3 Ways to Invest in Your Annuity Business | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 302

Welcome back to the Seven Figure Annuity Sales Podcast. It's Caleb north, your host here today, and I am rolling solo once again. Chad was unable to join us today for the podcast recording, but I've got some cool things that I want to talk with you guys about. And it's this idea of, would you spend $1 to make three or five or 10? And when you ask the question that way, the resounding easy answer is, well, yes, Caleb, of course. Right? Like, who wouldn't spend, well, a dollar to go make three or five or ten now? But the challenge that I have with it being assumed that it's just such an easy answer is that often agents don't do that. Agents will frequently forego spending the dollar because they don't want to let go of the dollar. And even if the thing that's costing them that dollar has the opportunity to return 3 or 5 or 10, that they don't want to let go of the one, or they would rather reposition the one. So let me, let me be a little bit more clear about what I'm saying. In my experience in working with agents, agents generally do not have just a hard time or a problem paying for leads in marketing. Most agents, they will pay for their leads in their marketing, and they understand that that is just a necessary cost of doing business. That's the way that they have opportunity to actually close deals and ultimately make commissions and make money. And so they're willing to put out, you know, shell out cash for that. Well, what about things that can go to impact every single one of those leads? And it amazes me. But when you start looking at things, resources, tools, programs, tangibles, anything that isn't a lead itself but has the potential or the ability to impact every lead they purchase, they're often a little bit more reluctant to actually purchase that thing. And I want to talk through some of those things because the emphasis of today is for me to encourage you to actually shell out the dollar. Okay, the point of this podcast today, what I'm going to try to achieve in this podcast today is to share with you three things that you can spend money on that will create the opportunity for you to make 3 or 5 or 10 back on the dollar that you put into it. And my goal is that you hear these things, you cognitively align with this mentality and methodology that I'm going to be sharing with you, and that you end up going and doing these things if you don't have them already. Now, let's start in order of least like Lowest barrier to entry from a cost standpoint, all the way up to kind of the, the highest, I guess you could say.

I think the lowest barrier to entry from a cost perspective thing that you can do that will go to impact every single lead that you ever work is training and mentorship. Now you say, okay, you have Retirement Realized Agents Academy, so you're biased. Yes. Okay, I'm not going to deny that I am biased in that, but it's not biased flippantly or without foundation. It's bias. Yes, because we have Retirement Realized Agents Academy, but we have Retirement Realized Agents Academy because it is one of those things that agents can spend money on and a fraction of what leads cost that can actually go to impact every lead that they work. Okay, and the way, the way that I would articulate it is if you were, if you were getting into something, let's say you were, you're gonna start learning how to drive. Let's think back to when we were 16 years old. Now, some of you, maybe you grew up on a farm, you grew up driving from the time you were, you know, 8 years old or something like that. Or maybe you had folks that were into racing or something like this. So being behind the wheel of a vehicle was just always there for most of us. We turn 15, we start doing our driver's ed, we're trying to get our learner's permit and somebody is teaching us.

Why do we not subject 15 and 16 year olds to just wing it? Well, because the costs are too great. Right? Okay, what are the costs of a new agent or even an experienced agent winging it in the annuity world? Well, the cost is not just the cost of leads. And this is what agents often think, right? They think, okay, if I go and I spend $400 on a lead and I don't close that deal, I'm only out $400. No, you're out 400 plus the missed opportunity to earn commissions. If that was a hundred thousand dollar case, you might be out $7,400 on that. If that was a million dollar case, you might be out over 70 grand on that. And this is the qualm or the problem that I have with agents having that struggle, right? And I get it, okay? I'm not sitting here, you know, on my high horse looking down on anybody. That's not my heart. You guys know my heart. That is, that is never it. But the, but the problem that I have with it is that it starts with a loser mentality to a degree. It starts with a poverty Mentality, right? This idea of I don't want to pay for training, I don't want to pay for mentorship because it costs me 40 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month or 2000 bucks a month or whatever it is, right? And what they're not considering is that the greatest cost in the industry that we're in is not the cost of leads and marketing or training or branding or any of that stuff. The greatest cost to us in this industry is missed. Business, business. You could have written, but you didn't. For whatever reason it was right.

