How to Achieve T.O.T (Top of the Table)

You might be wondering what is TOT - Top of the Table?

If you are in the financial services industry, you might have heard of the term MDRT, which stands for Million Dollar Round Table.

MDRT is a global independent association of the world's leading life insurance and financial services professionals from more than 500 companies in 70 nations and territories.

By qualifying for MDRT, it typically represents the top 10% of all the advisers globally.

There are 2 other higher tiers of MDRT membership:

• Court of the Table (COT):?Achieved 3 times of MDRT
• Top of the Table (TOT):?Achieved 6 times of MDRT, or 2 times of COT

Quitting my corporate HR career at the age of 33, I joined the financial industry at the relatively mature age of 33 to kickstart a new career as a Financial Consultant.

Within 6 months I had qualified for my first MDRT in 2017.

Since 2018, I had repeatedly qualified for COT, 3x of MDRT for 3 years. However maintaining the COT qualification gradually became an increasingly challenging feat as I rose up the ranks into a Management leadership role in the subsequent years.

By year January 2021, I had finally got promoted into Directorship - a Financial Services Director within one of the shortest span of 4.5 years within the Company.

By then I was beginning to feel comfortable, perhaps too comfortable to the extent of feeling stagnancy. I felt that I had stopped growing, or in another word - regressing.

Finally due to myriad of reasons, I decided to pursue the biggest breakthrough of my career - to clear to achieve Top of the Table (TOT).

I finally cleared my TOT goal by 22nd December 2022 because I had brought my family for an overseas vacation. I would only return on 31st December.

By 31st August 2022, I had already qualified for COT. What it means that I had to re-run for another COT within the last 4 months.

In a nutshell, I had to be even more strategic to make it happen. Previously I had shared the ways to open doors to achieving Court of the Table

Without a doubt, I did not want to double my working hours, as this would greatly compromise my time with kids, which was my biggest non-negotiable as a working mother.

I hope by sharing this journey, this would help more dedicated working parents to harness their deepest potential inside and achieve their best whilst mitigating the working parents guilt.

It starts with this system of TRACKS, which starts from reinforcement of our fundamental competencies. Of course, whatever I shared is based on my own experience.

To break into the Top of the Table, and without having to compromise too much quality time with our family, requires us to be strategic thinkers.

Training

The year which I achieved TOT also witnessed me attending different courses and obtaining the accreditations. All in all, I had invested more than 300 hours of studying just in 2022:

• Certified High Net Worth Adviser
• Chartered Financial Consultant
• Women Leadership Development Programme
• Chartered Life Insurance Underwriter

The accreditation and the training programmes opened my mind and easily became conversation starters for my prospects.

Resilience

To warrant standing at the Top of the many top advisers, it not just takes strategic planning. It requires a tremendous and superior positive mindset and attitude.

Many producers I have seen, are good at forging forward. But when it comes to obstacles, not everybody have the resilience and faith to continue.

Grit, the spirit of not giving up and still able to rebound each time despite meeting small challenges or bigger adversities in life is one key element to achieving TOT.

During my journey, I vividly recalled that there were many wavering moments.

When scaling into unknown zones, breaking new grounds..

You have to learn to live and co-exist with prolonged periods of ambiguity, uncertainty and self-doubt.

Average of 5

Does this Average of 5 sound familiar to you?

You're The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With

This rule states that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. For example, if you constantly hang out with negative people, you will ultimately find yourself becoming a negative person too.

This is hugely attested by Brian Tracy too. More than 90% of our success will be determined by our “reference group.” Your reference group is defined as the people with whom you habitually identify and pass the time.

Examine closely who are the people you are hanging out with most frequently. These inner circle people around us can easily uplift us to see higher and broaden our horizons or bring us down, and deeper to destroy our confidence.

Consistency

Ask anyone the secret to success. Many would quote consistency, or perhaps self-discipline as a key trait to success.

But over time I have also come to realise that even without any special talent, by having the self-discipline and staying consistent will outlast so many.

For example, I am probably known to be one of the rare few Financial Consultants to be consistently posting content online, especially in the Linkedin domain.

Since 6 years ago, I had been fervently posting, sharing my opinions and thought leadership spanning across financial, parenthood, social and economic affairs and also leadership.

Along the way, I have seen several peers who had posted really good solid content but only to fizzle off along the way.

Success doesn't come from what you do occasionally, but what you do consistently.

Knack

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word "Knack" is defined as a skill, or an ability, to do something easily and well.

Such a short simple sentence but it encapsulates so much. Do you know what is your unique ability that you can do easily whereas others find it hard?

It took me years to find my "KNACK" - the ability to communicate effectively in an authentic and sincere manner.

When facing prospects that you have not met before, especially the C-Suite niche customer segments that I serve, it's utmost important that they must feel very safe in sharing with me during the fact-finding process.

One other special KNACK that I have discovered for myself after attending Toastmasters is that I am good at story-telling. This is such a powerful technique when it comes to scaling up from COT to TOT.

All you have to do is to identify your KNACK and play it to your fullest potential.

System

To achieve a goal that you want, especially being at that highest playing field of TOT, you need to develop a system of tracking in terms of numbers.

I have heard many times from my peers. "Oh I don't like numbers, I'm bad at tracking and figures."

Let me ask you back - if we as financial consultant, planners are bad at planning and tracking figures, how do we convince our customers that we should be their primary go-to person when it comes to managing their finances?

I have my unique advantage in gaining insights from numbers due to my Corporate HR Compensation & Benefits experience. This skillset enabled me to sit down and analyse and tracked my progress.

This came in pivotal especially in the last few weeks of the achieving TOT. You just had to be sure of the figures, how one variable then has a domino-effect on the overall TOT income requirements.

By having a system to track also enabled me to break down into X number of cases I needed to reach the peak of TOT.

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. ~ Lewis Carroll ~

Hope that this article can truly help those who are looking to break through into Top of the Table (TOT).

Jaslyn Ng, the author of this article is a working mother of two beloved children. Jaslyn is currently a Financial Services Director, leading a team of MDRT qualifiers who are mostly working mothers too.

Jaslyn has also been frequently invited as a guest speaker to share at various regional and local platforms including Singapore MDRT Day and company events.

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