Her business rakes in Sh12 million a year

Our interview is held under the serene aristocratic canopy of the Exchange Bar at the New Stanley Hotel. I meet her as she is getting out of her Mercedes Benz in the parking lot.

She exchanges warm words with the guards, a sure sign of familiarity. On our way in, I notice that she is holding her mobile phone in one hand and a Jubilee Insurance business cards in the other. She means business!

While my order of a Coke and chicken chops is quite plain, hers is not. Her order is a little exotic: ginger, lemon and honey to drink, and prawns served with mango salsa to eat.

It is hardly my kind of hearty meal, at least not one that would rob me of my hard-earned Sh5,000. But Sh5,000 to a lady who spends $5,000 (about Sh450,000) on a once-in-a-year vacation to the United States is petty cash.

After all, besides some investments in real estate, she has more than enough cash stashed in her bank account. And, her commissions bring in well over Sh12 million annually in revenue.

Her business is selling insurance policies. Her name is Jacky Nduta. Well, Miss Nduta is living easy, but this does not mean she made it easy. She has worked smart. For starters, Miss Nduta is passionate about her job. Sales, she says, is her calling.

She loves her job so much that she works around the clock. On Saturdays and Sundays she networks and meets important people in the business industry.

Sales, she says, is a “satisfying career.” A career which gives her a rare opportunity to get paid for what she loves doing: serving people and travelling.

Public satisfaction

But don’t get it twisted, selling insurance is not a get-rich-quick affair. The priority of a sales agent is to ensure client satisfaction before getting paid. “Being a solution provider should be key, money comes second,” says Nduta.

Sales is about “satisfying your clients, giving them what they need; it is about finding a solution to their need first.” Money, she says, is just the resulting factor. Don’t start with it. Since she passed her interview as a sales agent less than three years ago, Miss Nduta has been carving out a niche as a solution provider in the insurance industry.

Between 2006 and 2010, Nduta, a CPA and Bachelor of Commerce graduate, worked at a reputable security firm as an accountant. She found the job to be a little monotonous and boring. “I discovered that I was more of an out-going person; a people person; someone who likes to interact and give service to people. I also enjoyed travelling,” she says. “I was limiting myself and my potential,” she concluded.

Moreover, her salary (less than Sh 100 000) could only afford her “a basic life”. So, she left for a more “comfortable life”.

Selling insurance was not going to be a smooth-sail. “Joining sales was, as expected, strange. It was not easy initially,” she says, adding that she made her maiden sale after three months. And even then, the client never paid his premium and she missed out on the Sh1,700 commission.

Rocky start

But in sales, patience is a virtue. Also, like any other business, you need some capital to keep you going through the rocky start. Besides, she also took her personal training seriously. Not only did she read avidly, she also never failed to attend training sessions.

Today, she spends between Sh3,000 and Sh5,000 per session on seminars. On average she spends about Sh10,000 every month on her personal training.

Unlike most sales agents, rejection to her is a necessary evil. Although at times rejection gets her down, she has learn’t from experience not to be bitter; instead she takes it positively “as a learning lesson to improve her selling techniques,” she says. Other challenges that still hamper her progress include time constraints, varied expectations from customers and cut-throat competition from other intermediaries.

But her most insurmountable challenge is insurance apathy. “There is little knowledge on insurance products among most Kenyans,” says Nduta. “Insurance has not been fully accepted in Kenya. Also, there is still that old perception that sales persons are cons,” she notes.

Nonetheless, she still thinks the industry has a bright future. And with insurance penetration still at three per cent, the sky is the limit for budding salesmen and women.

Budding salespersons need to have passion, personal goals, self-discipline, selling skills and product knowledge, a willingness to learn from others and a mentor.

In the near future, perhaps in three to five years’ time, she intends to increase her portfolio to over Sh500 million - which for her will mean an annual revenue of Sh50 million, and to set up her own company of about ten employees.

Miss Nduta might be spending weekends with CEOs and other important decision-makers at gol clubs, but her clientele is still mixed: “I don’t choose,” she says. “I can’t say that I am like Apple which goes for the high-end market, I consider myself a Samsung which creates products for every market,’” she says.