawals from the volatile markets and the vehicles that might reduce the withdrawal risk. After evaluation, we employed about half of their portfolio into a New York Life Guaranteed Life Income Annuity with cash refund and that income, along with their pension, fully delivered what they needed for retirement. We had also placed much of their assets in New York Life's variable annuity with the IPP investment protection plan rider so that a large share of the variable assets had investment protection against loss over a 10-year horizon. As it turned out, these withdrawals from the variable markets to the Guarantee Life Income Annuity and the addition of these IPP riders in 2007 and early 2008 were very timely.
6. LIS: What are some mistakes you've made over the years, and what have you learned from those mistakes?
Kaneski: My mistakes started early in not listening to my management and not working within the systems and processes that they had introduced to me. I thought that I could talk to fewer, better clients and after many months, even years of stressing over whether a particular case was going to be completed or not, I realized that really, this is a consistency business; that you have to set case rate goals to confirm that you are making the appropriate number of contacts, or serving the appropriate number of clients. The lessons I learned from lack of case rate and activity have been painfully burned into my memory in that to this day, I follow the case and activity models that New York Life had shown me that first week.
7. LIS: How do you involve your staff in your business?
Kaneski: I couldn't function at the level I do without great staff. My wife Channa handles my schedule and schedules the seminar leads and reviews. My clients understand that she truly cares about them and wants to help in any way she can. I have staff members who are dedicated to each of the functions necessary to service our clients. I have an individual who prepares my cases in advance of each of my appointments and I have licensed assistants who handle the processing and service of life, annuity and registered products. I have other assistants who help maintain our database and marketing needs.
8. LIS: Tell us about your civic and charitable activities, and is there any connection between them and your business activities?
Kaneski: After 20 years in this business, I have realized that not only can I provide great service to my clients, but I have also benefited greatly. I strongly believe that I must give back, not for business reasons, but because it's the right thing to do, both spiritually and as an example to my kids. We are deeply involved with many of our clients' charitable works. After all, doctors are in a caring profession and for many of them it doesn't stop because their medical day is done. One of my clients, Ernie Bodai, created the breast cancer stamp that has raised $65 million for breast cancer research. Another, Steve Polansky, had a daughter who needed care for an eating disorder and by the strength of his will and character he created one of the finer eating disorder outreach programs in the state of California. I have another client, Phil Dirksen, who spent years in the Congo and now goes back on a yearly basis to treat women who have been ravaged by the ongoing wars. Serotonin Surge will cross the $1 million dollar mark in fund-raising that primarily benefits the Safety Net clinics in the Sacramento Area. As an organization, and with New York Life's help, we contribute significantly to these charities and many others. We must lead our communities in helping not just in the financial services area, but in all aspects where possible.
9. LIS: In that same vein, what is your involvement with industry organizations like MDRT, and what have you gained from your membership in those groups?
Kaneski: As a "Top of the Table" member, you are exposed to the highest-end professionals in our industry. Having them as resources, mentors and role models has helped me develop my own vision as to what my practice could be. I remember my early MDRT meetings and many of the ideas I use today came straight from main platform and breakout group speakers.
10. LIS: As a financial professional, looking back on a long career, what personal accomplishment are you most proud of?
Kaneski: I'm most proud of who my clients are, that I have been blessed to know great people who do great things, both in their professional and personal lives. Yearly, I have a client get-together and every time, I'm struck as I look out and see who I have been lucky enough to work with.
From the June 01, 2009 issue of Life Insurance Selling • Subscribe!
