Start Saving Now Or Never

There is a significant duration of absence on this blog, my apology for not writing any, for so long. I wish to write on something after a long pause mode.

Today I met with a longtime client. He is an EPF’s regular and has been around ever since my early day with PM and stick still, until now. He is obedient enough to invest in unit trust once in every three months, and gets quite encouraging returns by doing so.

But there were baffles once I started talking about DDI (Debit Direct Instruction) or, in other words, monthly saving for the purpose of retirement. He seems sunk in a deep thought and doesn’t think it is necessary to do so as he already has EPF investment to cater that.



I wonder whether he realizes that based on a survey that was published in Berita Harian newspaper, on average most Malaysians spending all EPF monies supposedly for retirement purpose, in just two year after receiving them.

As most Malaysians are depleting their EPF (KWSP) money in just two years after retire, it is likely that we are included, too. Without money how do we go on with the reminder of our golden and sick-prone latter life? Where do you get the money from, every month, in order to maintain and to retain the previous lifestyle?

I firmly believe that a proper post-retirement financial plan has to be made for those who aren’t in a government sponsored pension program.

It’s always a good idea that as long as you work, no matter how old you are. Now is the time to start financial plan. The younger you are the better. But, just in case that you only realize this when you get older, it still a good thing. Better late than never.

I have deemed useful tips to share upon …

1) Register with EPF on the very first day of your working day. However, after taking into account of the cost of inflation, the contribution alone may not enough to sustain the entire retirement period. Therefore, it is always good idea to create your own retirement plan by putting aside at least some, say, 10% of consumable income for later use.

2) Increase personal saving as you getting old. If your start working at the age of 25 with 10% saving and decided to increase 1% every year, by reaching 35, you will save 20% of the income for retirement plan.

3) Put aside some of your annual bonus for retirement plan. Apart from that, you may have to revise retirement plan every year, to ensure that the money flow is enough and, to adhere to the original plan.

Once You Stop Selling, You're Finish!

I gonna deliver a bit of a sermon today, sorry if it lands you into boredom. But since you are here already, please bear with me.

Selling, as many of you realize, is different from working employment. The income from UT consultancy is flexible as flexible as the amount of time that you can put into it. As flexible as the amount of effort and energy that you can allocate into it.

That is the different between the two. As a matter fact, this is the clear boundary between them.

 

The keyword is the opportunity. You reap what you sow or as you sow shall you reap, whatever. It means, what you do comes back to you eventually, and this is the fact in UT business.

Take this for example. In UT consultancy, Whatever income you get today is because of what you did in the past, is because of your effort of yesterday and it is fixed. There is nothing you can do to modified it. You may get RM50, RM100, RM1,000 or RM10,000 as the income from UT at the end of the month because of how many people you can convinced and invested their money under your consultancy and supervision and that is it.

You can't change it any longer, no matter how loud you cry, or scream because what you get isn't enough to cover your basic sustenance (paying monthly installments, utility bills etc.,)

It is because of what you did in the whole month, 30 days before. And the amount you received is fixed. As fixed as the monthly salary you get from the employment.

What is the whole point that I wanna talk about?

I'm talking about what you did yesterday makes your life as it is today. And beyond it actually. Whatever you are doing today, at this moment will effect your tommorow's income.

So this is the beauty of UT career.

While you cannot do anything of what you get today, you can actually modify your future!

You need the income today, and you will need it tommorow too.

Hence, you need to keep on build the network i.e. finding clients, looking for your downlines, and servicing the existing clients NON-STOP day by day as if you walking barefoot everyday. Only by continuously working on it, your network will expands and getting bigger and bigger day after day.

By doing this, its only natural that you tommorow's income will getting bigger and bigger too. And big enough not only to cover your basic necessity, but to you will be able to save some amount for the future.

You need to work on UT as a habit.

It isn't like going to karaoke, that you go there whenever you like if you have free time. That kind of attitude will bring you nowhere. UT is not the kind of work that you can set-and-forget ...

Keep on building network, horn your selling skill, that is it.

What you reap is what you sow

God bless,

Elda.

Show Them What're You Made of

You are made of a diamond - a rare one.

That's it is, by the time you decided to become Unit Trust Consultant (UTC). You have opened up yourself to vast opportunity like no other. You are talking about high potential of financial freedom. The opportunity to break away from monotonous chain of daily life. The freedom from the confinement of a tight working space / place. And opportunity to work in flexi-timeframe.

That's what you are.

But until you can stand on your own feet, you are actually unpolished diamond.

There is a little problem, of course. Unpolished diamond doesn't really look good. Anyone with untrained eyes can't really differentiate unpolished diamond from ordinary glass.

Unpolished diamond still, thats what you're. Especially when almost everytime your UT superior need to instruct you to do so-in-so, to remain you do-and-don't, helping you with housekeeping, managing your clients, assisting you with your downlines.