You will never find another thing that can impact your overall production. Not just today, but tomorrow and next month and 10 years down the road. More than a good foundation of training can. There are agents that come into this industry trying to wing it, like the 15 or 16 year old driver that doesn't want to take driver's ed, that will end up getting themselves out of the industry.

Because of lack of success, because they didn't want to pay 40 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month or 2000 bucks a month or whatever it was to learn how to do the thing the right way.

And that's, that's sad to me, number one, because they got into it for a reason. And they probably got into it because they care about helping people. They care about earning a good living while doing so. They care about time, freedom and the ability to, you know, work for themselves and be their own boss to it, you know, to a degree.

And they're back working for corporate, working for a salary, you know, position.

Because they didn't want to spend the 40 bucks or the 200 bucks or the $2,000 or whatever it was to increase their odds of success. Is it ever going to be a surefire thing the out. Because it requires an individual's effort, drive and tenacity, grit, all those things. But there are things that you can purchase for very, very, very marginal amounts of money that can go to impact not only your production today, but every day thereafter, every year thereafter and for new agents can quite literally be the difference between making it in the industry and not making it in the industry. And so I would encourage you, whether you are a stalwart, you know, 30, 40 year veteran of the industry and you're writing, you know, your production and you're writing your 3, 5, 8 million a year, whatever, 10 and.

That'S that I would encourage you.

Get, get plugged into training and mentorship somewhere or be somebody else's trainer and mentor. If you're writing, you Know, eight plus million a year. Find somebody else to mentor and let them pay you to learn how you did what you did. And no, I'm not saying you need to go to all the work of trying to build some program and some thing. No, just be connected to people, network with newer agents. You're not going to be in it for too much longer if you've been in it for 30 or 40 years, probably.

So help train up that next generation. And I guarantee you, if you get somebody with the right head on their shoulders, they'll pay you to learn how you did what you did. How'd you build to make it? You're writing your eight, $10 million a year in annuity premium. If you're a newer agent or you're a lower producer, pay for training or find somebody else that's willing to mentor you for free if you're willing to pay. But that's going to be a tall, tall task because guys that are writing good production have a high, high, high value on their time because again, the cost is never just the cost of, of, you know, the lead or whatever. For a trainer. The cost is not, you know, the 30 minutes or hour that they spend with you. The cost is what could they have written in that period of time if they were not working with you? So be considerate of the people that you're trying to learn from and glean from and recognize that if you're not willing to pay for training from somebody, it's going to be really hard to find somebody that's willing to bring you under their wing. Because if they're worth the salt in their bread, they're going to value their time because that time is extremely valuable to their bottom line. So anyways, that's, that's my, my spiel on, on training. But that is one thing that agents can be spending money on that will go to impact all of their production, training and mentorship. And I'll, and I'll say this. If an av, let's just say an annuity lead is 400 bucks a piece to go and spend $400 on a lead, but not be willing to spend $200 on training and then to multiply the cost of that lead out over the number of leads that you order in a month, let's just say 10, and then multiply that out for the course of a year. So you spend, call it $48,000 a year on leads and marketing, but you're not willing to spend $200 a month to learn how to work that 48,000, the best.

Number one, I would say it, I would encourage you to consider how much do you care about that 48,000 that you spent? And then number two, how much do you care about the opportunity that could be getting missed? And guys, I want my, my heart and my, I don't want my tone and my heart to be misaligned. I'm not jaded, I'm not frustrated.

