How The Fourth Quarter Can Be Your Best Quarter | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 223

On this week's episode, we're going to talk about how the fourth quarter can be your best quarter.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode. I am Chad Owen, the host with the most. Are you the host with the most? How many times do I say that.

I'm the one that brings the content, so I'm the artist with the most.

You have no content. No, that's. That's pretty harsh. You have a lot of content. You. You're. You're worth a lot.

I've got some. I've got some stuff today.

Yeah. Well, let's go.

Fourth quarter can be your best quarter.

It usually is.

If you're a Chad Owen, it usually is.

Yep.

Since 2014, here's a fun. Some fun facts about your. Your numbers. Since 2014, Q4 has been your best quarter five times. So five out of eight years.

Five out of eight years.

You got four quarters in a year and five out of the eight years.

Oh, and I know there's been some quarters in those. Probably three that I didn't. That I was gone a lot.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've already been gone. Is this this quarter? So October. When did I get back last?

Like, Monday last week, which was the.

Are we in November already?

We are.

So I've already been gone three weeks in this quarter, huh? Well, we'll see. Yeah, I'm not going to make this one of the. I'm not going to make this the fourth one where it's not going to be my best quarter. This is going to be.

Yeah, it'll be the best one. Well, here's another one. Since 2014, Q4 has averaged 26.3% more production than the average of the other three quarters.

Nice.

Okay. Since 2014, seven out of eight years. Okay. So the best single month has been in Q4. Wow.

Well, so no pressure.

Literally, seven eighths of the last eight years.

I don't know though, your best month.

Was in Q4 either.

So over November, December, October.

I only worked one week, but I did a million bucks.

You did.

And then November, we're already. No, I didn't do. Man, I don't know. What did I do in October?

You were a little over. Well, because October was when you were out for a while, right? Europe trip. You did a million that one week. You did a million the week you got back. A little over a million.

But that wasn't October.

No, that was November. First week of November.

Oh, man, I better get selling. No more time off. Yeah, well, till after Christmas. What?

I Find interesting is that of those seven years that your best month of the year was in the fourth quarter of the year, five of those. Eight or five. Five of. Well, five of those seven months were December.

Okay.

December is.

We have hope.

Yeah. December is historically been an absolute. Just bomb for you.

Okay.

But I think there's a few things as to why.

Right.

Like, we're going to talk about how the fourth quarter can be your best quarter.

So about.

Okay, practically, what do you need to be doing? Number one, you're huge on this. Chad, don't assume clients don't want to meet.

No, I. Well, I don't assume that in general.

Right.

Ever.

Right.

Clients want to meet me.

I mean, the reality, when it comes down to it, they want to meet because they know generally, I mean, the market, even right now, the market, we just have no certainty on it.

Right.

And it's funny because a lot of people expected. Expected the election to be going a little differently. And I honestly, I didn't think no matter. No matter how it went, the market's going to have problems for the next couple of years. That's just what I think. I'm not saying I'm 100%. I mean, if I was 100%, I wouldn't be doing this podcast. I'd be a billionaire.

Yeah.

You know, I would like to think I'd still be doing some podcast, but, you know, there's no guarantees. And when we look at that, I think especially when we get around Christmas time, Thanksgiving, people want to meet with me. If they're willing to set an appointment, they want to meet with me. Now, that being said, I already made calls this morning, and there are some people that say, okay, wait till after Thanksgiving and wait till after Christmas and have the same response every single time. This is your money, your decision. What's important to you will give you the urgency to meet. If it's not, then wait till after the first year. We just don't know what the market's going to do in that time frame.

Right. So, yeah, that's good. That's good. I think a lot of agents tend to coast out the year. Right. So those that are willing to keep working have generally a less competitive environment.

Yep. And that's true. I'm telling you, honestly, I'm fighting that right now.

Yeah.

I really. I mean, this has been a busy year.

It's true.

And there is a side of me that just wants to go. I'm just taking the last two months off.

Yeah.

But it's not going to happen. You Know, there's too many big things we have going on. I mean, even, even the momentum in general has got to continue because the first part of the year, I'm taking off the last two weeks, I think the last week in December, the first week in January, and I have to keep that momentum going. Sure. To that point. Yeah. Because I think, I honestly think the last quarter is going to be big. I think December is going to be really big. And I think January and February are going to be really big too. I just, I just got this gut feeling that it's going to be phenomenal.

