How did Jeffrey Schweitzer of Northeast Financial Strategies in Wrentham, Mass., win Life Insurance Selling’s Life Now! YouTube contest in September? With a good video illustrating the importance of life insurance, obviously. But, more importantly, with the power of social networking.
The 36-year-old producer called on his Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers to vote for his clip, and they turned out in force. Schweitzer handily beat his competition, with 55% of the vote, to win a free iPad. What’s more, a handful of those followers ended up contacting him about purchasing insurance.
“I use social media both personally and professionally — blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,” he says. “So I just asked my followers to vote for me, and they did. I got a lot of good comments on it and at least six people interested in buying insurance.”
Community service
It’s fitting for a guy who, along with his father, has largely built his practice on the notion of community, online and off. Their company serves individuals and small businesses in their area, providing everything from tax preparation to insurance products and financial planning.
“We kind of offer a one-stop shop for all of our clients,” Schweitzer says. “Because we do all the pieces of the pie for them, we know how one affects the other.”
Most of their business comes through referrals and word of mouth resulting from the company’s heavy involvement in the community. Schweitzer and his dad sponsor local sports teams, host hole-in-one fundraiser golf tournaments for local organizations, and coach teams for the local American Legion baseball program — which they helped start. Schweitzer’s participation in the extracurricular activities of his three active daughters — ages 8, 5 and 2 — also brings in clients.
“We just do things in the community, kind of give back to all these organizations where we live,” he says.
The approach has earned them about 750 individual and roughly 100 small-business clients — not bad for a company that consists of just Schweitzer, his dad, his wife and a neighbor. It helps that Northeast Financial Strategies accepts a broad client base. In an industry that has become increasingly focused on serving wealthy clients, the company is one of the few helping an underserved middle market.
“We’ve always been pretty much open to anyone who walks in the door,” Schweitzer says. “We don’t discriminate. We’ll work with the people nobody else wants to work with.”
Family finance
There was a time when Schweitzer didn’t see himself working with anybody’s finances, regardless of income. Though his dad has worked in financial services since 1976 and Schweitzer spent time working for him in high school, he left for the University of Maine with every intention of getting a degree in environmental science.