How I Sold $4.2 Million in Annuity Production in January | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 183

Hello, everyone. We are going to talk about on this episode why I had a 4.2 million dollar January.

Welcome back to this week's episode. I am Chad Owen. As you know, the annuity sales coach and my sidekick here. We're still trying to figure out a new name for him because he's actually taking suggestions. Yeah, he's earned the right to have a little more respect. We'll see. Now, case design. He's incredible. Absolutely incredible. So if you're part of retirement, relaxed financial, you actually know what I'm talking about. Case design, to me is one of the biggest things that can help with success. It really is. Because if you have a good marketer that can help you with that, not only can they do it initially for you, but they can teach you how to do it so yourself. And to me, that's, that's, that's where you want to be. You don't want to be in the middle of an appointment and not know how to do case design. I make so much progress and sales and help people so much just because I know how to think on the fly. And I wonder what that comes from. Think on the fly.

Think on the fly.

I don't. I hate flying on the go. What does that mean? Okay, so Caleb, lead the way.

Yeah. So we've got why chad had a $4.23 million January. I've got a few. A few things. Because there were some things stacked against you, you know, in January.

Yes.

You had Covid.

Yeah.

Okay. You went on a business trip for another company.

Yep.

Okay.

You literally only that is heavensarmy.com it is brought to you by any weapon you want. You want it, we can get it. Okay.

You're really in your radio voice. I did.

I switched to my radio announcer voice.

So you were only prod for two weeks in January out of the four. So half the time and lead flow wise, you get like 23 leads or something over the entire month, which if you do the math on 23 leads with a what I would consider a quote unquote normal process, a decent process, you're looking at about $500,000 in business. Most agents would have probably placed. With the 23 leads, you managed 4.23 million. And I want to give the listeners the why that happened, why that went down. I have some ideas.

I'm curious to hear this.

Well, and so we said that there was some things stacked against you. I will say too, there were some things stacked in your favor that you definitely leveraged. Okay. Number one, the market had been over the past few weeks experiencing extraordinary, extraordinary volatility.

I mean, I actually think we're down about 4, 4.8%, I think, right now from the high.

I mean, it's the ups and the downs. Like if you go and you look at a short term.

Back cast or whatever of the s and P500, the Dow, the Nasdaq, whatever, the temperamental children, as we say. Yes, the brats. The brats. I mean, it is. The peaks and valleys on those things are insane. So tons of volatility that stacked in your favor, lots of market uncertainty and start to a new year. So where people might have kind of kicked the ball down the road toward the end of last year, ideally there's people coming back up, kind of rekindling those conversations and whatnot now.

Yeah, it is interesting, though, because generally people kind of make those decisions at the end of the year. And my December was not as strong.

Right.

But my January's taken off and my February, honestly, I expect I don't plan on any vacations or anything for at least the next two months. And anybody who's followed me for a while know that's a big deal because generally about every month, a month and a half, I take some time off because I need to. I literally, I need to take a break. But that being said, I think we're going to run into a couple months of a huge opportunity for us. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. It's a. Market's right for it.

Yep.

You know, there's the old saying. I don't know if this was you that was telling me about this. Somebody was telling me about the idea that when bees get a little bit anxious, nervous, they kind of start buzzing.

Animals in general, if you're referring the same thing.

Yeah.

It's called the animal syndrome. And what happens is before an earthquake, the animals get really nervous. And all types of animals, it's not just one species, all types. But I assure you those animals are not smart enough to understand plate tectonics. I mean, you barely get it. And so it's like.

Plates moving around, lava coming up, you know, friction. They don't understand that. They just know something's right. And that's how it happens. People just get this nervous feeling before there's this stock market earthquake and they don't know why. I mean, I don't know though. You would have to be. You'd have to have your head really far in the sand to know something's not right right now.

Sure.

You know, there's a lot of things going on that just a lot of indicators make sense.

There are.

There are a lot of indicators. I mean, first of all, just the fact that a market's been going up for 12 years, that's one thing. That it cannot go up forever.

Right.

Then you talk about government spending, you talk about political uncertainty. You talk about the pandemic. I mean, pandemic. You talk about.

