Cross-Selling During Open Enrollment | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 171

Today we're going to be talking about how to cross sell during open enrollment.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. I am Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach, owner of Retirement Realized Financial and Retirement Realized Agents Academy. This is my sidekick, the Wonder Bread of all breads.

Yes.

Poster child.

I don't know if you call me Wonder Bread because I'm white or if it's because of my shape. I don't. I'm trying our bow.

You had to go there, didn't you? Okay, I'll just. Let's move on. So we know what we're talking about.

Cross selling during open enrollment. This is huge. I mean, your background is cross selling, not Medicare. But we are in the middle of open enrollment for Medicare. And you did cross sell with life insurance. Yes, specifically mortgage protection and final expense.

And Social Security lien and, and, and, and, you know, sure. Latest greatest government change and some process for financial.

Expense and oh yeah, I've done a ton of cross selling.

Well, and bear in mind, it's not just, oh yeah, you know, I've cross sold, it's you cross sold at a phenomenal level. Okay, so you came in to, to a company doing life. You ended up breaking a company record in your first month there. Shortly after that.

You know how I broke that record?

You called leads that were shoved away in the corner.

That's true. But I truly believe, I really do believe in life insurance.

Yeah.

Like, I've seen so many people die over the years that their family. I mean, just watch GoFundMe.

Right?

I mean, you see all these GoFundMe posts of so and so just died. We need to help their family. And I'm not mocking that at all. That's nice that people want to be generous. But when the family post it as that's their life insurance. That's a problem. When you have a heart for someone, you go, hey, you know, let's see if we can help them and let's see if that's great. But when a family relies on GoFundMe to take care of a death, that's a problem. So I really believe in, yeah, absolutely.

In people, clients, prospects. They sniff out the phonies quicker than anything. If you don't believe in the product you're selling, they will know and they will not do business with you.

I ask people that all the time. How many agents that sell annuities have annuities.

Right.

How many people that have, like, sell life insurance have really good life insurance policies? It's not that common.

Right.

Yeah, but it should be.

But thinking back to your time, cross selling one of the biggest, number one, first thing right out of the gate, we got to hit it. You've got to address the first concern always.

And I talk about that all the time. Do not bait and switch. If you're going out to life insurance, lead, take care of the life insurance. If you're going out to Social Security, think, take care of the Social Security. If you're going out for Medicare, take care of the Medicare. I mean. Yeah, do that first to the best of your ability and then talk to them about other things. Yeah. Now on the fact finder, you said because of suitability reasons. I just need to ask you a few questions. How much other life insurance do you have? And then how much do you have in qualified funds like retirements, and then how much do you have in emergency funds and savings? Yeah, that's why I'd find out information. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and that was actually the second piece to it was if you're going in and you're addressing the first concern, you should already be using a fact finder. But if you're going into it thinking, oh, you know what, I'm going to actually try and cross sell here. I'm going to see if there's a problem and if I can solve the problem, bring, you know, create a solution, then use a hybrid fact finder.

You know what's funny though, I found, and this was a little while ago the other day, I found one of my old fact finders and I'm going, how did I sell anything that fact finder. Yes. Because it was so generic.

Okay.

You know, I mean, the questions I have on this fact finder are very methodical, thought out because I've had 17 years. Actually, this fact finder really stemmed from about six years ago is when I really did the psychology behind the thought process of why people need to protect their retirement. I've always believed you need to protect your retirement. But that's thought process of why do people. Why do they not? I mean, it's crazy. This one guy on an. I can't remember where he saw. I wish I could find it. But they went around asking people what do they need for retirement, how do they protect the retirement and when do they plan on retiring? I mean, people didn't know what an annuity was. They didn't know a cd. They didn't know what a stock. Stock is something, you know, for a company. Well, yeah, that's true, but then they thought that, well, the company's Always going to go up. Well, we know since 2000-2003-2007-2009, I mean, shoot, we could go back since the inception of the stock market and see it doesn't always go up. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. So when you're in a Medicare appointment, address that first.

Right.

But always make sure. I mean, if I'm going to the doctor and I say, hey, you know what, man, I broke my finger and can you look at it? And he looks at it and he goes, hey, what's this over here? What's that bump over there? It looks like you broke your shoulder or your elbow too. What would have happened if he didn't. He took care of this, but he didn't take care of that.

