Becoming an Expert is the BARE MINIMUM | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 327

Hey, everyone, this is Chad Owen with Seven Figure Annuity Sales Podcast. I am with Caleb north. And finally he has a decent shirt on. It's. It's.

Oh, you like this one?

It is. It's pretty good. It looks like you're ready to go golfing, but it does look pretty good.

Oh, I wish I had time to golf today.

You still have to fix the whole, you know, what's coming out of the shirt forward. That's.

Yeah, that's beyond repair.

Fix that. That means a lot of help.

It's beyond repair.

But, yeah, we're going to make this one fairly quick today. But one of the things I've had a hard time doing is the bane of my existence this year has been getting people do what I pay them to do, having to babysit them. And yeah, Caleb, I'm talking about you. No, it's everybody outside. There's just. It's tying up so much time. But I think from realtors to bankers that just do your stinking job and I'm paying you to do something. And it's so frustrating when I have to tell them how to do their job or what you're missing or what you need to do. And I was thinking about how that applies to our business. Why do we have to beg agents to become experts to help people that are paying them to do what they need to do? Now, granted, the. We don't. Our, our clients don't pay us. It comes from the insurance company. But we're being paid to do a job. And when I'm talking to my banker or my broker and I'm saying, oh, you need to do this, you need to do that. Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? Oh, here's a better way to do this or to do that. I'm just going. A lot of times it's super simple stuff. And the vast majority of the time, it's something as simple as communication. You know, hey, when is the sign going up? Where are we at with this loan? What's going on here? And I think when you look from an agent perspective, it's like, when is my policy being issued? What's the status we're at? How does this company benefit me? How does this company make my retirement easier? And so it's almost the same thing. It really is, when you think about it. You're paid to do a job. You need to be an expert in that. Now, chances are anybody listening to this podcast, that's exactly what they're doing. They're Trying to become a better expert. They're trying to learn. But I am blown away by the number of agents I talk to that have never been on a podcast, they've never been through a training program, or they're arrogant enough to think they've arrived and they don't need to get any better. And they may not come out and say that, but they do that by their complacency. So if you don't continually try to get better, if you don't continually try to learn, then you are subconsciously saying, I'm good enough. I don't need any more training. I'm the maximum amount I can be for my client. Or you're just plain lazy. Or both, you know, because you and I know. Caleb, how much time do we spend a week or a day, for that matter, learning our industry, constantly trying to be better and better and better. And, man, it's. I mean, you probably run into that more than I do. Because you talk with more agents.

I. I do. And it's funny that that's what you bring up. We didn't talk about, like, what we individually had kind of planned for this week's episode, and now that we're kind of doing a. A weekly recap, like, what's, you know, what's going on in the week and what are some things that have stood out to us and we've noticed. What I was planning to talk about today is how often it seems agents will rely on their marketing organization to do half of their job for them. And where I really wanted to kind of encourage agents and push agents, too, is the realization that you can work with the insurance companies directly.

Yeah, it's better to do that. It's better to do that.

I agree. Because it helps your IMO out a lot.

Forget the imo. Forget the imo. You know, I have direct contacts with actual new business people, with people, product knowledge people. I have direct contacts. Why I am incredibly deliberate on talking with people in new business, talking with people in new products. And when I call, we're. We have fun talking. And so when something. And I get this comment all the time, hey, you know what? I'm not supposed to tell you that this yet, but, hey, we got a new product. This is what's coming out. This is what we expect it to do. Or, hey, we got a product in the works. You know what, What? You want to talk to one of the case, or, excuse me, the product creators and give some of your input into that? I have great relationships with people in the. In the Insurance companies, because I take the time to talk to them. And, you know, I've.

Those relationships go a long way for you.

