Cross-Selling Annuities Through AEP | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 220

On this week's episode, we're going to talk about how to cross sell annuities during the aep.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode. I am Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach host with the most. Maybe every time I do. My dad used to have this saying, I kind of am a little nostalgic today because I'm looking through my desk drawer and I see these five tie tacks. Now for those who don't know what tie tacks are, you actually put it through that, like a little pin thing. Through the tie, it goes on the back and there's a little chain that attaches. And man, I'm just like going, My dad used to be an incredible business person. Unfortunately, he wasn't really good at holding on to businesses. He could build things. He didn't have his integrator. That's the problem. He was. He's a visionary, but he didn't have his integrator. That's. That's what happened.

Interesting, huh?

But it's just kind of cool because now I have them up right by me to where I can see him. But this is Caleb North. He is the host with the leastus. I mean, okay, No, I love him. You know that I bring the content. So you do bring the car.

Without me, all you'll get is Chad rambling.

Well, that's true, but I'm the source of the content. So if I wasn't here, they'd be going, yeah, Caleb, what do you got to say?

You weren't here. They'd be on YouTube watching my face. Probably that's true.

Well, hopefully you guys are on YouTube no matter what.

Should be.

You got to go to YouTube. The annuity sales coach. And what's the other 1?

A 7 figure, 7 figure Annuity sales podcast. You find it. Obviously if you're listening to it, you found it. It was. If you're on the YouTube and you're watching this, you can find it on Spotify or Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to your podcast.

Yeah. Okay, so let's get going.

Cross selling annuities through aep. Fun topic.

Well, here's the reality. Most people don't cross sell during AEP because they're so stinking busy servicing.

That's true.

They don't get to do that. And that's something that needs to be fixed if you're ever going to make it work in the annuity business. You either have somebody else start to take care of your Medicare business or you just learn how to work some.

More hours yeah, yeah. And, and I, I don't think that it's necessarily a horrible thing that agents are, are slow. I don't know if slow playing is the right word, but not operating as quickly as they maybe could on the annuity side, because we're going to get into this in a second. But you definitely don't want to violate your scope of appointment. But you definitely have to recognize the opportunity at your fingertips before you maximize it.

Well, here's the first thing. You gotta be willing to work more hours during this time of season. I'm not saying you do or you don't. I'm just saying you need to be willing to. I had a bunch of things going on this last week, and I think I'm just under 90 hours that I put in for last week. And it's because I have multiple businesses. I have other things. I've said this for years, actually. Last week, if I only would have worked annuity business, which I didn't have a ton of appointments, still did 2 million bucks, but I probably only would have worked about 35 hours. It's just all the other stuff this week I only have one appointment so far. So needless say, I'm going to be making some crazy calling once we're done with this. But you know, this time when you have the open enrollment, you just got to put in the extra hours.

Well, and the reason you do the extra hours is because you're able to recognize the potential in front of you. If you can't recognize the potential in front of you, you'll never maximize it. So the first thing is you've got to be able to see it. So if you're dealing with people that are at Medicare age, you've got prime, prime opportunities there for sure. The second piece to that, and this has a bunch of sub pieces, but the second, second piece is you have to know how to steward the, the opportunity, otherwise you won't maximize it either. What I mean by that, there's several things that you need to be doing. Like I said, there's like five subsets. But the first thing is don't violate the scope of appointment. So for those of you, if you're selling Medicare, you probably know what a scope of appointment is, but it's basically a piece of paper that your client is filling out, they're signing saying, these are the types of products that I'm interested in. When you go into that point appointment, you are legally not able to talk about products outside of the ones that they've scheduled that appointment. For. So make sure you honor the scope of appointment. But you have their information. You have their contact info. You can always follow back up with them later, ask more questions, and book a separate appointment for the annuity conversation.

God forbid if he ever helped someone with something else that you could help them with in the allotted time.

It's. I know it's a.

It's a crazy sometimes, but the reason why it gets that way is because people have abused that. They do the bait and swear, and they never end up helping them with Medicare because they don't know anything about it. But then they try and sell them something else. So, I mean, I get why the rules can be made, but, man, it just makes it so much harder for a lot of people that do their business honestly and ethically.

Right. And that. It's actually that. That scope of appointment is the reason I say for agents. I've talked with a lot of agents that are doing Medicare and they'll say, yeah, Caleb, I'll probably start following up with clients at the beginning of next year to start talking about annuities with them. It's like they get fully out of the period, which. Great, that's fine. You can do that. But just recognize that those are still people that you've worked with that are in retirement or approaching it, and they need to have those conversations about their retirement and their income and all of those different things.

Correct.

So once the Medicare plan has been set up in a separate conversation, in a separate appointment, ask those necessary questions. The fact finder. Come on, somebody.

