Most schools do not teach basic financial management techniques.  World Financial Group believes that everyone benefits from the six financial concepts that were set forth on the Financial Dream Map.  Associates with World Financial Group work with clients in their own communities to teach the client how to use the concepts.  As progress is made, the World Financial Group client is encouraged to stay the course toward the goal.  The early steps on the Map lay a solid foundation for the long-term goals.  Associates work with each client for many years, and together they make meaningful adjustments to the financial portfolio.

When World Financial Group decided to create a network of associates who would work with clients in their own communities, leadership skills surfaced as a central need for the entire team. The Situational Leadership Theory developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey set forth a methodology by which people could address the guidance requirements of dozens of different people. Every person is different, and associates would need a way to assess who required a great deal of attention and who just needed some good ideas. Associates who embrace the concepts of situational leadership find their task rewarding and profitable.

Basic situational leadership theory states that there is not a single approach to leadership that works for everyone. Associates learn to read the needs of clients and team members and adjust their methods in each situation. One client may require step by step explanations of every illustration on the Financial Dream map. Another client may have a basic understanding and want to learn how to take ownership of their financial management. Each person will be treated with respect and given the guidance required to achieve results. Associates receive training in these methods and are able to ask more experienced associates for guidance with difficult situations.

Maturity is the key factor in assessing the amount of guidance an individual will require when learning about proven financial management practices. Associates work closely with each client during the initial assessment to determine the financial health of the household. When clients demonstrate initiative and ask good questions, the associate knows how to adjust their style. At some point in the process, each client will need additional guidance, but situational leadership provides a framework.

World Financial Group exists to help people from all walks of life in their quest to live out their dreams. Associates encourage clients to dream big and implement a household budget to measure their progress. When a client struggles to follow the budget, the associate knows that more guidance will be needed. Certain clients will embrace every concept quickly, which will allow the associate to move forward more rapidly.

When a challenging situation is encountered, the situational leadership model affords a common terminology where experienced leaders can share ideas to meet the client’s needs. An associate will share the situation in terms of competence and commitment, which gives the leader insight to make recommendations. Team members benefit from the experience of others, and the entire team is strengthened.

When World Financial Group decided to create a network of associates who would work with clients in their own communities, leadership skills surfaced as a central need for the entire team. The Situational Leadership Theory developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey set forth a methodology by which people could address the guidance requirements of dozens of different people. Every person is different, and associates would need a way to assess who required a great deal of attention and who just needed some good ideas. Associates who embrace the concepts of situational leadership find their task rewarding and profitable.

Basic situational leadership theory states that there is not a single approach to leadership that works for everyone. Associates learn to read the needs of clients and team members and adjust their methods in each situation. One client may require step by step explanations of every illustration on the Financial Dream map. Another client may have a basic understanding and want to learn how to take ownership of their financial management. Each person will be treated with respect and given the guidance required to achieve results. Associates receive training in these methods and are able to ask more experienced associates for guidance with difficult situations.

Maturity is the key factor in assessing the amount of guidance an individual will require when learning about proven financial management practices. Associates work closely with each client during the initial assessment to determine the financial health of the household. When clients demonstrate initiative and ask good questions, the associate knows how to adjust their style. At some point in the process, each client will need additional guidance, but situational leadership provides a framework.

World Financial Group exists to help people from all walks of life in their quest to live out their dreams. Associates encourage clients to dream big and implement a household budget to measure their progress. When a client struggles to follow the budget, the associate knows that more guidance will be needed. Certain clients will embrace every concept quickly, which will allow the associate to move forward more rapidly.

When a challenging situation is encountered, the situational leadership model affords a common terminology where experienced leaders can share ideas to meet the client’s needs. An associate will share the situation in terms of competence and commitment, which gives the leader insight to make recommendations. Team members benefit from the experience of others, and the entire team is strengthened.

