Ron Barbaro Takes Center Stage

Ron Barbaro was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, the Canadian capital. His father ran a restaurant on Bank Street, in the city’s hub and the Barbaro family lived above the restaurant. Whenever the restaurant got busy, Barbaro’s father would bang a broom handle on the ceiling. One knock was reserved for Barbaro’s brother, two knocks were meant for Barbaro and three knocks called for his sister. “When you work in a family business, you learn discipline in a hurry,” recalls Barbaro, looking at his visitors with an eye searching for points of familiarity while at the same time relishing the colorful memories of his upbringing. “My parents worked hard to give us everything they didn’t have. In the process, they gave us what they truly had: quality of life.”

Dealing with the public early on became a source of street-smarts learning that a Harvard degree could not have matched. Of the many regular faces who visited the family business, Barbaro recalled the Chicklets salesman, a very friendly man who always left samples and impressed him with his unique credentials: a membership in the Association of Commercial Travelers of Canada. Little did young Barbaro know that many years later, the same association would bestow one of its highest awards on seasoned veteran Ron Barbaro.

In this exclusive interview with Personal Selling Power, Barbaro shares the personal secrets of how this fearful and insecure Canadian insurance salesman sold his way to the top. Today, as the President of The Prudential Insurance Company of America, he recognizes the many role models who have shaped his core values, skills and attitudes. At age 59 he is not afraid to act like a child who knows how to wish upon a star. At charity benefits he dresses like a clown; at sales meetings he sings rap songs; during board meetings he asks people to imagine wearing different colored hats. To this day he still continues to reach out and learn, saying, “It’s part of the ongoing education that can never cease while we’re striving to achieve.”

STUMBLING INTO INSURANCE SALES

Like many other great salespeople, Barbaro became a salesman by accident. As he settles back in his chair, he relates how the idea of entering insurance sales was suggested to him in a coffee shop: “To get out of my dad’s restaurant, about eight months after finishing high school, I took a job in a dime store in Ottawa. They transferred me to Windsor which is across from Detroit. The manager and I got along well. Then I learned that I was being transferred as a manager to a town called Moncton in New Brunswick. I had just been married and I didn’t want to go there. But in those days, you had little choice. If you didn’t move, you were finished with the company.

“I remember telling an insurance salesman in the coffee shop that I was being transferred and I didn’t like it. He asked, `Why don’t you consider going into the insurance business?’ The idea appealed to me. I had been married in May and this was September 15, 1955. I decided to take a sales job in the insurance business on a temporary basis.”

Since Barbaro didn’t know much about selling, except what he had heard and seen from the role models around him, he eagerly followed the system laid out for him. Because he was used to working long hours at his father’s restaurant, he applied the same amount of energy to visiting prospects. His first major handicap? Dealing with fear.

Barbaro explains, “I had a tremendous fear of the prospect, but I also knew I had to make a living. I wasn’t a good salesperson at all, only a good worker. So I did all the things they told me to do. I went through all the rejection and the sweating and people slamming doors in my face, just like everybody else. I probably hold the record for quitting, maybe a thousand times in the first two months. As I look back, I wonder how I made it. After every knock-down, I would sort of revive myself and say, `Well, that’s one person who wasn’t interested.’ Then I found a list of high school graduates. Many of them worked in tool and die shops that catered to the automotive industry. So I would go through the list and try to find out who were the best prospects.”

BREAKING THE RECORD FOR SELLING

Following a system that had proven successful for others who had gone before him, Barbaro surprised his colleagues by qualifying for the Million Dollar Round Table in his first year. Up until that time, none of the veteran salesmen in his office had imagined the possibility of reaching that goal.

Barbaro explains the secrets to his early success: “What are the three most important qualities for success in the insurance business? I think it is discipline, discipline and discipline.

“There was a world of difference between the industry I came from and the insurance industry. Where I came from, they told you when to go to work, when to go home and when to take your holidays. But when you enter insurance sales, they don’t know if you get up every morning and they don’t know where you go all day long. They show you where and how to succeed and point you in the right direction, but you have to have your own discipline to make the system work.

“Once you leave your home office, they don’t know where you are. You could come back and say you made 30 calls, you can fudge the numbers, but sooner or later, the lack of self-discipline will come out and tell the truth.”

