End Of Year Marketing Strategies | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 275

Welcome back, podcast listeners. Today's format's a little bit unique, a little bit different. Chad, as many of you guys know, is moving up to Colorado. Back to Colorado, I should say, at the end of January 2024. And he's actually on a trip right now up there. So it is me recording, but it is the seven Figure Annuity Sales podcast. I am Caleb North. I am super excited for the what we've got going today. I'm going to share with you guys a few different ideas, some end of year marketing strategies for wrapping out 2023. I think one of the biggest flaws or areas of improvement that agents have is tending to coast out the year. Now, if that's in alignment with your business goals, okay, you've busted it all year long. You've written your production, your at a point where you can, and you want to go for it, take the year, you know, coast out. I'm not going to sit here and, and bash on anybody's, you know, decisions to spend extra time with their family and friends during the holidays. But for those of you that are trying to meet sales goals, for those of you that haven't maybe written what you're wanting to write over the course of 2023, there is still time to hit that goal. There is still time to work hard, and there are still people that will work with you, want to meet and we'll write some business. So I want to share a few strategies. This is first one. Here is one that you've probably heard us talk about before. If you've been a podcast listener for any period of time really, or you've been a part of retirement Realized Agents academy, or you've worked with me in retirement Realized financial, we talk all the time about not shutting off your leads. This is an area that a lot of agents, 10, they tend to mess up. They'll get to the holidays and they're thinking, well, I don't want to deal with lead rot. I don't want to, you know, have a lead generated and then it sit for a week or two and then try and, you know, get back in front of it. And they're long gone because of the time that's passed. And to be fair, Lead rod is real. It is a thing, I mean, just in any sales really, as the closer you can interact with somebody as the salesperson, the closer that you can interact with somebody to their initial point of interest, to their initial point of contact, the greater the percentage of likelihood for that sale to go through. So lead rot is real, but the Problem with shutting off the leads is not avoiding lead rot. It's the potential that you don't get back in with that lead vendor down the road. What I've seen, and I've actually, I've actually helped agents get leads this time of year because other agents have canceled their, their leads with certain lead vendors or marketing systems or whatever. So my encouragement is, even though there can be and more than likely will be some lead rot, if you keep your leads on during the holidays.

It'S, it's le. It costs you less, in other words, it costs you less to be paying for leads that have lead rot than for you to lose the lead vendor altogether and not be able to get back in with them for however much time. Whether that's weeks, months, years, doesn't really matter in the long run, it will cost you less to pay for leads that might incur a little bit of leave rot over the course of a month or so than it would be for you to not have the leads at all and lose that lead vendor over the long term. So that's my encouragement to you guys this morning. Number one, don't turn off your lead flow for the holidays. Number two, call lead vendors and marketing systems to see about newly opened locations. If you're trying to run appointments in a local market and you've had a hard time historically being able to actually get some territory in that local market with different lead vendors and marketing systems, this holiday time of the year is a fantastic time to reach back out to them because a lot of other agents are doing what I just said don't do, and they're turning off their leads, they're canceling their leads, they're shutting down their marketing systems for the holidays. So if you can make an effort, make a point to reach back out to them, there are often opportunities that have opened up even in your local market that might have previously been shut down or closed or blocked that you could get into. So reach back out to those lead vendors this time of year. Another thing, and this isn't necessarily marketing, but this will drastically go to impact your appointment rate. But know the risk implications of kicking appointments to next year. So what I mean by that is if you're getting leads at the end of the year, December, you're going to have people inevitably that say, hey, call me after the new year, know, call me in January, whatever. It's not that they're not interested, it's that they feel like what it's going to take or require of them to meet with you is greater than what they're willing to give around the holiday season. So there's a couple of things you can do. Number one, I always say know the risk implications of kicking it down the road. Okay, and I'll get into what those are in a minute. The other thing that you can do is help them understand that it, it's very simple to have an appointment is not a big, complex, drawn out thing. I think sometimes clients have a false perception of what we do or what our process looks like or what an appointment is. And they might be thinking it's an hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours, three, or they're thinking they're going to have to get in the car and drive somewhere for, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes to meet with you for two hours and then drive home and see when you start thinking about it in that regard, calling it an appointment. And their familiarity with appointments is doctor's appointments that can feel for people like a big thing. If you're doing things one on one, you're doing things face to face, then you can tell them that, hey, an appointment is only 30, maybe 45 minutes, depending on how many questions you have. So you're able to bring that.