World Financial Group offers a variety of life insurance options to suit clients’ needs, including term life insurance. This type of life insurance is said to be one of the simplest types of insurance. It covers a person during a specific period of time, or term. Variations of term life insurance include return of premium life insurance (ROP), annual renewable term life insurance (ART), renewable term life insurance, adjustable term life insurance and universal term life insurance.

Most term life insurance policies assure fixed premiums. In other words, the owner of the policy makes the same payment amount to the insurance company on an agreed upon schedule (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.). Term life insurance can be relatively inexpensive, depending in part on the chosen term of coverage. Further, a beneficiary of a term life insurance policy is guaranteed a fixed death benefit (should the policyholder die), regardless of how long the policy has been in effect. The difference in cost between term life insurance and other policies is due to the fact that a term life insurance plan can expire without ever having to pay out a death benefit, as opposed to permanent life insurance, which undoubtedly will eventually be paid out.

Depending on the circumstances, some people choose to purchase term life insurance for a year, knowing that they will have enough savings or will create another plan for coverage after that year. However, most often, term lengths purchased include 10, 15, 20 and 30 years. Regardless of term length, you no longer have coverage the day after your term ends. After that date, you have to obtain further coverage with different terms and conditions and, usually, different premiums.

In most instances, term life insurance can be converted to a universal life or whole life policy if you want more permanent coverage. Luckily, World Financial Group works with you to fully understand your current situation – as well as any plans you may have for the future – when helping you choose the best term life insurance.

The beneficiary of a term life insurance policy typically uses the benefits as supplemental income, as opposed to other types of life insurance that allow for estate planning and charitable strategies. However, having multiple types of life insurance policies isn’t uncommon, depending on what type of strategy you and your financial advisor have created. Contact World Financial Group today so its experts can help you navigate through the many options of term life insurance, as well as other life insurance options available.

Long before Andy Weng joined World Financial Group in 2001, he had the dedication and discipline necessary to be successful. He started studying martial arts at the age of six, and would train every day for three hours before school and another three hours after school. At 11, he was one of 30 children out of 6,000 applicants to be accepted to the Shanghai Opera School for the Chinese performing arts, where he learned all about the singing, dancing, martial arts and gymnastics that are integral to Chinese opera. Until his graduation in 1988, his life consisted of nothing but cooking, eating, studying, training and practicing from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, with once-weekly visit from his parents and several performances each week. As an adult, his life would take a different course.

Andy originally thought he was going to be a performer, and even formed a professional performance troupe, along with a few friends, that put on productions all over China. The events in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 changed everything for him, though. After military force was used to quash student protests supporting democratic reforms, Andy’s school disbanded his performance group and placed all its members into different groups throughout the country. Faced with limited college opportunities and an unstable political climate, he decided to use the English skills he’d picked up after two years of night school and attempt to study abroad in the U.S.

Getting a student visa was very difficult, but through hard work and some fortunate connections, Andy was able to make it to the Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus on a full scholarship for its mathematics program. He later decided to pursue a dual degree in math and chemical engineering with a partial scholarship to BYU’s Provo campus. To make ends meet, he worked as a carpet cleaner, janitor and teaching assistant. He still found time to get out, though; he met his wife Jeana and married her in 1993.

Although Andy dreamed of getting a high-paying job with a big chemical company, his plans changed after his boss at the math lab told him about an insurance and financial services company that he’d gotten involved with called World Financial Group. Andy wasn’t interested at first, but eventually got on board. Now he has 60 associates working with him at his World Financial Group office in Seattle and affiliate offices in California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah.

You’ve finally gotten that person on your team that you’ve been trying to recruit for months, but now what? How do you integrate that person into your existing team and retain them? How do you keep networking to find more great prospective associates?

Three of World Financial Group’s top leaders take you beyond recruiting, and share the networking, team building and retention strategies that have helped grow their businesses.