Yeah.

And even though everything, I mean, it came back and apparently I'm not feeling real well this week. And so, you know, I'm going okay, but it doesn't matter. I mean, we obviously don't work on emotions. Right. You know, it's. If there's a lot of, I mean, every single week I could go, I don't feel like making calls, I don't feel like doing pending business. I mean, finally our insurance companies are caught up. And that was just brain damage, man. I mean, I think at one time I had 26 pending applications. And yes, I hear everybody say, you know, well, you should have somebody else do your pending. I do, I have the insurance company and I have the fmo, but I still follow up on my own business. Right. And then of course, I'm in the stage now where a bunch of those are getting issued. So that, that means I'm now having to personally hand deliver the policies, and that just takes a lot of time as well. So we don't work off of emotions, but if we work off of facts, December, November, December are huge. Yeah.

I want to take a minute, shout you out, because I don't think agents quite realize how much the podcast itself is a labor of love. I mean, to take a Monday and carve out several hours on a Monday afternoon. And bear in mind this Monday that we're recording today, number one, you're not feeling well. Number two, you just got back a week ago from a three week vacation. So you've got all kinds of leads stacked up, all kinds of calls to make. Insurance companies have been historically more backed up, so you've had to do more pending business. And we have a local, a new local agent starting with us today that.

Moved from South Carolina to be a part of our team.

Yeah. So there's a lot going on in your world. You still carved out a couple hours this after, so I just appreciate that. I want to say that as a shout out to you and the way that you care so much.

Well, I do. I mean, as you know, in our industry, it's one of the rare industries where we can literally create a lifestyle and a legacy for our families at the same time. I think a lot of things I could do a legacy, you know, illegally, you know, but I'd probably be spending my legacy behind bars. But the reality is this type of money completely 100% legal, as long as you're honest and ethical, which I am. Just. There's no. There's no room for gray in that. And my world is black or white. It's either right or wrong. We always do the right thing. But in that scenario, we get to create this beautiful thing of creating a legacy for future generations while protecting people's money and giving them a peace of mind. And not one of my clients has called right now and said, oh, I'm uncertain about my income. What do I do? Am I going to run? No, you're all taken care of. And this once again goes back to what. Why I always use income riders if the purpose of the money is for income.

Right.

Because you could tell me the hypotheticals off of indices have performed X number of dollars, but the reality is it still does not give a guaranteed peace of mind.

Yeah.

And so this is part of why I do well even in these times a year. I just told someone today, I said, wouldn't it be a great Christmas present for yourself to think and know that you don't have to worry about market volatility anymore? You know, that's a beautiful thing. And I'm gonna say things, and it may sound corny, but it's not corny to me because it's honestly how I feel, you know, people. I'm very sugary towards my wife. You know, I do a lot of what people say, corny comments, but my wife knows I'm genuine. I really mean that. Like, when I say these things that are corny after 30 years, it's not corny to me or her because she knows I really mean that. And when I'm telling my clients these corny things about it would be great to be thankful, have something to celebrate for Thanksgiving when, you know, you don't have to worry about anything. That's not corny to me. That's legit how I feel. And so, yeah, I agree.

And going back kind of to this concept of agents, you need to not assume that people don't want to meet. What I mean by that is assume that they do want to meet, because for Somehow shape or form, they became a lead. So if they became a lead or they showed up to a seminar or they called into the radio show or.

Whatever, however they reached out, they are. Even if they filled out a form on the Internet and it's not a pre qualified lead, they still did that for a reason.

Right.

And so I take that right off the bat is they need. They want to talk with me.

Right.

So does it mean everybody's qualified? No, but they want to talk with me.

Right. It's true. And so you go into it with that mentality. I think a lot of agents shoot themselves in the foot by assuming, oh, it's the holidays, they don't actually want to meet. I'll just save it to later. But correct me if I'm wrong, generally for you, there's like four days that are off limits. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day.

Yeah.

Outside of that, you can still meet with people.

Well in the week for the fourth quarter. But even like Veterans Day.

Sure.

You know, I won't call the Memorial Day. I won't call, you know, certain military days. I just won't call because I. A lot of.

Well, a lot of them were.