I've gotten cases through suitability because I explained, and they know who I am, why I did what I did that most people would never get through. But they know. I know Chad. I know he always has what's best out for them. I know he did a thorough fact finder. I know he knows all the information about his clients. I know he knows all the information about the product and what it will do. You know what? Let's let this one go through. And most people would not get that case through. It's like the old saying, you know, only put 50% of someone's money into an annuity. Who said that? There is no rule that has to that says you have to put 50% of your money. You can't go more than that. Nobody does. You need to do a complete and full fact finder, making sure they have plenty of money in reserves if an emergency comes up and they have plenty of income coming over their expenses. That's what you need to have. I remember a case, I got 90% of the money put through to an annuity because this person still had hundreds of thousands of dollars available in emergency funds. They had way more enough income based off of pensions and Social Security. Well, then, Chad, why'd you do so much in an income rider? Because that literally was their vacation fund and their grandkids fund. Like, they knew no matter what, for the rest of their life, they would never need to go, oh, the market tanked. I can't go on vacation with the kids. And the grandkids. They knew that would cover them for the rest of life. Or we know Texas, God bless Texas, but holy cow, their. Their property taxes are straight from the pit of hell. You know, like, it just is insane because I have clients that use an annuity to pay their property taxes every single year. And so when you think about this, that relationship you have with your insurance company, I'm not just saying the fmo, I'm saying with the insurance company is so important. But that takes energy, that takes effort, that takes intention. And we are paid to do a job. Well, let's just do this. We're paid by the insurance company to do a job, right? So what does the insurance company generally want us to do? They want to make sure we're picking the right product for the right situation. Now, you can write good, clean business, right? Good, clean business. That. Because if you don't, they end up paying the price for it. So I just, I guess I didn't mean to go off on this kind of a tangent, but we need to be experts. And this is the way I look at it. An ER doctor is kind of a unique creature because an ER doctor, literally, they've got to know everything instantly, right away, because a traumatic situation could come in at any moment and they need to have the knowledge to be able to assess the immediate way to save this person's life. Now a lot of times, like, okay, this person needs to go into surgery, send them off to Dr. So and so someone who specializes in that area of trauma. But when I did my EMT school, I realized that I had to have so much knowledge and immediate protection of life. So if I came up on an accident, I had to make sure. This guy needs C spine, he needs to have his neck protected. He got whacked really hard in the head. This guy's bleeding out right here. Tourniquet over here. You have to make sure that they have an hour. You have one hour. It's called the golden hour. If you can get, if you can stabilize a patient, like extreme bleeding, you can tourniquet. If you have some sort of traumatic headache injury, if you can get them to the hospital within an hour, they have a high chance of life, of living. If you are outside of that hour, it drops dramatically per minute.

Whoa.

Per minute. And so when you think about it, when we go into a client's house, we don't have 12 hours. We literally usually have 30 minutes to 60 minutes to assess the situation. And it's kind of like a triage. This is super important. Like, I mean, when you walk, when you go up to one of these mass casualty accidents, we were driving to California one time and there's like a 40 car pileup. So literally I got out of the car. Caleb, you don't know any of this, but when I got to the car, I literally was going to every single car and seeing if anybody had an immediate life threatening injury. There were tons of broken bones and blood everywhere and things like that. But there wasn't, fortunately anybody that I looked at that going, this person's going to die in a matter of minutes if we don't do something. Or is this person just going to die? I mean, I pulled up on an accident one time. This is. Leilani and I were going down Arizona and sky. I saw a huge cloud of dust and this guy had rolled over and long story short, he died. There was nothing we could do. He was. Had heavy breathing and all that and literally died. But what I remember walking up to that truck and I knew is something was probably pretty bad. But in that instant I had to assess it. And, and I think about our first 10 minutes of fact finding is literally triage. What is the most important thing that could cause them not to have a super successful retirement? So, you know, we went from being paid to do a job and not doing it is frustrating, but the more you get into it now I can go into a client situation and I can literally almost instantly assess what the problems are and figured out it's because I'm paid to do a job by the insurance company.

Yeah. And I think for me, Chad, like, what I would be encouraging an agent to do is take initiative.

Yes.

You know, like, for example, I had three instances this week where agents were reaching out to me to do specific things that they have full access to do.

Hey, leave me alone. Leave me alone.

No, not you. You. So here's the thing. IMO's will bring to the agent a more holistic, more holistic approach to product selection. So you called earlier this week asking, hey, got this case. What are you seeing, you know, from the accumulation side, is this still kind of the product we're looking at? Because you write a bunch of income so the accumulation is less frequent, so you like to bounce those thoughts off when they come up, because they don't come up all the time. So I said, well, actually, I'd maybe go with this route. If you call the insurance company, they're going to tell you whatever their product, of course. So the IMO brings a more holistic and more objective lens to the product recommendations.

That's a good point.

That's a huge part of what an IMO is there to be.