But the truth is, nobody born as polished diamond. Perhaps God purposely leaves the polishing task to us all. And so we need to polish ourselves especially in UT business.

You can't simply move on in this industry just like that, but to upgrade youself. If you wanna successful, you need to take every chances to attend courses, seminars, gathering, get together sessions, get along sessions, or your career will die soon.

A lot of things happen in those sessions that are good for you. There, you will find someone that may inspires you, for example. Or someone may provoke you, may challence you or make your jealous simply because they perform better than you are. All these negative and positive energies pushing you to one point eventually. You'll feel that, "I NEED TO PERFORM BETTER". By attending these session, you will also get updated, get organised and having sense of confidence, and know where you are heading to.

Please remember, unit trust industries is about a long term stability, long term return and also, long term income to you. If you wanna successful, you're going to take up a long term relationship with clients. For this, they deserve the peace of mind hanging around with you.

Make them feel that you're someone worth to be trusted managing their money. Polish yourself. You need improvement in order to impress and to guide them.

God bless,

Elda

Finding UT Client the easy way: Part 3 You are the SUN!

There is no doubt that the first 100 clients is the easiest part in your early career as UT consultant.

But you may not realised this. Probably because all this while you always looking for greener grass on the other side of the field. You were looking for distant planets on the other side of milky way. Or you got panic as weeks passed by and you did not get a single customer. Ugh, cheer up my friend, this is not the end of the world...

Let me humbly guide you to understand how your life as UTC is easy with this simple experiment.

Please make sure that you have a piece of plain paper (kertas kosong).

Then, Draw a small dot on it. Only small dot and nothing else.

You see, this small dot is the most important. It is the starting point, it appears before everything else exist on that paper.

It makes that supposedly plain paper no longer a plain paper because now it already has a DOT. Now it is there, the dot is actually everyting,forming a new beginning for the paper itself.

Again, this small dot actually is EVERYTHING. It is akin to the SUN. And actually it is YOU, the first time after you pass the examination.

Your UT consultancy career is all started with you, and you alone.

This is only the beginning, as I already said. The sun, we don't call it as the sun without planets. Same to you, there is nothing to consult if you have no clients!

But, since you are the sun, then you shall create your planets. And in this case it is about your first 100 planets. Kept in mind that the first 100 planets are the easiest part of your life as UT consultant.

No man is an island. Even the sun is nothing if it has no planets!

So, what shall we do to find the first 100 planets? Its easy because all 100 planets are around you!

Here I give you the first 25, and please go on until it reaches the first 100.

1. Your Sisters
2. Your brothers
3. Your Mother
4. Your father
5. Your husband
6. Your sister's sons
7. Your sister's daughters
8. Your brother's sons (nephews)
9. Your brother's daughters (nieces)
10. Your sons / daughters
11. Your sister-in-law
12. Your brother-in-law
13. Your sister-in-law's sons
14. Your sister-in-law's daughters
15. Your father-in-law
16. Your mother-in-law
17. Your uncles
18. Your Aunties
19. Your uncle's sons (your cousins)
20. Your uncle's daughters (your cousins)
21. Your husband's uncles
22. Your husbands' aunties
23. Sons of your husband's aunties
24. Daughters of your husband's aunties
25. Sons of your husband's uncles and the list goes on ...

Nope, I'm not kidding although you may felt that the above list is funny somehow. This is about networking, building your business, and there is nothing to be ashamed of.

No man is an Island, again, and you need them to become your planets and they need you as their only SUN. You eventually help managing their money, and for this they should be grateful to you. And on the other hand, you too, should be grateful to them as their investment will bring about steady income on your part...

So? So go, approach them and create your first 100 planets.

Up to this points you begin to ask me, "Ms. Elda, what will happens after I completed the first 100 planets?"

Well, let get this straight. Any UT consultant that already have 100 planets as repository may no longer needs my advice at all!

So as usual, let summarize the all the above points of discussion into two golden rules of UT's SUN (that is YOU!)

Rule No.1: You first 100 clients is the easiest to be found
Rule No.2: Finding your next 100 clients is even easier!

Finding UT Client the easy way: Part 2 Clients are EVERYWHERE

Clients are everywhere in your daily life.


Nope, I am not dreaming. You bet, I am fully awake as I wrote this article. You see, all you need to do is to fully understand your own daily life pattern, utilised them fully, and you will become a successful UT consultant!

There is a need to understand your daily life pattern nicely, in order to be succesfull.

If not, you will end up in a selling mess, and get lost in selling jungle. And this is bad, the selling careers of yours may be short lived as the result. Again, only by understanding the pattern you will see that clients are everywhere, and every moments. This way you simply can't miss every selling opportunities that appears moments after moment in your daily life.