You just. I mean, you talk about all these different things that can cause problems. And I'm going to balance that out. I mean, I know that. I know Covid is real. I mean, my mom died from it. I mean, actually, my mom died because of it. But it was, you know, the major health issues at the time before that caused that. Sure. I think if she was healthy and she wouldn't have. She would have had Covid. There wouldn't have been an issue. But I also look at that really from a retirement standpoint as well. You know, if you take care of your retirement and you keep it healthy and you keep it safe and you keep it secure, when the. The economic virus kicks in, you're not affected by it because you're not exposed to it.

Right.

Without a mask, you're not exposed to it. And so I would tell you in that situation, there are definitely some things going on, no doubt about it.

Okay. So that's definitely something worth staying on the forefront of. As somebody that's working in the area of safe money, understanding what may be going on in people's risk accounts, that's definitely valuable. And make sure, too, that you're not advising out of risk, in or out.

I make it very clear. This is. Here's my recommendation from the standpoint of which product I would use for safe money. But it is your decision whether you want to get in or out of the market. I tell them I'm not even licensed to tell you whether you should get in or out of the market. But what I'm telling you is if you do want safe money, here is your best products for that. You got to be very clear on that.

Yeah, that's really good. Well, four things that I made note of that I think played a part in you having a $4.23 million January. Number one is the mentality of that 4.2, 3. It all counts.

You know what that. I mean, the blood, sweat, and. Oh, yeah, no tears, but, you know.

Blood, sweat, blood and sweat that goes into it. Oh, man. So. So the seconds count mentality. Excuse me, I was gathering my thoughts back. You have this mentality that every bit of time that you're given every bit of time that you're blessed to have is worth being spent the right way. And the right way is different. You know, when you're in different. In different times and seasons, you're at home. The right way to spend time you're hanging out with your. With your wife is not to be thinking about work at the same time. If you're in an appointment, seconds counting means you're focused on that appointment, not thinking about the vacation that's coming up in two weeks. Right. So truly treating your time and working in an efficient manner that backs up that mentality. Anything you want to add to that? Like the idea of seconds count?

Yeah, I just wasted a couple seconds because I just looked over to the left of me and there's a dumb chicken cup with chicken knowledge, a tumbler. And I've never seen that before this. If you guys don't know him, he is all about chickens that just everything about chickens knows every different little thing. And. Yeah, that's distracting.

My LinkedIn says, so you just.

Chicken connoisseur.

It's like. I can't remember what it's like VP Operations retirement. Realized something, something, something. I can't remember what all this. Outdoor enthusiast.

That's deep.

And then the last one is Chicken aficionado Chicken.

Okay, there you go. Okay. We just wasted seconds, and we're talking about seconds count. But no, absolutely. When I'm in an appointment, it's all about being deliberate and everything I'm doing, everything I'm talking about, no wasted time. Sometimes it does mean you get a little bit into sidetracked conversation. But most time, it's straight to the point.

Right.

You know, I'm not being impersonal. I'm being professional in my. Really, my motivation for being there. It's to help you find your problem, find a solution. That's all it comes down to.

Well, you tell clients that it generally takes, what, 30 to 45 minutes the first appointment. Okay. Depending on how many questions they have. And here's the thing. Thing. If you're going to tell your clients, it takes a certain amount of time, and then you go way longer than that. Do you think you're going to get second appointments? Probably not honoring your word. Exactly. So if you go in there, you tell them what it's going to take, and you adhere to that, you make that happen. Trying to get second appointments in the future. Third, if it's necessary, and you tell them, hey, on the next appointment, when we meet, you know, in a week or so, it'd probably be about 30 to 45 minutes. Again, answering any questions you have, that's actually going to be believable.

One, and I'm very clear, I say it takes me 35, 40 minutes to explain everything. But if you have questions, I'm not going to kick you out or I'm not leaving when time comes up. So.

Right. So that's one thing. The second thing that I noted down was the idea that nothing gets wasted when it comes to.

It feels almost wrong to call them opportunities when it comes to people to help. Okay. Prospects, leads, whatever you want to call it. You, your system that you use, your filing system, your call system, your pen and paper system, the way you mark on leads and everything, it's so efficient that no balls get dropped, nobody gets left behind. They're either continually followed up with until they meet with you, or they tell you flat out no. So there's not. There's not dropped balls. And I think that's one area a lot of agents probably struggle in is they talk about they need more leads, but probably not maximizing the leads they have.