SUCCESS IS A THREE FIELD SYSTEM

In the same way that farmers achieve maximum productivity through a three field system, Barbaro suggests that success in insurance sales comes from cultivating three separate fields. The first is the company, second the sales territory and third the industry.

Barbaro sees it this way: “The successful salesperson will use the company’s resources intelligently. We give our people all the ingredients you would give anybody who works for you. We educate them, show them how to plan, organize, sell, manage and how to provide the best possible service. Besides the formal education programs, we have outstanding role models and personal success stories anyone can learn from.

“The second field to cultivate is the territory. Your experience is determined by the number of interviews you’ve obtained. You cannot get the full education necessary to be an above average salesperson if you don’t have the right number of interviews. It always annoys me when people say that because they have been in the business for 20 years that automatically means they have 20 years worth of experience. I have a different way of measuring experience. If they have conducted only 2,000 interviews during that time, then the person who has conducted 4,000 interviews in 10 years has much more experience. To me, real experience depends on how many face-to-face interviews you have conducted. Ben Feldman estimated that he conducted 35,000 interviews during his career. Now, that’s experience!

“The third field to cultivate is our industry. To round out your education, you need to be involved in your industry. When you go to a MDRT meeting, or meetings of other national associations, you will hear new ideas that will help you adjust a little bit at a time. Even the worst communicators in the world can still give you one or two new ideas. I have never heard a speaker that I haven’t learned from. After five or six years worth of that exposure, your discipline will tighten and you’ll go through more positive changes. Your company will provide you with the seeds, your industry will share the harvesting tools, but you have to supply the discipline to go out and cultivate your territory.”

HOW TO GET MORE REFERRALS FROM CUSTOMERS

The greatest sale Barbaro ever made was back in 1955 when he sold a policy to a prospect who was referred to him by someone he didn’t even know. Barbaro enjoys polishing the reputation developed by thousands of Prudential salespeople since the company was founded: “We have built one of the largest financial organizations in the world. Our reputation wasn’t built by the founder, the chairmen or the presidents over the years. Our image was built by our agents in the final three feet — with the customer.

“Our people control our image. The first three words our customers hear when the policy is delivered are: ‘We will pay.’ Our people are the ambassadors of quality service. An ambassador speaks two languages, the language of the home country and the language of the host country. Our people speak the customer’s language and the company’s language. Our company language is quality service. You know it when you get it and you know it when you give it. Quality means that you are getting the best — every time. When I was an independent insurance agent, I could not advertise individually. I told my customers, ‘You are my advertisement. If I treat you with the best service and give you the best quality product, you will refer me. I am not going to ask you for referrals, I want to earn the right to be referable.’ Asking for referrals is one thing, but being referred is much better. When I made my first sale to a prospect who was referred to me by an existing customer, I realized that the system works. To me that was a very important lesson.”

HOW TO TRANSFORM FEAR INTO CONFIDENCE

Many successful people hesitate to talk about their secret fears. When calling on customers, Barbaro felt tremendous fear. He was frightened even of the thought of speaking in public, until he found a secret that turned his fears into confidence.

“One day the MDRT asked me to speak to the Life Underwriters and deliver a ten minute talk explaining my achievements. I had never done anything like this before in my life. I felt terrified.

“I still remember shaking with fear when I stood up. My mind went blank as I faced the audience and I couldn’t even remember the name of the guy who had introduced me. With shaking hands I took my papers, said ‘I can’t do it’ and sat down. I said I’d never speak before a group again as long as I lived. I tried everything to fight my fear. Then in 1957, I attended a course in psychology at the University of Detroit. I remember the professor writing on the blackboard: ‘When you know, and you know you know, knowledge replaces fear.’ My immediate response was, ‘Holy mackerel! This might be the answer to my problem.’

“A short time after that, I had the responsibility of introducing one of our people who became Man of the Year. I had written out a 90 second introduction and practiced it over a hundred times. When I did it in public, I was so proud that I had gotten through this thing without sweating, I was thrilled.