At our company, all roads lead to the building of a team. If you don’t build a team – and build a company within a company – you’re actually building a practice; you’re not building a business. A true business could eventually operate without you and require less hands-on time if you build it right. But if you’re building a practice, you are in the transaction-only business. Similar to an accountant or lawyer or other professional in a practice, your business success relies solely on your individual effort and not on the collective efforts of a team of people. Without recruiting, you end up being in sales every day.

That’s why recruiting, and recruiting the right people, is so important in our business. Recruiting allows you to not only build a company within a company, but also helps solve the prospecting challenge. Eventually everybody in this business will run out of personal contacts. But when you build a business and build new associates on your team, you never run out of potential contacts because you are working not only with the 1,000 people you know, but also with the 1,000 people your associate knows, thereby helping you expand the potential warm market for your business. For that to work well, however, you must first get your new associate excited about what we do for people: We help people learn how to save money, make money, get out of debt, and correct their financial mistakes. When they fully understand and are excited about our mission, just like the great new restaurant in town that they love, they will want to share it with everyone they know.

This is a contact business. Whether looking for clients or associates, one question you should never be afraid to ask is, “Who do you know?” Who do you know who is a great team player? Who do you know who is looking for a career change? Who do you know who wants to get their financial house in order? Asking these questions of others helps you start building potential new contacts for yourself and your teammates.

Once I get a new contact, a name generally never leaves my list. I currently have a database of 15,000-plus contacts – both clients and potential business associates – and I go to it every day to drive my business. I log my last call with a person and what we spoke about. I have different codes for different types of contacts, and the great thing is, since it’s part of my Outlook program, I can access my database on my computer or through my Blackberry, so I can work my list from wherever I am and whenever I have a free moment.

I also believe that 90 percent of whether or not we succeed with a client or a recruit is a matter of timing. It comes down to your commitment and their readiness to hear the message. That’s why the word “no” to me means “not yet.” When people are ready to hear a message like ours and they’re ready for   something different, I want to be there.

You should also be aware of your attitude when making contacts. You can either be a) unsure or b) confident they are going to be interested. I always assume something good will happen, and that always comes through in my conversations. I love our business and I’m excited to tell people about it.

Effective networking also comes down to your schedule. I believe this business is won and lost on how you plan your day. You can’t wake up with a wandering generality; you’ve got to wake up with a specific action plan. The number one thing you need to do when you get up in the morning is grow your business, and you do that through contacting other people. I am on the phone making calls from 9 a.m. to noon every weekday. You need to be on the phone setting appointments with potential clients, following up with existing clients and teammates, inviting potential recruits to corporate overviews, and reconnecting with previous contacts. These calls will more often than not help generate business, leads, new clients, and recruits, and that is the heart and soul of your business. You’ve got to be in the prospecting hunt every day.

The key to integrating a new recruit on your team is that they need to feel part of something from day one – part of World Financial Group, part of the team, and part of our mission of helping families. If you wait until after they are licensed to really integrate them, you’ve missed a critical window. They need to feel they belong right from the start because that will provide a necessary foundation for them as they build their business.

I believe there are some things you can do to make new associates feel welcome right away and to help them develop a comfort level with the team and themselves. Show a new recruit you are excited for them to be there — don’t just tell them.

1. Set expectations. You do a great disservice to a new recruit if you do not give them a game plan to follow on their first day. A game plan will help build their business, their confidence, and their relationships with teammates. Our new recruits understand that if they do not already have their licenses, they need to get started with our licensing program right away and begin training. We also work with them to develop a prospect list, attend weekly business presentation meetings (BPMs) and trainings, and get out in the field to observe training appointments. We let them know that if they do their part, we’re going to do our part to mentor them, train them, and help them build their business.

2. Keep your promises. When you tell your new associate that you and your teammates are going to help train and mentor them, do it. No exceptions. By keeping your promises, you build a relationship with a new recruit built on trust – which is critical to their success, to the team, to their leadership development, and to the future of your business. Without genuine, two-way trust, your relationships and your business won’t go far.