Oh, 100%. I know there's agents I can consistently talk with that miss opportunities all the time that I would not have missed. Why would I not miss that? Because I've spent millions of dollars on leads, and I know what they cost. More importantly, I know what it costs the client. If I can't help them because I was being lazy or I wasn't doing my part, now they're out to the wolves with someone else, and who knows what they're going to do with them. So I take a lot of responsibility. I'm that EMT that pulls up to that car wreck, and I'm the one that's going to try and get them to the hospital within the hour. And that's really what it comes down to. If you're an EMT or a paramedic and you get to this car scene, they call it the golden hour. You need to be there within the golden hour. If you're there, the survival rate is so much higher.

Yeah.

Well, if you don't do your job, the first appointment, they may not have an opportunity to help be helped by someone else. And if they are helped by someone else, if they're better than you, great. But a lot of times that is not the case.

Yeah. Yeah. A third thing that I noted down that again, a lot of agents miss out on repeat clients. How much of that 4.2 was repeat, do you remember?

I don't. I would say probably half okay.

So.

Yes, see? Yeah, definitely. Definitely half okay.

So that.

And so here's what I did there when I. People started calling me. I don't know why I didn't get this stuck in my thick head earlier, but when they called me for review, I would help them with everything they needed. But then I started, about a month ago, I started saying, hey, you know what, let's just do a quick review. How much do you have in savings now? How much do you have in your qualified accounts? Just doing a redoing, a little mini fact finder.

Right.

And found out that this one guy had another 500,000.

Yeah.

You know, another guy had another 400,000. So they wanted to move it. So, yeah, just taking the time, being deliberate once again, not wasting time.

Right. And the reason I say I think a lot of agents miss out on those opportunities is because they don't treat the first opportunity with professionalism and excellence. That's fair. You. You handle the client the right way the first time. Then when you go to review with them, they already understand who you are. They know the character you have, they know the expertise that you have. They know the excellence you operate with. So to then go in and say, hey, I. I noticed this here. Is this. What's your plan with this? What's the purpose of this money? Was it, you know, in. In asking the right questions, you've already won half the battle.

1. I hear my clients say this all the time, Chad, I can always get in touch with you or you'll always respond back quickly. I mean, if you don't do that, people know if I'm not a date with my wife in my. In an appointment with my family at church or sleeping, I will answer that call, and I do. And if they text me, I'll call them. If they email me, I call, I'll call them. Why? It's important. So texting back, I can't hear in their voice if they understand my response. Same with email. I want to hear in their voice that they understand clearly what the answer to their question or whatever they talk to me about. I want to know they understand it for sure.

I feel the same way when it comes to helping agents. I mean, I get. We get lots of business in retirement, realized financial simply because I'm willing and available to help them with things that their other IMO is dragging their feet on. It means.

It'S just like agents. There's a lot of marketers out there. It takes you two or three days to even get in touch with your Marketer, by that time you're going to.

Well, great, yeah.

Now, yeah.

And then the big one here, number four. They're all big. But the fourth one is that you always find the problem. And the best solution to the problem. It's not treated like it's a commodity, just a pair of shoes or I like to say a bunch of bananas getting purchased. This is a, this is a problem that needs a solution and this is the best solution.

And it doesn't matter the dollar amount. If it's a hundred thousand, I do the same process. Do not skip steps. If it's 10 million, I do the same process. I do not skip steps. Every dollar counts to me. You know my saying, seconds count, pennies count, everything counts. Because if you think you're going to give more time, energy and effort to someone who has more money, that's dead wrong. You treat everybody the same, so you help them. Because a hundred thousand to one person is the same as 10 million is to another. So. Yep, I agree.

That's so good. Well, Those are the four things that I believe contributed to your $4.23 million January. Do you have anything else on that?

That'd be it. I mean, here's the reality. This is the time if I'm not taking time off. You know, there's a reason why, and I highly recommend the same for you. If you're not part of a really good IMO or marketing organization, we can help you at Retirement Realized Financial. Reach out to Caleb. If you want training, let's say you have a really good imo, but they're not great at the training side of it. Retirement Realized Agents Academy. We can help you there as well. We do have some proprietary products that I've kicked the tail on other people and, and they just. And these are true proprietary products. This is not someone calling you and saying, hey, we got this product. No, that product's been out for two years and yes, I already have access to that. Oh, but it's so great to go an appointment knowing that you're not going to be beat.

Totally.

So. Okay, well, till next time. Hope you have a great time and of course happy selling.

It.