Yeah. Or they were. Or they were impacted by someone who was. So I just want to honor that day. Right. And I mean, it's never even Memorial Day. People are out enjoying time with their family and, you know, they're taking that day to remember. And I just look at this going, you know, what is it really worth trying to call on that day? So I'll call on Tuesday instead. So, yeah, Thanksgiving, I don't, I don't care if somebody has $10 million. I'm not meeting you on Thanksgiving.

Right.

And Black Friday. I'm not going out with the crazy people out there. All those cray crays running around that are trying to get the deals and they're driving like they're drunk. But the real realities, you're just drunk with the sale and. Yeah. So I won't do that. And that's also a forced four day weekend for me. I'm, I'm looking forward to this next four days. And you can see you just took vacation off. If anybody is, you vacation with me. You know, my vacations are not restful.

You need a vacation from Chad.

Yeah. Because we are seeing and doing everything. I'm at peace, sure. But I'm not like just sitting there. We are, we are walking between 8 and 10 miles a day and we're exploring the countryside. But this next, I think this Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'm going to really try and be incredibly deliberate on not doing hardly anything.

That's good. It's good.

I think another reason this means not in my phone looking at business stuff, not on my computer looking at business stuff. You know, I'm telling you when it. Well, maybe I believe it when I say, I was going to say, I don't know if I can do this.

I think too, one of the reasons that the fourth quarter can be the best quarter is it generally you see a larger average case size, which is odd, that a quarter can impact. And I started thinking about it and I'm curious what you think, but do you think that generally the people that.

Sign up for an appointment or they, you know, they become a lead, you book an appointment with them in the fourth quarter are actually people who are preemptively planning for the new year, often because that's their mentality. They've probably done better in their career because they're thinking ahead, they're planning, they're preemptively acting towards something they want to have in place by the start of the new year.

So they have more New Year's resolutions, things like that. I also think about this as well, and we'll see because this is only second time I'm going to run into this type of opportunity. But I think there might be a lot of people this year doing capital losses. You know, they're going to sell knowing that the market's probably not coming back anytime soon. I mean, once again, we don't know. But if they sell before then, the year they can do the capital losses. Just a thought.

Yeah.

You know, because like I said, 2007, 2009 was the last time I got to see this to this magnitude. Now we've seen a little bit of a rebound, but I don't think it's sustainable. When you got the top economists in the tile world saying that 2023 is going to be a recession year. You know, you look at that and go, okay, people might want to get taken care of November and December.

True.

We'll see. I mean, only time will tell, right? Yep.

Another one. You can generally write more business with fewer appointments.

Yes. AKA because people that want to meet, they're serious.

And then here's some practicals for you. Number one, don't turn off your lead flow going into the holiday season.

Don't turn off your lead flow ever. Oh my gosh. Ever, ever, ever. I have the relationships with I that I do with my lead companies because they know I don't Shut off my leads.

True.

By the way, Stay tuned. We have something else we're working on right now for some potentially more leads, but you will need to be contracted to get these. But we are starting another company.

There you go. Second one. Get really good at handling common Q4 objections. And I'll actually, we'll give them one here in a second, but then ultimately keep pushing through Q4. So the number one objection that we hear in Q4, call me after the holidays.

Okay.

I mean, here's the question I ask you, though. I'm not emotionally attached to your money. You obviously reached out for a reason. If you're concerned about market downturns, do you really want to wait a couple more months to see what happens?

Right.

Or, you know, do you really want to sit there and take your chances on your money not making any money right now? You know, once again, these are just things that you put the question in. Their response is all up to them.

Right.

I'm not. And this is where, when I write the volume, I write right now, honestly in my heart, you do it or you don't.

Right.

I have plenty of people I can meet with, and if I don't, I have plenty of other things I can do to fill that time.

Right.

So when you only have one or two leads, though, or that come in, then that's where you can start to get a little desperate. And I don't have any money for Christmas, so I really need to get a sale to happen. And I want to make sure, you know, see what I'm saying? So you just don't want to be desperate. But I do pose that question, well, where's the stock market going to be after Christmas? And I let them know, excuse me, that it only takes 35 to 40 minutes to explain everything.

Yeah.

So, I mean, really, it doesn't take that much time. And if you want to have this, generally people have more free time during the holidays. So if that's the case, it might give you more time to browse through the material.