Ominous perception down a little bit back down to reality of these aren't. These don't need to be these first appointments, don't need to be these big drawn out, long, ominous things. So you're helping them understand it's super simple. If you're meeting with them in person and you're actually going out to their home, then tell them that. Because that's one thing that should make them a little bit more open to the concept is they're going to save time traveling, they're not going to have fuel expense. There's, there's nothing. They're just doing their life. And you show up for an appointment that's going to last 45 minutes, probably that that's not a big deal and it shouldn't be perceived as a big deal. Even around the holidays, if you're doing things in person but they're coming to you, look up where their address is, figure out how far away that is and tell them, hey, you're only, you know, you're only 10 minutes away, you're only 15 minutes away. Whatever the case might be, I can get the appointment done in half an hour, give you the information that way that you at least have the information going into the holiday season, something like that. If you're doing things virtually, then that's about, should Be in theory about as, as low a barrier to entry for a client as possible. You can just literally tell them, hey, I meet with people virtually too. So it's better for you for us to get on a zoom call or some kind of whatever platform you're using and we can go through this stuff. It usually takes 30, maybe 45 minutes depending on how many questions you have. And then you've got the information at least.

That kind of bringing down the expectation or bring kind of removing that ominous perception of what the appointment looks like actually couples really well with these risk implications that I'm going to talk about. So here are some fun statistics that I've looked at. So as you guys know, if you're in the academy, we've got a, a chart, it's called the bear markets chart and it literally looks at all of the bear markets from 1929 through 2022.

And there's 17 bear markets and we calculate the average drop, the average duration, the average return needed to break even, all these things. Well, one of the things that I started looking at within that chart is when do these bear markets start? When do they tend to begin? Well, fun statistic for you that you should be using in your calls if you're, if you're pushing hard through the end of the year and you're making calls with leads and you're trying to book these appointments. 42% of bear markets since 1929 have begun in either November, December or January. Okay, so if you consider that a year is 12 months, three months would be 25% of that year. So the statistical expectation, the theoretical expectation would be that 25% of bear markets begin in November, December or January. But the actual percentage of bear markets that begin in November, December or January is 42%. Here's another one. 25% of bear markets since 1929 have begun in December. In January, again, the statistical expectation would be 1/6 of bear markets because that's two months out of 12. But the actual statistic is 1/4, 25% of bear markets have since 1929 have begun in December or January. So if you've got clients that are trying to kick these appointments down the road, you can help them understand that the appointment isn't this big, big, long, drawn out thing. Okay? It's simple, it's easy. Explain what you do in the appointment, how long it takes and then stick to that. And then couple that with the statistics about the bear markets. So statistically, 25% of the bear markets that have occurred between 1929 and 2022 have started in either December or January.

The expectation would be 1/6 of them, but 1/4 of them have begun there. There's a statistical.

There's a greater emphasis on those two months for some reason, and I don't know what that reason is personally, but there is a greater emphasis on those months for some reason, actually having bear markets begin. It is what it is. I don't fully understand. I'm sure there's some kind of logical economic explanation for it, but the point is, hey, let's not just kick this down the road, okay? Let's not just postpone this. Ultimately, it's your decision, right? You can tell the clients. And I encourage agents to tell clients this all the time. Chad's Same thing. This affects your retirement way more than it affects mine. Okay? So you decide you want to meet next year, that's fine. I'll. I'll file this. I'll give you a call in January. But I want you to understand that this is historically what's happened. And I want you to have the information going into the holidays so that you can actually make a decision sooner rather than later about what's best for you and your family and just being real with people and expressing that you have their best interest at heart that you're willing to, hey, if you want to meet in January, okay, that's fine. That affects you way more than it affects me. But I want you to understand these things so that you can actually make the best decision. That type of care, but real is something that goes a long way with clients.

Chad, he gets the objection. Call me after the holidays as well. And that's about how he handles it. If you want to meet in January, great. I'll file this one. Call you in January. But I want you to understand these things. Xyz.