I'm just extremely, extremely passionate about agents actually having success. And I would be lying if I said I thought that there was a better way to expedite success early on in a career than by training. Because I cannot find one for the price point that has a better potential of roi. Because the argument would be, well, what do you do with that $200 per month, let's say elsewhere, do you stack that up over two months time and now you have enough money to buy one extra annuity lead or you intentionally buy fewer leads, one less lead over that two month period to learn from people who are at the highest level in the industry that you're in or trying to get into, to learn how they got there, how they do what they do, what their sales processes are and that can go to impact every other lead you order or buy over that two month period. Like guys, to me it's, it's almost a no brainer, but that's what I'm trying to make it seem like to you. And for those of you that are already using training and mentorship and you've got somebody out there, retirement realized or otherwise, fantastic. Props to you. You guys are ahead of the curve because a lot of agents are still stuck in that, that mentality of I can't spend that, I don't want to spend that, I don't want to spend that. And the only thing they want to spend money on is leads and marketing and then they find themselves spinning their wheels. So the fact that you're actually getting that is indicative of success on the horizon, if not already.

So anyways, take that as encouragement. There's another area that agents can choose to spend money on and that is going to be branding. Branding, web development, you know, presence online, those types of things. This is one of those areas that, yeah, it's going to cost more than training. You're looking at multiple thousands of dollars most of the time to develop a really, really solid company brand, to develop a really nice company website to do those things. Do you need to have all of that right away to have success? No, you, you don't necessarily need it. You do need to be able to be found online when people search your name and retirement or your name and annuities or something like that. And you can, you can leverage social media for that, right? If you have a LinkedIn page or a Facebook page or anything like that that you can go build for free, a YouTube channel, anything like that that you can build for free, that when they search your name and a keyword you pop up, you should have those. There is inherently more credibility that also comes around when you have a company name and good logo and brand that looks nice and is appealing to the eye and then also has a website that people can read about you. The thing is, especially for newer agents, what happens often with newer agents is they'll go and they'll buy leads. And that's great. I encourage agents to be buying leads. I know, I'll tell you. Chad himself purchases leads. The guy's been in the industry 20 years. He's writing over $30 million a year. He's buying leads. Why? Because it's a supplement to other marketing streams that he's got going on. Well, newer agents don't have the history or the time to have their own marketing systems and things in place. So what do they do? They go buy those opportunities. Okay, when you call a lead, think about it from their perspective. When you call a lead, they've reached out for something online, some more information, some pamphlets, some booklets, something, right? And now you're the one calling them. They don't know you. Maybe they already got the deliverable that they want, maybe they didn't. Let's just say they don't know you. You're able to build enough rapport with them that they're going to book an appointment with you. So now you've got an appointment and agents think, oh man, sweet. But what they don't think about often is what that client or lead does next. And you want to know what that is? They go to the Internet and they look for you. And if they can't find you or they can't find your company and they can't verify that you do what you say you do, you can be pretty well sure that you're going to get a call back for a cancellation or a text or an email with a cancellation or just a no show as you got to be out there, they need to be able to third party. I use air quotes on that. Not watching the video. They need to be able to third party verify what it is that you do. And if they can't do that and they don't know you. And leads that you're buying do not know you. It's going to be really, really challenging for them to be excited about keeping that appointment. So, again, having that web presence, does it have a cost? Absolutely. Does branding have a cost? Absolutely. Unless you do it yourself. But what does that cost do? It's there, it's built, and it goes to impact every single lead or future prospect client that you ever go to work with. So there's two things that you can be buying that goes to impact every single individual that you work with. And that's our time for today, guys. But I hope that this encourages you. I hope that this impacts you and it you want to talk through this more, please give me a call.

I want to see agents succeeding. That's why I do what I do. I don't do what I do to sit around and just, you know, hope agents are able to do it. I am in this thing because I want to see difference and I want to see change made. So reach out to me. Let's have a conversation.

I'm not a hard sales guy. I'm not a hard recruiter. Okay. It either makes sense to work with retirement realized or it doesn't. And that's a okay. But I care a whole lot more about the industry and I care a whole lot more about agents having success and clients getting what they need than me just adding one more agent to our long roster of agents that we've already got. So I hope this encourages you. I do hope to have a conversation with you soon and get out there and look for those things that you can be putting your dollar into to try to turn back three or five or ten from there. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one and happy selling.