That's a great explanation of what an IMO and an insurance company is. You know, the IMO is literally assessing. Okay, this is what is. This is what I think is best. Where the insurance company, well, our product's the best, of course, so you do have to balance that out.

Right. But there were things specifically pertaining to policies this week with some other agents that it was like, man, if you're willing to take initiative, you can actually get this information directly from the insurance company, strengthen that relationship, too, and probably get what you're looking for faster than what I'm able to get it to you. Because when you send it to me, of course I want to get to things right away, but the inevitability of the role that I have is that it ends up in a queue of sorts, where there's already things that I'm working on. You send it over. I'm going to get to it when I can. Point is, there were a few instances where I felt like, man, if these agents were willing to get out of their comfort zone of just talking to the person they know and actually get on the phone with the insurance company, call the insurance company, email the insurance company, they'll strengthen the relationship they have with that carrier and they'll probably get what they need a little bit faster.

100%, it's.

And so it's just, just taking initiative. Go, go. Like, at the end of the day, I felt like, well, they, they should know pretty well that for me to answer the questions that they have, I'm going to have to be the one now to call the insurance company. It's like, if you can understand that that's what I'm going to do. Why not just go ahead and circumvent that process and call them directly? You are a representative of them. You're paid by them. But I think that, generally speaking, it's a little bit easier for an agent to just shoot over an email to the marketer, whoever it is that they're familiar with working with, and say, hey, will you do this thing for me? And of course, we want to help the agents with as much as we possibly can, but simultaneously, we're trying to help agents become independent. I don't want an agent to feel like, oh, they can only go through Caleb. And that's the only, you know, method or means that they have to get the work done. What happens if I. Something happens to me and I'm unavailable, I get a car wreck or whatever and I'm laid up in a hospital. It's like, you've got to understand, you have resources. You have other people available to you at the carrier level that you have access to to help you get things done.

Yeah, I hope your brother never shows up on the scene. He'll just look at him. Yep. Let him go. I only broke my finger. Now let him go. We need to put him down just like a horse. He broke his leg. Put him out. Yeah, so. But, you know, do you know the reason why a pilot. How much do you think a pilot really flies the plane when they're up there?

It's. It's pretty much autopilot with the exception of takeoff and landing.

Correct. So in that scenario, that is exactly what a marketer is supposed to do. You are paid for the 10% of the time that you can only you're the only person that can probably fix this situation. And, you know, that's really what it comes down to. And I told this before, I have a gentleman that has literally paid me for inner circle, and I probably talk to him once every two to three months, but he always tells me, the cases you've helped me with have made me tons of money because there are cases I couldn't figure out. And so, you know, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, if I have someone that can help me with a million or 2 million, excuse me, a million or 2 million dollar case every two months. And they're the reason, one of the reasons why I got it closed, I'll pay them, you know, a ton of money. So, yeah, it's.

For me, it's. And I don't want it to come across like it's a chastisement by any means. I'm not, I'm not.

No.

At the end of the day, the IMO is in a service role. We are there to help serve the agents and help business get pushed across the finish line and do as much as we can for everybody involved. But it's, it's really just a call to what you're describing. Expertise, be an expert, take initiative, work hard, do your job right. It's kind of, it's a call to take that initiative and do what you can for your, for yourself. And actually what will happen is in the process of you just trying to figure things out, calling the insurance company, talking with people, your knowledge and your expertise will increase as you do it.

Absolutely.

So if you have somebody else forever doing the thing for you, you never actually learn how to. How do you get better? So in those instances from this week, I went ahead and I did what the agent was asking me to do, but I used it as a training moment to tell them, hey, just so you know, you do have access to the same exact things that I did to obtain this information. So it's, it's constantly, from an IMO perspective, trying to help agents get better and train them while still providing good service.

Well, and that kind of makes sense. We'll wrap it up with this. You know this by. I've been in this business for 21 years now, and I can tell you, people move all over the place. Different insurance companies, different FMOs. And I know people that I've known literally from the beginning of the me getting into this business that have been to three or four different places and the relationships I've had with them, that's why you never. You're never a jerk to someone. You're always very nice, very respectful, very honorable, because they can help you a lot in what we do. So the essence of this is we're paid to do a job. Let's do it. And the number one thing you're going to find is the more you learn, the better you get. But not. Well, let me rephrase that. The more you learn, the better you get. But the more you apply what you learn, that's when you become the expert. So I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day. And, of course, happy selling.

Sam.