Judge Not.........Respect Their Decision

When I first started out in sales almost 32 years ago, I was working for John Hancock Life Insurance as a Debit Sales Representative. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is a Life Insurance Sales Representative who sells in and services a territory. The territory was usually very small, in my case about 6 streets across and 5 streets long. Besides selling life insurance you also had to go house to house and collect the insurance premiums on a weekly base. By the time I got into it they were selling monthly and annual premium policies, but the weekly still had to be collected. The weekly premiums ranged anywhere form 5 cents to maybe a dollar. Yep 5 cents got you a $250 insurance policy.

Now I will get to my point. These people on my debit were hard working people without a lot of money, but they ALL managed their money very well. As a young kid I had a hard time at first in trying to sell them additional larger policies. I was OK with selling them $3,000 to $5,000 policies, but would never go over that, because I felt that they could not afford it. That is when I was given a piece of advice that I have never forgotten, “do not decide for them, respect them enough to let them make their own decision on what they can afford.” I have never forgotten that and up until now have always followed it.

I say up until now, because I find myself in a different situation. In the past I would be passing judgment (that is a good Sunday blog TLW) on what someone could afford, but now I get to see their whole financial picture, and there lies the problem. When I am dealing with a Borrower who has good credit scores, they don’t even have to be very good, just good, I can many times take their back ratio to 65%. That is 65% of gross income, Uncle Sam has not taken his cut yet. Some times the 65% ratio is a fictitious ratio, because the person might have a second job that I can’t use, they might work a lot of over time that I can’t verify will continue, or the loan is only on one of spouses. So there is a lot more income than they are showing, and I am OK with that. It is the ones that the 65% really does reflect all of the income. That it is ALL the money they have, there is no more. Those are the ones that it is very hard for me to follow the advice I have followed for a long time.

What I have come up with to date as a compromise, is to try to explain what the figures mean. Make sure I disclose ALL the costs. Go over the monthly payment with taxes and insurance with them, and repeat it several times. Try to make sure that they understand the financial commitment that they are making. And I always ask how do they feel about a payment that size? Are they comfortable with that? Do they feel they can manage it?

I try to keep my opinion out of it, and let them make their own decision after I have given them ALL of the information that I possibly can. But when the decision is to still go through with it, a part of me wants to YELL are you CRAZY. I don’t and I have been fortunate that the times that they have chosen to go through with it have been very few, but a few still doesn’t make me feel any better.

There lies the inner conflict. I want to respect their right to make their own decision. I believe that I have given them ALL of the information that I possibly can for them to make that decision. But I hate to see people make mistakes that could change their lives for a long time.

I guess I am open to any suggestion on how I could handle it better, without making the decision for them?