Don't ignore the impact of the product carrier when fact finding | 7FAS | Ep. 324

Welcome back to this week's episode of Seven Figure Annuity Sales. Caleb north here with Chad Owen. Another Monday morning.

It is another Monday morning. So today we have the plague, which is me, because I'm definitely not feeling that great. Just cold sweats and can't quite figure it out. And then we have Rudolph. If you watch, if you watch the. He looks like, I mean, I told him he hasn't went through puberty yet, so he's still doing his skin, his little pimples on his nose and stuff like that. And this just proves, proves it. This just proves it for sure.

So I was horseback riding yesterday. I think I got some dust kicked up and somehow settled in my pores and now it's all flared up. Yeah.

Not hormonal, huh?

If it is, that would be real sad.

So what do we got going on?

Well, man, I wanted to talk about something that I deal with on a weekly basis, but agents also deal with it. And if it's not handled well, I think it can be detrimental. And it's, it's product knowledge, it's knowing the products.

And it's kind of. To me, there's almost a double edged sword involved here because on one hand, you always want to do what is best for your client. You always want to use the solution that best solves your client needs. On the other hand, you also want to sell a product. You know, and if your clients are needing different things frequently enough, the next thing you know, you're trying to sell 12 different products because they do different things and they perform best for your clients in different ways. And it becomes really, really difficult to actually know those products on a deep level when you're positioning that many different products. So it's like the balance between knowing your products well, not product pushing, but also still doing what's best for your CL client. And I, I could be crazy, but I think it really comes back to the way you determine what's best for your client. Like, it almost comes back to fact finding. Like everything else seems to.

Yeah, but everything does. It always comes back to fact finding. But you know what, I've been doing this for 21 years right now and I'm, I'm kind of having an epiphany lately. I'm going through this whole thing of trying to figure out.

What really matters because I've heard you say many times, we are not trying to find something that replaces the stock market. Yeah. And I've been really dwelling on that a lot because it's not replacing the stock market. You're not going to get potential super high gains like the stock market. You don't get the losses. But it all comes down to one thing, safety. You know, there's nothing the stock market can offer out there that does anything what the indexed annuity with an income rider could do. And I've been focusing a lot on, hey, you know what, you still participate in gains, you still participate in some of the upside of the market, but you don't get any losses. And that's all true and everything, but the one thing that is undeniable is this offers guaranteed income for life. And this is why subconsciously I always, I mean, you know this. 90% of my sales are income for life and 80% my volume is income for life. Why is that different? Because a lot of times I can have some big clients that they don't need income, you know, that's just not something they need. So when I'm looking at this scenario, I'm going, what really matters? So then we look at all the different companies, all the different products. Now, you and I both know if you took the vast majority of indexed annuities and you just threw a dart on the wall, you're going to have anywhere from a 3% to 7% gain on average in indexed annuities. That's the very wide range. But the income is the number one thing. So if I'm now, like I said, this is 90% of my clients, so we have 10% that you have to know the indexed annuities. What's the best. I actually have a client I'm working with right now that she is, she decided that her income is enough with half the money we were going to use. So I'm going to go, okay, you know what, we'll take the other half of the money and we'll use it in straight indexed annuities. She just felt she didn't need that much income. And I'm like, okay, that makes, you know, to her, that makes sense to me. I'd always rather err on the side of too much income and use it for other things like vacations, extra things and, and you know, when we're trying to figure out what's best, it ultimately comes down to you have your product line where this is kind of your set companies you use. You and I both know, I mean, you see my sheets all the time. I can be all over the place in a year. But you don't always pick the number one income. You don't, because remember, financial stability is number one. Best benefits Number two, highest payout or, or no, actually financial stability, best benefits, customer service, and then which is the highest payout or index growth and then rate integrity. And actually, I'm starting to think even rate integrity might go above the highest payout, best benefit or highest payout. Because if you think about it, what good is an indexed annuity? Now, granted, once you get an income, does it really matter what the rate integrity is as long as they get the income for the rest of their life? Yes. But I also want to try as best as I can to leave as much of a benefit, a death benefit, to the heirs, even if it's not a priority. I still want to, I rather their heirs, whether it be a charity or kids or whatever, I'd rather have them get it than the insurance companies, such as an Espia or an immediate annuity. Right. So I think, and there's, and there's too many options out there nowadays where we can make that a possibility. I mean, it's not like, you know, back when you had products that you knew 13 to 15 years that that death benefit was gone. There's, you know, and there's still products and companies out there today that, you know, 13 to 15 years, the death benefit is gone, sometimes even sooner. So I think we get so focused on.

Knowing all these different companies, all these different products, I'm starting to really understand loyalty to the client. And the best way to be loyal to the client is to know which companies are loyal to me and the client.

Yeah, I, I agree entirely. I mean, when I look at agents who are consistently writing good business, they. Well, a couple of things. They almost always end up selling majority a carrier or two. And then, so it, then it becomes, well, why is that the case? Are they just trying to product push and then it's like, well, no, their process is the same with each client. So the way they go through the fact finder is the same with each client. The questions they're asking are the same with each client. So because their process is the same, what they end up with is a need that is very similar. Right. And it's not to say, it's not to say that the agent's process determines the client need. The agent process is what allows the agent to figure out what the client need. Actually is where I see agents that are looking at this product and that product and this product and that product, and then they end up writing inferior business because they're always selling some new product. They're the ones that just say, okay, well what do you want like what do you, what's. And they just take what the client says they want and then they try to figure out how can I get them that as opposed to figuring out what the client needs by good fact finding.