So, what does it mean by this boombastic "understanding your daily life pattern" jargon any how? Actually, it is just a simple phrase. Understand life lead to your success.

Take this for example. You are a government's / company's employer, working full time and at the same time doing UT on part time basis. Look at all these daily potentials...

1. Every morning is an opportunity

Every morning you may send kids to school. You are not alone, as many other parents are doing exactly the same. These people are potentials! Of course, you are not going to sell unit trust that early, but I'm not going to stop you if you want to do that. By the way, it isn't too early to smile, and to say hello to anybody that happen to be there. Start your day with smile and this is a positive energy. By just smiling, these people will recognise your face. You may bump again with them somewhere, in some corners of the city, parking lots, shopping malls and there, real opportunities will be yours. Or may be later in the day, in the same school and they will become 'real' prospects. I will explain this later.

2. Opportunity in the late morning

Look at your office, and you will understand of what I mean. The office location, for example. Is it a stand alone office, in a shoplots or building complex? There are lot of opportunities there, and you don't know that until you try. Everybody there are the potentials. Nevermind about their current investment status, whether they have yet to invest in UT, or already invested in some funds, or not interested at all. Remember, UT is all about long term investment, and you too need some time to invest trust in their head before they invest money in UT.

Think about the bunches of working colleageus, friends, friend's friends, office's clients, other office bearers / staffs from other departments / companies nearby...

Yes, there are so many of them. And, it's more actually; just look this way. You may also have a coffee break at 10 a.m. daily, right? There are high chances that it takes place at the canteen or cafe too, right? Also tend to be a lot of people there.

Not to proceed with selling process directly but if you want, no harm to try.

What I mean is all about but building a gradual contacts, and a growing network. Afterall, you are the one who benefit most later. Simply put, say hello now, sell later. Or say hello and sell at the same time, whatever. I won't go in detail on how to start selling, the chances is that you already knew about it and have attended the selling courses prior to this.

3. Opportunity in the afternoon

The chances are, you will also pick yours kid up in the afternoon, as you were the one who sent them to school in the morning. And there are also highly chances that you will see the same people that you say hello in the morning. They are just like you, and are having the same commitment as yours. But compare with the mood in the morning as everybody are rushing, they are bit relax this time around. But I'm not talking about mood, this article. This is about selling, so we are going to focus on selling opportunity. How about getting there 5 minutes earlier. Just for the sake of killing time, why can't you smile again, talk to them and ask for the their contact number? Aha, the selling isn't it ....

So far I just stated 3 types of opportunities based on your daily routine. But think about it. Everyday, opportunities are everywhere and they don't just stop in the afternoon. You may involve in neighborhood activites late in the evening. You may go to the mosque every day / every week. Or to temple, to church, depending on your religious belief. And opportunities always there, waiting.

Day in day out, you will continuously moving in selling's life cycle, and you keep on circumambulating around the selling. But the good thing is that, your circle getting bigger and bigger. That's why wise men of the olden days said, "Rome was not built in one day" and it's true.

As a UT consultant, whether you doing it full time or part time doesn't really matter. Last year's top PM UT consultant performer (2008) was a part timer. Some even said that doing UT on part time basis is better as it bring less stress, more secure, and steady continuous influx of customer by understanding your daily routine. But on individual level, it is a matter of preference. I, for example, choose to do UT consultancy on full time basis and I still feel the same "less stress, more secure, and steady continuous influx of customers" sentiments.

So it is entirely up to you. But whatever it is, I have another rule of thumb of selling for you to ponder upon.

Rule No.1 Client is everywhere
Rule No.2 Clients are everywhere

Cheers and heat up you selling life cycle,

Elda

Finding UT Client the easy way: Part 1 JUST DO IT!

So, you wanna sell Unit Trust (UT) and it is very unfortunate that clients seems nowhere to be found. And you feel its tough isn't it. Tough, tough, tough...

Maybe you are the UT consultant for quite some time. Maybe you just pass the exam. And your superior keep on pushing.

Then what should you do?
Perhaps, as the result maybe you thinking of quitting.

Well, let me be honest that you're not alone. It happens to me as well. Again and again and again. Except for me, I NEVER thinking of quitting as I like this job. This is my bread and butter so to speak.

But really, the answer actually lies within each and everyone of us.

I have a tip that does wonder almost all the time when I'm trapped in the blue.

I'm doing it all the time and it works. So I really wanna share this, and hope that you all find it useful. First, sit down and take a piece of paper and a pen with you. Close your eyes and take a deep breath before proceed.

Then write down at least 100 names of persons that you can remember, regardless of whether these person have investment potentials or not. Or even more names if you want as the choice is yours.

I often started with my kid's names, my husband's, my maid's, my dad's, my mum's, whatever, whosoever, it doesn't matter. What we need is for our mind to break loose and then when it relaxes more names will appear and you can write them down too...