He. He likes to reference past clients or past individuals. So he'll think back to people that told him that thing in that same thing in December, and he let them go until January. And the market fell, you know, however much percentage over the course of that time. Um, you think just back to the end of 2022. That was about when the market started falling. I think it was 2022. This, the December 31, 2022 to January 1. I mean, literally, that, like, beginning of new year threshold, the market just started falling.

It is what it is. So you can use previous experiences with clients as stories that help people understand what you're actually trying to do for them. And one just practical thing that I would recommend you do or encourage you to do for marketing purposes is send out a Christmas newsletter to your leads, your clients, everybody with practical valuable information, holiday wishes and some kind of action provoking thought. Okay, so everything that you send, you want to be.

Valuable, you want to be informative, you want to have.

I mean literally inherent value within it. You want people to be excited to get pieces from you, whether that be mailers or emails or anything like that. Because there is inherent value in the content that you're promoting. If all you ever promote is marketing materials, oh, this rate's done this, all the annuity rates are here. Oh, you know, we got this new great product and all you're ever doing is marketing things, but you're not ever actually providing them practical value in their retirement. More than likely they're going to unsubscribe because people don't like to be sold to and you're going to whittle that list down. And a lot of the people that end up staying on the list are probably going to be people that never even see the emails in the first place. Got to understand, people that unsubscribe are people that see. People that don't see it don't unsubscribe. So if you're dealing with your email marketing, you want to send things that have this tangible practical value for them so that they don't feel the need to unsubscribe, but they actually get a sense of this person is actually I want to get information from this person, I want to get emails from this person. So send them that Christmas newsletter. Send them to your leads that you've never worked with. Send them to your clients that you've already done business with. The good, good content in email marketing is capable of being sent to both leads and clients alike. In other words, you shouldn't, you shouldn't need to just send email marketing to leads. If you are or you, the content that you've created is only valuable to people you haven't done business with, then the content's probably not valuable. So good email marketing content is going to be able to be sent to both leads that you've never done business with and clients alike. So send it to them, make those holiday wishes and then give them some kind of just action provoking thought. Right? Some. And call it a call to action. Right? And make that call to action as simple as you possibly can.

If it's as simple as respond to this email, whatever the case may be, you could provide them information about historical bear markets. And please understand do. When we talk about these things, we are talking about the factual realities of the market. Not to create fear, not to elicit fear, but because they are real and people need to be informed about them if they're going to make the best decision for them. In other words, you can only make decisions based on the information that you have. Okay, so the question begs to be asked is if Somebody understood that 42% of bear markets began in November, December or January, or they understood that 25% of bear markets began in December or January, would that person deem meeting with you now a more valuable thing to them as a result of having that information?

Or if they didn't have that information, would they think, oh, let me just kick it down the road? In other words, you're providing them factual information that they need to have in order to make a decision. They don't have to make the decision to meet now, but now they have information that they can make that decision. So don't look at it and don't try and position it out of fear, because that's not the point. Everything that we do with these fixed and fixed indexed annuities, these 0% floor products that never go backwards due to market volatility, is designed to remove fear. We're taking away the concern. We're taking away the like, literally. Retirees, number one concern is outliving their money. Statistically, that's the biggest concern that retirees have. We're trying to remove those concerns and remove those fears and bring this peace of mind. So don't use statistics in a way to try and conjure fear, but use the statistics, if they're factually based and true, to give people the information they need to be able to make a decision that they deem the best decision for them. So those are my four little nuggets. Don't turn off your lead flow for the holiday. Call lead vendors and marketing systems and try and get some more territory in your local market if you need that. Know the risk implications of kicking appointments to the new year. Be able to handle that. Objection. Call me after the holidays and then send out that Christmas newsletter with good, valuable, practical information. You'd be shocked how much business can be written with existing clients, how infrequently people actually disclose all of the information, all of the financials that they've got, all the money that they've got and where they've got it. So there are definitely people that you've written business with before that could probably benefit from some other type of product now and just simply getting back in front of them again can open that door for an opportunity to help them again. So this is my encouragement for the beginning part of December here. We've got some other good ones coming up, but that's a wrap for this week's Seven Figure Annuity Sales podcast. And as always, happy selling.

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