For Carrie Babji, confident technical competence and a capacity and commitment to deliver quality service have been the foundation to her stellar career. In addition, her affinity for “enlightened communication” – her ability to listen to both word and emotional cues and respond in a way that is empathic – has been a differentiator for her in her career. Babji explains her secret sauce as: “I really like people. So I make people friends because I like them as friends, not because I want to sell them insurance. Then I give them advice because they are my friends, not because I want to sell them insurance. It has to be authentic, otherwise people will see right through it. After that my friends want to buy insurance from me.”

Limited by the hours of the day, Babji knows that in order to achieve her career strategy, she must avoid time-consuming administration. So in 2018, she built a team of support staff that she could trust with service, administration and new business processing hand-offs, while terminating those that were not a good fit. “Now that my support staff and carrier network is organized and in place, I plan to do more of what has been working,” she says. “I also plan to expand my personal reach to multiple prospects through approaches such as educational seminars directed at prospects and centers of influence.”