Yep, my favorite. It could tell how excited I am about it. I just changed it again.

You did? We. Well, I think we've changed the fact finder, Chad. We've changed it like five times this year.

Oh, yeah.

I feel like we've made five updates to that.

Well, because there's certain questions that don't become relevant anymore, or I don't like the way it's worded, or I don't like the way the client's responding.

Right.

And so if I feel I can be more efficient in the way I ask things. Dang, I almost just yawned. That's not good.

You need. You need a caffeine, too.

I just drank my bang. This is not good. So anyway, back to what we were talking about. I just am very in tune with what the current feel of the market is for clients. And. And people are just really nervous right now. And I hate that because I hate fear in general. Like, I don't. I. Anybody is fearful. I just want to come for them, make them feel better. That's just me by nature and I just, when I see people like that, I've got to make the adaptations to way they ask my questions because I don't want to ever trigger a fear button now. I want to trigger, hey, let's think about this and where we are right now. But I don't want you to sit there freaking out like these people do. Well, if you, I just heard this just yesterday, I was in a meeting and they're like, do you know the, the bank can close down anytime and all your money can go away and you won't have access to it and the government will shut everything down if you say the wrong thing, I'm just like, you're just spewing fear and I don't like that. So I want to make sure my fact finder doesn't portray that at all.

Yeah, it's, it's important obviously that we're not fear mongering. No, but still asking the right questions and it's, it's a challenge because the right questions can trigger those types of things.

Of course, like I'm not, you're, that's not the intention, that question for that response.

Right. When you ask somebody what's the stock market going to be in five years and they don't know, that can trigger an uncertainty. But the reality you're illustrating to them why protection and safety and security is necessary. That's good. Here's another big one. If you're going to be cross selling anything, I don't care what it is. If you're buying annuity leads and you're trying to cross sell to final expense, which is the most arbitrary cross sell I can think of. But I don't care what you're cross selling, know what system and process you're bringing your client into before you even attempt the cross sell.

Yeah. And I would also add to that, and I think this is what you're implying, but make sure if they call you for annuities, address annuities first, they call you for life insurance, address the life insurance first, they call you for Medicare, address the Medicare first. Make sure you, you're not doing a bait and switch type deal. Address the issue why they reached out for you and if you can help them in other areas, then do so.

That's why I don't really love the term cross selling. I, I, I wish that the term that was commonplace was like cross problem.

Solving because ultimately let's work on something like that. Let's work on a Different language. I. I agree with you. Cross selling is a very, um. It's a heavy word to imply that your intent is to find another way you can get money out of the people. And that's not the case. I use this example all the time. If I'm a doctor, and I see you got this cut right here, and you came in with a cut, and he's like, hey, I got a cut. I cut. And then you're looking at the skin, you're going, dang, you are really yellow. Like, you're just jaundice. And it would be malpractice for you to just address the cut. Right. If you recognize that kidneys are shutting down, which is probably why your skin is turning. Excuse me. Liver is probably why your skin is turning yellow. And if you didn't address that. So we need to do the same thing as a financial expert where if we're addressing this one situation, but then we're screaming, you know, all your money's at risk. And you've said multiple times, you need to be in safety. If we don't address that, that's financial malpractice. Right?

Yeah.

We can't see a problems more severe than the one we originally helped or tried to help and not address it. That would just. That'd be. That would not be ethical, in my opinion.

No, I agree wholeheartedly on that. And this is that line between, well, I'm the client. I said I want to talk about this. Right. I'm the agent. I see that you have an issue with this. That line is a. It's a. It's a. It's a challenging line to try and draw.

But see, I've also went out to meet with someone specifically for life insurance, and I said, what the heck do you want life insurance for? You have $2 million. Here is. I mean, what's more important, Plan for living or plan for dying? Oh, I only care about plan for living. I just want money to do that. Well, then why are you doing life insurance? I don't know. You know, I'm not trying. Obviously, I get paid if they do life insurance. Sure. But I'm trying to do what's best for them.

Right.

And so if they already have tons of money, and for example, a client I just met with, they have no heirs. None. They have no kids, nothing. And they are talking about life insurance. I'm like, what's the life insur for? I don't know. We're told we have to have life insurance. You have $7 million here. What's the concern about, you know, we really don't have that. But somebody was trying to sell on this really big life insurance and they had a problem.

They didn't have.

Yeah, they didn't have the problem. I mean, I could have made some really good money selling that life insurance policy.

Yeah, I'm sure.

And I just. And they would have went with me. I mean, I ended up writing at 2 million and we'll do another million once I get back from a UK trip and I address their situation way better than the previous client or previous agent.