Right.

You know, it doesn't make sense.

Right.

So. So if I'm in an appointment, I'm doing a health checkup, a financial health checkup. Now, you know, people ask, well, why don't you sell more life insurance, Chad? Because the client base I have, and I don't know why this is, but they don't have the health generally or the cost of health of life insurance at that age is just they don't need it or they just don't care anymore about, hey, I don't passing money onto my heirs. The sacrifice of me spending $300 a month.

Right.

It just isn't worth it.

Sure.

So I mean, that's why now there are situations while do that. But that's because I did their financial health checkup and I go, oh, you know, hey, you're missing it right here. Now if someone's talking about Medicare, I am not an expert in that area.

Right.

So someone needs Medicare help, I will refer them. I do have someone that takes care of my Medicare clients that need that. I don't get any override or anything from that. I don't get that.15 cents. And so Medicare people know what I'm talking about. Medicare used to be a very profitable, very lucrative thing because they deserve what they did. Right. But nowadays they've just cut it down to bare bones and I feel for them.

It's hard. Yeah, I get it. Okay, so we're talking. You always address the primary concern. Always use a hybrid fact finder. So if you know you're going to be cross selling, ask the questions necessary. We do. We've got one for life insurance. Medicare.

It'S the same thing. I mean if you're the, the hybrid fact finder would be for anything you're cross selling. Okay. So it doesn't have to be. Well, I need one for Medicare. I need one for long term care. I need one for. It's covers everything. There you go. Specifically how I designed it.

And then you want to creatively open the door for the conversation. One of the best ways I've heard this for life insurance is essentially along the lines of, hey, you know what, Chad? We've taken care of you. We've protected you in the event that you were to die sooner than expected or prematurely. But what do you have that protects you in the event that you live longer than.

I actually learned that many times about possibility of dying early.

Oh, my gosh.

Mess with me at the wrong time.

Really? Really. But that's carrying right now.

Oh, I can tell you who's carrying.

Who's gonna definitely draw faster. I don't know, my, my arm's kind of blocked right here. I might be in trouble.

I told you about my trip to my buddy's boxing gym, didn't I?

Yeah, nuts. He says his hands are faster. Than who?

It's a joke. I always tease everybody that my hands are faster than Floyd Mayweather, which of course they're absolutely not.

One of the fastest guys ever. Anyways, that's beside the point. On the draw, I'm like Bob Munden. If you don't know Bob Munden is you can go look him up.

Where are we at now?

Okay, we're talking about creatively opening the door for that conversation. See, if you're going through the fact finder, the odds are very good that you've asked them the questions, you've gotten the information. But after you've done that, actually the.

Odds are not very good because a lot of people don't go through the fact finder.

Think about when you go through the fact finder.

When you go through it. Yes, yes. If you go through it. Yeah.

But that's on the front end of your appointment. So you, you're talking like, even on the annuity side, you go through the fact finder and then you're going back and you're talking about annuities. So if you were going to cross sell, say, life insurance on an annuity.

I would still go through the fact. Find the beginning in the beginning. Why do you need to know all this information? Well, if I don't know how much you have in retirement, I don't know how much you have in emergency funds and savings, how can I possibly pick some sort of Medicare plan that might help you more depend on how much you have in reserves.

Right.

You know I mean, I have a very high deductible on my life or my health insurance. Why deductible on life insurance? That wouldn't be good. You died. You owe me 50 grand for deductible 65. Well, but, but yeah, you have. I have a very high deductible on my health insurance because I know I can cover easily if something major comes up. But it's the thing that cost a million bucks, right? Where you're like, hey, I don't want that happening. So. Yep.

Okay, so you're going through it on the front end of the appointment. So there's going to be time that has lapsed since you've gathered the information about what you might be cross selling to the point that you actually open that door. So you've got to have a creative way of opening that conversation. Again. For life insurance, we went over that. What would you say for Medicare it'd be the same.

I just, I just said it. I literally just.

I've been accused of listening to responses.

You hear me, you're not listening. That's the difference. You can hear me and not listen. That's, that's. I said, my daughter's out there going, preach it, preach it. No, because you're wanting to find out which, what the best plan is. Because the reality is how much do you have in reserves? How much do you have in qualified funds? Because that will help us determine which Medicare program you need. If you have a big amount that's set aside to cover the donut hole, as they say, you know, that's maybe helpful. But once again, I'm not an expert in that area, but I can tell you that's an easy way to get information out.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you this.