You tell them. You tell them, like, it only takes me 35 or 40 minutes to explain everything. And then at least then you have.

The information, you can decide then I always add this. I always say, but if you have questions, of course I'm not going to limit you to that. But it does. It takes me 30 to 45 minutes to explain. I mean, I can easily explain in 30 minutes. I can explain 15 minutes.

Sure.

But I want to leave room. And this is where it takes 35 to 40 minutes, is when they're asking me some questions, questions along the way.

Right.

I don't want to be a robot spewing out information about, this is what it does. This is how it works. And I don't give them time to digest and ask questions.

Right. Yeah, I think that's really good because, again, it's. It's not handling the objection in a desperate way because you're not.

It's a really good way to put.

It, but it is handling the objection in a way that's like, well, do you, do you really want to wait? If we don't, we don't know what the market's going to do. Do you really want to wait and, like, and just see?

Well, and then I look at this, too. So I constantly look at the market and I'm going, wait a second. So even right now, as we speak, the Dow is literally flat. But I was doing something kind of interesting because there's. There's been this little rebound. And I go, actually, let me get this. I normally don't take this time while we're doing a podcast, but it's kind of interesting. The last time the Essence, or excuse me, the NASDAQ was where it was was literally August 10th or right around that time, 2020.

So over two years ago, the NASDAQ was where it was from its high point. And this is why, you know, I let clients just. This is their decision. But from its high point, the Nasdaq right now, now, granted, I'm using the NASDAQ, that's one that's been blasted. Mode is still down 29.37%.

That's crazy.

Now, the S and P, because this is what a lot of people say, well, the S and P, the last time it was at this place was.

And be patient with me, but the last time is at this place was around February 24th of 2021. So about a year and a half ago. But from its high point, the NASDAQ is still down 16.47%. Excuse me, the S, P. So I use those two extremes because S and P hasn't been hit like the NASDAQ has. But when we look at this scenario, I remember what happened from 2007 to 2008, when a lot of people thought the market hit its bottom, and then 2008 to 2009 hit. And I just let people know this is the reality. You know, it's that FOMO, we didn't have that word back in 2007 and 2009. But if you, if FOMO is Fear of missing out.

Right.

And that has been a big thing with crypto.

Yeah.

And look what crypto, including myself, got hammered on it. You know why? Fomo. Fear of missing out. I would say there should be a fear, and I'm going to create an acronym for this, but a fear of not being secure. So, you know, there should be a bigger fear of running out of money and volatility in the market. Then there should be a missing that slot machine arm pole and hoping you're the one that wins.

Yeah, it's true.

I mean, I just. I mean, 18 years I've done this. 18 years, and I can tell you there's more people right now that are concerned about outliving their income than they are about pulling that slot machine arm. Now, it would have been nice to win that $2 billion jackpot.

Sure.

But I don't play. Why don't I play? If you knew the number of people it takes for that jackpot to get to $2 billion.

There's been a lot of people playing.

A lot of people. And I see people that, you know, I'm. I'm prejudging, but the reality is based off of how they appear. And this could be completely off, but they probably make 15 to 20 bucks an hour, but they walk out $15 at lottery tickets, and they're normal buyers. So you look at me and you go, wait a second. You're blowing so much money on the hope that you could do this, when in reality, if you probably would have saved that money from way back when, you would be in a much better situation. And people have got to learn. And this is what we get to do in our position, is we get to help people protect their money. And the fourth quarter is a perfect time to do that because you're around family. Well, why do you generally want to protect your money? Because you want your family protected, you know, so you should be in that mindset of being thankful for what you have and that you got to protect it and you don't need to worry about it. And what a great gift you can give yourself, which would be your Christmas.

I love it.

Yep.

It's gonna be a good quarter.

I believe so. I really do. I mean, it's hard for me to say that right now when I'm not feeling well.

Yeah.

Because I'm, like, on, Okay. I don't want to do any of this. I just want to go and relax. But you know what? We don't work off of emotions. From the standpoint of you do what you have to do. The emotional side of it actually works off of even when I'm not feeling why still get to protect people's money.

Yeah.

So that's it, right?

That's it.

Okay. I try and be more energetic, but the reality is I don't feel like it right now. So trying to be energetic, but as always, happy selling.

Sam.