Yeah, that's why they picked you.

Yes.

That's good. I do wholeheartedly believe that even though you should always address the primary concern, the reason that they reached out in the first place, you simultaneously, if you have any inkling whatsoever that you're going to be cross selling another product, you're cross problem solving into another product. You need to have a system and process in place. You need to know what you're bringing your client into pertaining to that cross problem solving product. Right. So if you're going from life insurance to an annuity, you need to understand how are you going to take this client from point A to point B regarding the annuity, not just the life insurance.

Agreed.

That's one area that agents treat flippantly sometimes is they think, okay, I'm going to focus on this one area, then I'm going to try and cross sell. And they don't actually have a system and a process for it. The second, or I guess this is actually like the fourth, I was gonna say.

Wait a second.

We'Re way down there already.

You also need to be an expert in the industry of the product that you're using to cross problem solve.

Yeah. So I will not talk to anybody about Medicare. I have experts that I can refer them to, but man, I honestly, I haven't really studied that ever. To where I could call myself super knowledgeable, let alone expert. I'm knowledgeable, but I'm not super knowledgeable and I'm not an expert.

So you're not going to try to solve a problem there even though you could get paid on it?

Yep. I mean life insurance, I can, I can carry my own life insurance, long term care, annuities, I know about stocks, bonds and mutual funds and commodities. I will never try and promote other. I just had a guy email. What do you think of silver coins? I can't tell you what I think of them. I can't do anything that has a variable. I cannot advise whether they should or should not buy anything that is considered a variable aspect. A commodity, a stock, a mutual fund, a bond. I just can't. Treasuries, I can't recommend that. Yeah, be careful because I had someone just recently say, well, what do you think of these Treasuries? And I'm like, oh, yeah.

I just, I literally told him, I said, hey, I don't have anything to do with products like that. That's something you have to go through the broker. I'm focusing on safe money. The tough thing about that, some Treasuries can be incredibly safe, but they're not going to provide income.

Right. So you're also not trying to advise on the way they ins and outs.

Exactly. I mean, I can educate them on that. But when it comes to should I or shouldn't I, should I or not, should I or should I not buy, then I'm just, I can't recommend that. I'm not licensed for that.

Yeah, that's true. This subject here about being an expert in the industry of what's being cross sold, I think this is what prevents most agents from being elite in multiple lines of business. It's a very rare situation that I come across an agent and I, I'm talking with, I mean, literally thousands of agents I've, I've spoken with. I realized that one day I'm like, I've spoken with thousands of agents in the years that I've been doing this. And I'm like, that's a wild thing to me. But it's true. And I have very seldom come across an agent that was elite in two lines of business, meaning Elite Life and Elite Annuity.

I'd agree.

Elite Medicare and Elite Life. You know, it's so. And I think the reason is because to do any of them at a high level, you have to be an expert in it. So if you're going to try and sell annuities at a high level, you have to be an expert. You're going to try and sell Medicare at a high level, you have to be an expert. Well, the process of becoming an expert in one thing is extensive enough that most agents that try to do multiple don't end up elite in either.

Agreed.

So that's something to bear in mind. I had a whole conversation with an agent this past week about it and encourage church.

Well, that's go all in. Yeah, you got to pick it and go all in.

And once you're an expert there, if you have the bandwidth and the capacity to branch out and try and become an expert, in another without sacrificing the expertise that you've already attained. That's great.

That's why there's a really good mesh between life insurance, long term care and annuities. That's a really good mesh. There's. I can, I do consider myself an expert in those areas, but there's still some things like premium financing. I'm going to get outside help for that.

Right.

Why? Interest rates have changed, rules have changed. I mean, that's an area that I would rather have someone, that's all they do and I partner with that. And it's something we very rarely do. I'm. You know, most people that want to do infinite banking, bank on yourself. I'm a much bigger fan often of not having the life insurance premium. Unless of course, they're a certain age or they have tons of money or they're trying to do some estate preservation or they're trying to do some banking on themselves where they're borrowing against the money. But once again, you better have a ton of money for that to happen.

Yeah, it's true. And then here's the last piece. When you're cross selling anything, always discover the problem and educate them about the best solution.

No matter what it is. No matter what it is. You definitely want to make sure you're the one that's the expert. Addressing the problem and then finding the solution. Most my deals, 99.9% of my deals are simply because I addressed a problem and found the solution. It's that simple.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that this is a mindset shift that maybe some listeners need to have. The client is not your means to an end. The client should be viewed as the end themselves. Yep, they are the end. So if you're not solving a problem, there's really no sense in selling the thing.

Agreed. Okay. Well, I think that's it. Yeah, we actually hit an almost dead perfect. Well, as I say, and always will say, happy selling.