Case study · Canada
Seven engagement letters from her first ten meetings.
Noreen Gill spent six years building a high-net-worth practice entirely on referrals. In her first sixty days on our appointments she signed seven engagement letters, and she credits almost all of it to not changing the script.
Where she started
Noreen has spent her career in corporate banking, finance and insurance, mostly in business development and team leadership. She was recruited into a leadership role at Sun Life and never sold a policy there, only helped her advisors close theirs. In 2020 she lost an executive job at a bank, and her now business partner told her she had run out of excuses.
“I never wanted to do this business. I don’t like this business,” she told him. Then he started explaining corporate structures and the complexity of the cases. “That’s something I could get my head around. That could be exciting for me.” They started from nothing six years ago.
The practice they built serves high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth Canadians on tax and estate strategy. Every client came from the warm market: professional referrals from investment advisors, accountants and lawyers, plus an MGA network that brings them in when another advisor has an opportunity they don’t know how to navigate.
It worked, and it had a ceiling. Referrals arrive when they arrive. She came to us aiming to grow an insurance-only practice from roughly $1.1M toward $3M, focused on her own production rather than building a team.
What she’d tried before
Once, early on, they bought leads. “They were very simple leads, not to this level at all. We bought a batch and never did it again.” This was the first time she had worked with anything like a qualified appointment programme.
What she actually did differently
This is the part that surprised the mastermind. Noreen didn’t improvise, adapt or bring her considerable sales background to bear on the process. She ran it exactly as written.
“I logged in, I took the material you had and started working it, and I didn’t bring any of my own flavour. I didn’t modify anything. I literally took your training material and showed up to call one with it.”
For the first seven calls she read the discovery script verbatim, including on a prospect worth well over $50 million.
“I ran all those questions and he didn’t look at me weird or anything. He answered everything for me. I asked everything verbatim, and just allowed the feedback to gauge it. Don’t start changing it from the get-go.”
Every single first meeting led to a second meeting.
The two-meeting process
Meeting one · 30 minutes, all discovery
She opens by framing what the call is and isn’t: who she is, that she works with high-net-worth Canadians on wealth strategy and tax-sheltered programmes, that she has a lot of questions to get through, and that if there isn’t an opportunity she will say so and point them elsewhere. No strategy, no numbers, no product. If someone pushes for detail, she refers them back to the video and tells them plainly that this meeting is not for that.
She closes by summarising what she heard, saying it looks like there’s something to work with, and booking the second call on the spot. Usually within 48 hours.
Meeting two · 30 minutes, eight slides
She tried six slides. She tried ten. Eight is the sweet spot. The deck covers their current position, then what changes if they work together, across registered assets, an individual pension plan, and corporate-owned life insurance, weighted to whatever they clearly care about most. She frames every slide as conceptual and not yet verified by an accountant, and gets confirmation slide by slide that the numbers are right.
Then, at the end, she stops talking.
“That silence is kind of crucial, because then it’s this uncomfortable silence and it’s like, okay, so now what happens? Now how do we move forward?”
The answer is an engagement letter, sent by DocuSign, plus an introduction to their accountant. There’s no fee attached to it. It establishes what she’s responsible for and confirms the client has chosen to move forward with her.
How she handles the existing advisor
Most of these prospects already have someone. Noreen doesn’t fight for the business.
“I’m not here to compete with any existing relationships, and I’m not looking to duplicate any either. If you’re interested in working with me, let me know, and if you want to take that back to who you’re working with, go ahead. I give them a free out, but you’re going to make a decision.”
One prospect said exactly that, that he had someone at another carrier showing him different numbers. She gave him the out. He introduced her to his accountant and sent twenty-five financial documents that same week. She had met him on the Monday.
The results, sixty days in
- 10 second meetings held
- 7 engagement letters signed out of those 10
- The remaining 3 asked to pick it back up in September and November rather than saying no
- A conversion rate of 50-60%, against the 15% we see from our strongest clients
- Every first meeting converted to a second meeting
- A seven-figure pipeline built from a standing start, over a summer she partly spent in Europe
Her own read on why it worked is less flattering to her than it should be, and more useful to everyone else:
“Honestly, it’s all in the script. I don’t say anything that’s not in the script. It’s probably annoying as hell for you guys to hear this, but it’s all in the script. Try using it and see what happens.”
And on why these particular prospects respond:
“These people are worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. They don’t want to be forced or sold to. The second they sniff out that you’re trying to control them, they’re not going for that. But they’re thirsty for advice. It’s on us to deliver it.”
Engagement letters and pipeline are not the same as paid commissions. These figures describe cases in progress at the time of an August 2026 mastermind call, not revenue received. Results are individual and not typical, and depend on skill, effort, market and follow-through.