“Soon I started to apply the same principle to selling. I knew my product, I knew more than my customers did, and I knew I had a product they needed. I also knew that the referral system worked. So I kept reinforcing myself. I would sit in the car before every interview and think of four or five objections they could give me right off. Then I would rehearse a response in my mind. When I got one of these objections, I could take immediate control of the interview. As a result, the one-on-one selling became easier for me. I applied the same system to making telephone calls. I often would hang up after two rings out of fear of saying the wrong thing. One day, after getting a series of rejections, I suddenly blurted out: `I always make it a practice to contact the engineering graduates of the University of Detroit, and I have a few ideas I would like to talk to you about.’ Because I said I always make it a practice, he asked, `Well, did you call all the other guys?’ I said, `Yes.’ He answered, ‘Fine,’ and I got an interview. I rehearsed that sentence and later I realized that it didn’t matter what was after ‘the,’ it could have been ‘the newlyweds’ or ‘the new employees of an organization’. The realization that ‘when you know, and you know you know, knowledge replaces fear’ broke down a gigantic barrier to success for me.

WHEN PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY

When we asked Barbaro about his biggest fear today, he replied: “The fear of not being able to perform to the standards that I think I’m capable of.” That fear helps him maintain his razor-sharp competitive edge. His capacity to prepare is in direct proportion to his results. Barbaro explains: “Without rehearsal it’s impossible for me to give a speech. I enjoy a certain reputation in this industry. It’s almost like being a gunfighter. Whenever I am on a program people say, ‘I don’t want to follow you.’ So I have the responsibility of giving my best. If I haven’t prepared enough I don’t feel right.

“I find that in this job it is very difficult to be totally prepared to my expectations. But I don’t think I am alone in this. A good friend of mine, Marshall Wolper, who was president of MDRT years before I was, had this great idea for pushing me through fearful times. He said that he used to stand in front of a doorway and say: `Where am I now?’ The answer was, `I’m on this side of the doorway.’ Then he asked, `Where do I want to be?’ Well obviously he wanted to be inside the doorway. Then he asked, `What’s the worst thing that can happen to me?’ Of course, the reply was `I’ll end up back out here.’ So, the greatest salespeople in the world play all these little games.

“Ben Feldman could not speak in front of a live audience. One-on-one he was dynamite, but to communicate to an audience of a hundred of his peers of the Life Underwriters Association, he would sit behind a screen and do a question and answer interview like you and I are doing right now.

“Over time I found that the better prepared I was the easier it was to give a presentation or a speech. So, on any committee, I would do everything in my power to give 100 percent of what I had. When people in the audience hear the speech, they think it is natural, but they don’t know that making things look natural takes a lot of preparation. To this day, I still experience fear and nervousness but I know that when I know it, the knowledge overcomes the fear.”

STRETCHING ENDURANCE AND CREATIVITY

At age 59, Barbaro has more energy than people who are 20 years younger. “I work only half days,” he says jokingly, “from seven a.m. to seven p.m.” What makes Barbaro run is his love for feeling fit. Here is how he sorts out his thoughts on the subject:

“I started running back in the late ’70s. Every day I don’t exercise is not a feel good day for me. I work, think, feel and relate much better if I exercise. It’s a time to think, to reflect and to restore my creative juices.

“I find that exercise has stretched my creativity. I use that period to take an idea and work on it. For example, I may think of an article I’ve read and try to transfer it into our business. So I use the recreation as a gestation period for incubating a new idea.

“I remember, as a salesperson in Canada, when I first took over the McDonald’s account I tried to find a logical reason for them to give us the business. One day while I was out running, I found a workable solution. I was so excited that I ran over to the prospect’s office and charged in with my new idea. The manager listened to me while I presented the plan in my jogging suit and he said, ‘Done.’ That’s how I took over the McDonald’s account which was a pretty big business and it keeps growing. Today they have over 500 stores. To me, personal productivity starts with physical fitness.”

DEALING WITH PROBLEMS CREATED BY ELEPHANTS

The founder of Prudential, John Fairfield Dryden, was a pioneer. His big idea was to offer affordable life insurance for workers at a time when most insurance companies only offered insurance to the wealthy.

Barbaro knows that one of the safest ways of keeping the pioneer spirit alive is to keep on striving for improvement in every area of our lives. He explains: “I think that creativity feeds on success. If you’ve ever tried a crazy idea and found that it worked, you know that it energizes you and you feed on it. I don’t think that the pioneer spirit ever stops. We’re always driven to improve life. I don’t think that I could get involved in anything without feeling compelled to come up with an idea to make that better. That’s just natural.