Long term care, you can say the same thing.

Yeah.

You know, can you afford a year's worth of long term care? Well, if you can only afford a year, then you probably need a better policy. It's true. So yeah.

Okay, well go to theannuitysalescoach.com and download the free document. We've got a document in there that talks about the three ways you can open the door into Medicare. Cross selling life insurance.

We don't give our fact finder away for free though.

Fact finders in the academy.

I was just checking.

There is, there are creative ways you can open the door. Kind of, I wouldn't even call it necessarily a script, but it is a way. Like it is, it kind of shows you ways that you can structure those openings. Definitely go check that document out.

And I do want to balance this out real quick because I've had someone just recently go, well, why aren't your documents free? Well, why do you have to go to the grocery store and pay for things that you use? Because it takes a lot of time to get that food from here to there. It's a lot of energy and effort. I have an entire team that that's helped me build this system. And the people that are paying, it would be really rude to say, you know what, we're giving all the stuff away for free, but you're paying us. And honestly, when it comes down to it, the people that pay for are the ones that are generally going to use it. I mean, that's generally how that works in the game. If you. Absolutely. But if you knew how much time, energy and effort it takes to do these, I mean, I could be out writing annuities right now.

Yeah.

You know, but I want to take time to help. And if you see that what it costs to be a part of our platform, you know, I have not taken a dime from that in four and a half, almost five years. I have not taken a dime from that. I do that because I want to help train agents. There you go. But I do pay a team to do it, so. Yep.

I want to tell you too, you've got to give them a reason to want to be in a next appointment. Okay. Give them a reason to actually have another appointment with you about whatever line of business you're cross selling and then book the appointment.

Right, right there.

This is huge. Don't wait until you get back to this huge. Don't wait until it's huge.

Don't wait until you get back to the office. Listen, if you got to go get back to the office to check your calendar, get a calendar app on your phone.

Oh, man, you guys got a long time on Google. I think it was. I've only been on that for two years because I used to have the appointment book where I'd write it down. And it's probably been over two years now, but I'm finally on Google Calendar and it's awesome. I love it. Boy, I went screaming and kicking on that one, though. I've always done it this way. It's the way I'm always gonna do it.

Yeah.

Nope.

It's funny. You started writing more business when you started using Google Calendar.

No, definitely not.

Yeah, there's a correlation.

I was the same.

Also started writing more business since you brought me in. There's correlation. Correlation isn't causation. I know, I'm kidding.

Okay.

But yeah, so yeah, book the appointment in the current appointment and then here's a huge one. Be an expert.

Be an expert in whatever line of business you're cross selling.

Yes.

If you're going in and you're helping them with Medicare. Amazing. Be an expert in Medicare. Maybe you are an expert in Medicare.

This is why I don't run Medicare appointments. This is why I'm an expert, because I'm not an expert.

But if Medicare were to come up, you're not going to try to be an expert or pretend like you're an expert. Same goes, if you are a Medicare expert, you're going to cross sell annuities. Be an annuity expert. Be an expert in the line of business you're crossing.

I know so much about taxes and I feel very comfortable, but I will tell people right off the bat, I am not an expert in taxes and nor will I give advice on that. You know, technically I know a lot about wills and trust. I will not advise on that. That's what a lawyer does.

Right.

You know, so, yeah, you've got to be an expert what you're in. Plus, when you're an expert in what you're talking about, then when you refer someone and you name them as an expert, then they're like, well, if Chad's such an expert in this area, they're going to be an expert coming in.

Yeah. I'll tell you, Medicare season can be huge for guys and ladies that are also new at tp.

Absolutely.

I mean, think you're literally dealing with your target market right there. I mean, you go and you run life insurance, you may get somebody, 30s, 40s, people that aren't necessarily still doing, but they just. It's fewer and further between.

Well, the younger people don't usually know what delayed gratification is as a, as a general statement, and that you can't touch it till 59 and a half and that gets a little tough. Yeah.

But if you're gonna run Medicare, you might as well use a hybrid fact finder. You might as well be privy to the annuity side. If that's something you want to get better at or improve in and have a process, then we want to help you do that.

Absolutely.

So.

So I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day and of course, as always, happy selling.