And how often do I ask you? It is. And how often do I ask you when there's a new quote, unquote, great product, great company out there? What's one of the first things I ask you? How's the processing time? How do they, how's the customer service? How's the new business? Because if they can't get that together, what are they? I mean, me as one of the top people in the nation as an agent submitting all this business. If they don't treat me well, what do you think they're going to do to my client? And so I am so picky nowadays on customer service. I'll take something with a little lower payout and great customer service than something with a higher payout and horrible customer service.

Yes.

Because if you think about it, when they, a lot of times when they end up dealing with customer service is when something really bad happened or they want to start income. And if you have to just jump through hoops and you don't get the right person and you don't get the right communication, it becomes incredibly frustrating for the client, which that definitely reflects on you as the agent. So I think often, and I'm not saying product push, that doesn't, that never is in my vocabulary. That's never even a thing. I mean, I don't care if you've got a five star resort to, you know, the best hotel in the entire world and a 10 week trip or whatever. And you know, obviously that's exaggerating. It doesn't matter to me. I'm always looking at which one is going to treat my client really well.

Yeah.

And because God forbid, what if I died? You know, I need to make sure my client is being taken care of. And you know, it's kind of the joke going is if I die, you're going to get a call from a guy named Caleb, which, you know, was news to you a while ago. But I mean that, you know, when it comes down to it, and hopefully we have agents down the road to where I can sit there and say, you know, if something happens to me, here's the person who's going to take over my business because I want my clients taken care of. But I think the product is very important. But I also think there's so many companies out there nowadays that have Very close. Products. Yes. I mean, when we run our illustrations, there's a lot of companies that have similar payouts, there's a lot of companies that have similar index strategies. So which one is going to treat my client the best?

So, yes, I, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. What I've kind of come to believe when it comes to product is that if you do a full and proper fact finder so that you know what the problem is, that you can take most products that, that solve that problem. Throw a dart, hit something, sell it, and it probably won't hurt the client. In other words, if you do a full and complete fact finder, then you pick any random product that solves that need.

90 times out of 100, you're not going to hurt the client based on the product. Where I think clients end up with issues is when you pick a bad carrier, you pick those other more qualitative things that you can't necessarily see on a rating page or, you know, a calculator or whatever. You can't see the financial stability necessarily. You can't see the rate integrity, you can't see the customer service. It's more experiential. That's where having a network of other agents that are doing what you're doing, they're approaching business similarly, having the ability to reach out to them and ask them what their experiences have been with XYZ company, that, that is where clients, I believe, are most of the time either benefited or hurt as long as whatever product is selected is solving the problem. So the difference between, you know, an income product paying out 21,000 a year versus 20,500, that $500 difference is not going to make most of the time that much difference to the client. If that 20,500 is a way, way better carrier than the $21,000 product paying carrier. Right. So it's, it's, it's almost like you say, looking at the whole thing holistically, but it all again roots back to fact finding. So here's, I guess the, the bottom line of podcast today is if you want to write big, big numbers, you need a consistent process. You need to be able to write a product a lot, a particular carrier a lot. To do that, you have to have a consistent sales process. You have to have a fact finder that you're going through every single question with every single client and every single time you're getting to the root need. Not just, oh, well, they say they've got 150,000, they want the highest five year Myga or they want the highest growth potential or they want the biggest bonus or whatever. It's like you don't just take it surface level, you don't take it face value. You actually ask questions, you find the problem and then when you do that you will reach a point of consistency. You'll use a similar product. Often you'll get to know that product extremely well and then it becomes like clockwork to you.

That to me seems like just use, just you just used the Mygas. An example, I had a client that he insisted on using this particular company because he knew as the MYGA had a published higher rate and the amount of junk we had to deal with to get that through was just insane. And the tenth of a percent extra that he got did not make it worth that time. I actually wish I would have just said, you know what I mean? Now if somebody said, hey, if we don't do the myga in this company, I'm not, I'm not doing it. I'm like, bye, have a nice day. Because the amount of extra time, I think it took two and a half months to get that money transferred and moved. And it was all just crazy stuff. Yep. The other thing I look at too is, you know, when I talk with clients now, clients that bought an annuity from me six years ago and if they would have kept their money in the market hypothetically, most likely they would have done a lot more. But when you look at what the index actually grew up versus the income value and they never have to worry about income. I'm telling you, I don't recall one person ever saying, I wish I would have stayed in the market because they just are so happy to just get that money coming in no matter what, doesn't matter what else is going on because they don't even think about it anymore. The peace of mind is so high. And we all know that. How many studies have you and I saw where it talks about people that have good health and guaranteed income for life and no debt? Those are the happiest people during retirement. They are. And so I think I'm just, you know this, as I told you before, clients are getting different. You know, they're definitely.

Shifting from, well, I'm used to what a pension is, which is kind of like an annuity, to well, I've experienced since 2009, nothing but the market going straight up. And I never need to worry about income because my money's always going to be going up in the stock market. That's not going to be the case. So I'm, I'm with you. Everything revolves around the fact finder.

Fact find, sure. Uncover the problem and then you look at the options that solve it. And when you're doing that, you're going to find that your clients needs or a are a lot more similar than you think they are based on a conversation about. Once you talk to them about what they want and they're going to look like colors of the rainbow, you start getting into needs and there's going to be way more consistency, way more similarity. You always address the needs before the wants and when you do that, you'll find. Man, I've, I've been writing a lot of business with this carrier in this product. Why? Because for this season it has been the top problem solver for this type of case and because of my process, I'm finding a lot of this type of case. It's just. Yeah, it's just process.

Agree. Well, I hope this helps everybody. This, this. Should we. I mean we're pretty clear on this, so hope this helps you. Of course. Everybody have a great day and happy selling.

It.