After a while and satisfied that there are already enough names, then start filtering by studying them one by one. Of course for me, my kid's names, my husband's, my maid's, my dad's, my mum's, are those which the first to be striked off.

Again checking one by one, from one name to another until you finish them off. Believe me, you can easily find 20 potentials names or more!

And of these 20 potentials, filter them further and try to find 5 the most potential of them all and tada... normally I will end up finding their contact number, calling them up and set an appointment. And the selling process goes on. And on.

That's how I filled up my day.

That's why, please remember the TWO (2) GOLDEN RULES in Selling UT

Rule No.1 . SELLING UNIT TRUST IS EASY
Rule No.2 . IF YOU THINK SELLING UT IS DIFFICULT, SEE Rule No.1.

Elda.

Why do people invest in Unit Trust?

Sorry that I can't seems to write and post lengthy articles without resorting to copy and paste some good articles that I found while browsing the internet.

Honestly, I don't have much time to write.

But if you happen to read them in my blog,that is because I purposely put them on display because I believe the article is good and they had inspire me while I catching up with unit trust consultation and managing my kids here in there during the day.

Today I found this from somewhere, and it really makes me ponder

"Thousands of people are attracted to invest in unit trusts every year. These investors come from all walks of life ranging from housewives, pensioners and business people (who have the cash) to contributors who have their EPF money in Account one.

What attracts these people to invest in unit trusts?

Most investors, I believe, are attracted by the potentially higher returns promoted by unit trust consultants (UTCs) and their unit trust companies (UTMCs). After all, these investors were not too happy over the low rates of returns of 3.7% or 5.04% (5 years’ average for 2003-07) paid respectively by their banks for fixeddeposits and the Employees’ Provident Fund for dividends. Another valid reason is that investors wish to include unit trusts as a component in their asset allocation model to diversify their investment’s portfolio risks. Unfortunately, not many investors achieve their objectives of a higher return. Many in fact, lose money, probably because they do not have the knowledge, skills, patience and time to monitor and re-balance their investments when market conditions change.

How, you may ask, can an investor lose money in unit trusts when the research analyst, the fund manager, the unit trust management company (UTMC) and the unit trust consultant (UTC) look after his or her interest? There is, of course, no direct answer to the above question. There is also no such thing as a perfect situation where everything will turn out right all the time. Research, if not thoroughly conducted can go wrong. Asset allocation, if not skilfully conducted, can also go wrong. Market conditions can also change, affecting the performance of an investment portfolio.

These are the risks that one has to take when making investments. However, one thing that can be quite certain is that the UTMC will never encourage investors to sell regardless of the market conditions, as this amount to not doing business and may reduce their income substantially.

Dollar cost averaging and switching to lower-risk products are commonly advised to help you stay invested. Of course, other options exist, which investors can consider on their own.


Only two parties are now left to do the job, the UTC and YOU. Many concerns arise here. First, can the UTC do the job by looking after your interests? Some may and some may not as there are trailer commissions to sacrifice. Second, is the UTC knowledgeable and experienced enough to give proper advice? Third, as an investor, you may have deviated from the original investment plan over time, or did not heed the advice of the UTC. Fourth, you may have changed your UTCs many times for personal reasons, and are therefore unable to follow a common plan for your benefits. The list can go on and on. Hence, the blame cannot be directed at anyone in particular, as many things might have changed during the course of the investment."

HERE the full article

When things get tough, only the tough get going

I like this article. It reminds me very much on how unit trust industry is heading toward since last year. Things get tough, market isn't very encouraging, but again, there always someone who can make money at the time like this.

"We have heard it time and time again that when things get tough, the tough get going. But, what does this mean, and how does it apply to your success? Are you destined to be the 1 - 4% of high achievers in this world? If so, then as you read this article, you will discover gems which will propel you to success.

Many people hate adversity, and everyone wants security. However, security is non existent. We often get comfortable; believing that jobs provide security, owning a home is security, etc. However, these are all illusions. And we know these are illusions. For example getting a job 50 years ago meant that you were likely set for life. You had a job that would last till retirement, and this was great. But, this is non existent today. Today you could go through 10, 20 maybe even 30 different jobs through your lifetime."

Read more here

China will save the day

A U-shaped recovery in place

You might be interested on whether the economy will recovered soon. Read on...














Elda

KLCI over 1120 points

KLCI reached 1120 points as at 17 July, 2009.

Welcome to Elda's Blog

Hi all,

This is my first post and it won't be long for sure. But I have to admit, technology is another undeniable aspect of our line of business that can't simply be ignored, like it or not.
















So, from now on, I'm going make myself available to make some modest posts that deemed useful to myself, to our agency activities, and or, us in general.

Thank you for visiting.

Cheers,

Elda