3. Put the mission from their head to their heart. I strongly believe in the mission of our company. Making sure there is No Family Left Behind ® financially is what fires me up every day. New recruits need to understand and really be dedicated to our mission from the outset. This bigger purpose fuels their fire and helps them understand that we are here to serve. When I talk to people about what intrigues them most about our company as a business opportunity, they like the fact that we are committed to helping people.

4. Match up with a mentor. Mentorship is everything in our business. The fact that our business model encourages experienced veterans to train new associates is what sets us apart from the rest of the industry. Existing leaders understand if a new associate succeeds, the company succeeds. It’s that simple. So many people have dreams of being their own boss but they either a) don’t have the money or b) don’t have the know-how. The low cost to building a business with our company and our mentoring business model solves those problems. Mentorship also adds to retention. Spending one-on-one time to coach and mentor new recruits builds a bond and gives them someone they can go to for advice throughout their careers

5. Show and celebrate success. You should be committed to an atmosphere of encouragement. We are all about celebrating milestones — whether it’s making a first sale, getting a promotion, or passing a licensing exam. You need to help people become successful and then recognize and reward that success in front of their teammates. That not only makes the new associate feel good about their accomplishment and allows the team to feel proud to be in business with this person, but also motivates others who are shooting for that milestone to go out and get it done.

6. Get together outside the office. The bigger your team gets, the harder this gets, but it is so important to spend time with your team having fun and relaxing. You can have barbecues, golf outings, weekend trips, or holiday parties, but it’s important to really get to know your teammates outside the office.

I think once we have a new associate on board, the immediate focus needs to be speed, so we can get them to the results and rewards phase of our business and show them they can make it here.

The first 30 days is the survival phase in our business. If they can overcome the survival phase, they can move on to the training phase, and then the building phase and be on their way. In my opinion, one of the best ways to fast start a new recruit in our business is to follow 3-3-30 – help them get three recruits and observe three field training appointments in the first 30 days. The three recruits help them start building a team so they are ready to go once they get licensed. The three training appointments help them observe and learn how to work with potential recruits and clients in the field. They have to believe and see that they can do this business right away or you may lose them. Using this method, you eventually turn your trainees into trainers who can then help teach the business to new associates on their team. After that, they are on the road to building a business with dozens of new associates on their team.

A sense of belonging is part of human nature. Our team environment bolsters a new recruit’s confidence and helps him or her stay on track. The many team meetings we have – weekly and daily meetings, training sessions and calls, baseshop and breakout meetings – not only help people train and stay focused, but also build bonds among team members. These interactions help new associates overcome any self-doubts and get them off to a fast start.

As a leader, you should also be in constant personal communication with your associates – new and veteran – to motivate and help them. Personal communication is so important and helps associates feel connected to our business, the team and our mission. However, people at different phases of business growth need different messages and motivations, and it’s your job as a leader to stay on top of that.

Once a new recruit gets started and their business begins to build, you need to recognize and reward their accomplishments. On our team, after a new associate completes 3-3-30 successfully, he or she becomes part of the MD Club, gets special recognition at team meetings, and knows the next necessary step. As your new associates build their teams, get their licenses, help clients, and begin to get their business rolling, you need to keep those recognitions and rewards coming.

People want to be recognized for their accomplishments. My previous corporate position never rewarded me for the extra effort I put into my job. When I came to World Financial Group and was immersed in such a positive environment, it was a welcome change. Our culture of personal growth, mentorship, and support is such a stark contrast to the everyday working world most people experience. It is a huge plus for our business and keeps people moving forward with their careers. I’ve said and many others have said that our company is a great personal growth program with a great business opportunity attached. I couldn’t agree more.

A new associate needs to see that this is the place where they can grow a great business and achieve their dreams while making a difference for people out there. Especially after what happened to most people’s financial picture in the past 18 months, our message and our business couldn’t be more important.

Connection, confidence, mission, results, recognition, success, speed, and team building are keys to helping retain a new associate and keep them on track, happy, engaged and dedicated to building a career and a business with World Financial Group.