“For example, when I first took over as the Chairman of the Toronto Zoo, we had a strike. That week one of my lifelong ambitions came true: I had a chance to clean out the elephant pens. There were six elephants housed in a building that had won a design award in the ’70s. To describe the task at hand: an elephant eats 300 pounds of food a day, but retains only five percent. After filling the first wheelbarrow and pushing it out of the pen from the far corner of the building, wheeling it down the hallway, out the front door and around the building to the dumpsite, I started to think: ‘Why don’t they have a door right in the pen for the cleaning crew? An elephant can’t go through an ordinary doorway. If they installed a door right in the pen, they would transport the manure only 10 yards instead of a 100 yards each time.’ The more I shoveled, the angrier I got at the design. I think that creativity is a habit and I could not suppress the idea for improvement. We soon had doors installed and eliminated a lot of unnecessary work.”

THE LIVING NEEDS BENEFIT PROGRAM

Throughout his 36 years in the insurance business, Barbaro has made it a practice to spend 25 percent of his time on community projects. One day, a phone call for help in the community led to a fundamental change in Prudential’s life insurance business. Here is Barbaro’s account of how he found the idea of the Living Needs Benefit Program:

“One day I received a call from June Calwood, a well known Canadian writer. She told me of her personal involvement with a hospice and its AIDS patients. She asked me if I could come and look at it. So I visited the hospice with her.

“Up until this point I had no idea just how horrible it is to see people deteriorating right before your eyes. So I asked, `How can I help?’ One of the patients looked at me with piercing eyes and said, `Help us die with dignity.’

“I was embarrassed and sort of backed off. The manager of the hospice told me that the patient’s family was in Europe and they didn’t have enough money to come and visit. This patient had a $25,000 life insurance policy, but what good would it do him now? The money would only be released after he died. I felt badly. I could not do anything and shortly thereafter he passed away.

“A few weeks later I went back to the hospice for a photo opportunity where we handed the hospice a check for $10,000 to give their fund-raising drive some publicity. That day I asked June, `I wonder if there is any way to give terminally ill people who carry life insurance some of the money before they die?’ She thought that would be a great idea. What June didn’t tell me was what she really thought, `Boy, he’s really gone off the deep end now.’

“After that visit, I called in a team of insurance experts, lawyers and advisors. There were a hundred reasons why we should not even consider such an idea. They asked, `Why would you do something you don’t have to do?’ I told them that this wasn’t a good enough answer for me. We know that we have to have the money in reserve. We know that within six or nine months that terminally ill patient is going to die and we know that they have no money. What they are going through is dehumanizing. Why can’t we make some of the money available? It is just a question of time and calculating the interest accrued during that time. So what’s wrong with charging the same interest if someone borrowed the cash value of the policy and turned over the money to the terminally ill patient? They said, `Well, we’ll try it on a live-and-learn basis.’

“After this meeting, we started to make calls to look for people who could use our financial help. We called doctors of patients who had submitted disability forms and who had life policies. We found the first case in Vancouver.

“People were shocked when we explained our idea of offering to pay on the policy. They thought it was a joke. An insurance company with compassion? Are you crazy? Offering money before I die? The idea started to work. One day a reporter showed up unexpectedly to inquire about what we were doing. We told him the truth and the news spread like wildfire. The program picked up momentum and now we have it working throughout Canada and the United States. We expanded the program to any terminal illness and, since we’ve started this, we have advanced about $18 million in benefits.”

THE FEEL-GOOD POLICY RIDER

Barbaro faithfully walks in the footprints of his talk. He is vigilant about practicing his final three feet philosophy. As the Living Needs Benefit program was sparked through a one-on-one conversation with a dying AIDS patient, his latest idea also came as a result of working with a Prudential customer. Barbaro shared the moving story of what one man did with the money he received:

“One terminally ill patient was so excited about receiving $25,000 that he began talking to reporters and the next day we were front page news in Canada. The next day I went down to the hospital and interviewed the young person to find out how it all really happened. I still remember him sitting in this little chair. His name was Ron.

“He told me that when he first received the money, he bought better medicine. Then he sat back and said, `Eight thousand dollars will go to the people who helped me and two thousand dollars will go to the Catholic church, because my sister is a nun.’ He sat back and smiled and said, `Peace.’ I was stunned. Here was someone who had only a short time to live and he would be giving a substantial amount to charity. A few days later, I was out jogging when the thought occurred to me, `Why don’t we create a charity rider that represents five or ten percent of the face value of a policy, so everybody can have this “I feel good” experience?’ The outcome was that we have developed this rider in Canada called Charity Plus, and it has been operating for several months and is doing very well.”