How to Achieve a 72% Conversion Rate WITHOUT Scare Tactics | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep.192

In today's podcast, we're going to talk about how to have high conversion rates with no pressure.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode. I am Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach, owner of Retirement Realize Financial and Retirement Realize Agents Academy, where we can teach you or we can help you go under us. And we can actually really create some momentum and business for agents. We've seen agents go literally from 3.7 million to writing over 12 million in less than two years. I mean it's a constant thing where we're getting agents. That said, I've never had a month where I've done a half a million or I've done a million, you know, million dollar a month club. It's just phenomenal to have that help agents really achieve. I tell people this all the time. If you write under 2 million a year, you, you know, generally million to 2 million, you can pay some bills, 3 million to 5 million, you start to create a lifestyle. 5 million above you create a legacy. And to me it's all about the legacy. I don't care about having a Lamborghini or whatever. I mean, I love the cars, they're great. But you know what, to me it's about what else can I do for the future? How can I make future generations do better and better? Our people in very hardship circumstances, how can we help them? You know, that's really what it comes down to. Yeah, I mean this guy was a flat out bum when I met him. I mean he just, you know, somewhere. Yeah. Oh, ranch, yeah, you're out in the ranch somewhere. His thank God his dad was so generous and just took him under his wing. Even though he just looked and goes, how what's this guy ever going to achieve? And now he's one of the top in the entire industry. Is like, well, you are.

I mean, I appreciate it.

I have stay humble. But yeah, well, sure, at least, at.

Least on air.

You know, I'll tell you, he is definitely, like I said, he's in the top one or two, possibly three marketers I've ever seen in my life. And that's saying a lot because that's including me in that and I'm not in that group. So I'm not a great marketer. I'm great at helping teaching people and. But when you asked me to run 15 different illustrations and you haven't done a fact finder yet, that's where my patience wears out. So yeah, the client's got $200,000. What product should I put them in? What not much to do there. How old are they? When do they want to retire? What's their circumstance? Do you want to plan for living, plan for dying? I'm telling you. And if you're using Caleb, please make sure you're doing a full mini fact finder and you met with the client before you really go into that type of circumstance. Because we can do so much better for the client when we know what's going on with them. We got to know the purpose of them totally and what their circumstances not. They got 200,000. Well, how much do they have an emergency funds and savings? You know, what do they have for a pension? You know, just make sure you're doing full fact finders.

Well, I'll tell you, I've, I've had conversations with agents that I've helped before on that and had to tell them, hey, I need more here than this. Like if I'm going to, if I'm going to hang my hat on the idea of I'm making the best recommendation to you, but of all the products out there I'm, I'm hanging my hat on, I'm making the best recommendation to the agent. So they can then go and make the best recommendation to the client if I don't have the information I need. I can't do that. I can't say that. The agent can't do that. They can't say that. And it creates this trickle down of somebody's getting messed over.

Well, it's funny because, you know, we're talking about how to have high conversions with no pressure. That's one of the easiest ways to do it. Have a complete fact finder where you know what the purpose of the money is. You know, they have plenty of emergency funds and savings, you know, when they want to reach retire. I mean, when you do that and you find a problem but you have the solution, you don't have to say, oh please buy from me, please. I, this drives me nuts.

Right.

You know where they, they have come up with some sort of little plan but they have no idea what the client needs. And I mean you have to do complete fact finders.

Yeah. If you, if you position the product or the illustration or the brochure or whatever as like a, and I've, I've used this reference many times. I'll use it again as a commodity. Like it's just a thing that they choose to buy or not to buy. And it has no purpose, it has no direction, it solves no problem. You're not going to be able to that. That's not going to convert in a low pressure type deal. They're not going to look at that and go, oh yeah, this is exactly what I'm looking for. You're setting yourself up for a lot of lack of success. But if you do the full fact finder, you find a problem, you address it and you find the best solution. Okay, now you're actually accomplishing something. You don't sell the product, you sell the end. What does the product do? What does it accomplish? What's the benefits of the product?

What I find that one of the most disturbing things about pressured sales is people use fear to close it.

Right.

I'm like, why would you do that? You don't need to use any fear. You basically just simply state the facts of what the product does and what the current situations are and let the client put the motion to it.

Right.

Just because you don't like market volatility and you're worried the market's going to collapse, that doesn't mean they're going to correct. And so it's their money, their decision, they should be allowed to do that without you sitting there freaking them out and trying to make them scared to buy something. That's just wrong.

Yeah, it's true. This year you've closed almost 72% of the appointments you've had. Now, some of those are still even in process, of course. Right. So realistically, you may be closer to the 75% margin, which three out of four is phenomenal. And that literally equates to 48 out of 67.

Well, it comes out, really. I have the best product that's out there. How do I know that? Because I have software that compares all of them one shot and tells me which the best are. I make sure the companies are financially stable. I make sure they don't have a bunch of lawsuits. I make sure they have good Better Business Bureau ratings. And then that way, when I'm presenting it to the client, the competition can't go, oh my gosh, why would you use this company? It's a B rated company. It's had financial issues at this time. Its customer service rating is this. I just know what the companies are. It doesn't matter which one. You could name a company in the top 25 companies that are out there and I could tell you exactly what their customer service is, like what their financial rating is. It's just stuff I memorized.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly right. And there are some people that would say, oh, you know, 70 to 75%, whatever it is, you know, I've closed 100 and they've had, you know, three appointments and they closed all three.

Right.

It's like, okay, 48 out of 67.

And they were my mom.

Right, yeah, 48 out of 67 close. So if you're wondering, okay, by what, by what authority does Chad speak to high conversion with no pressure? It's. It's what? It's, it's proofs in the pudding.

Well, I remember I've done ride alongs before with agents and I'd have a one set, one close, and they happen about 15 to 20% of the time. And they, they would flat out tell me, they go, man, you didn't even have to ask for that, right? And I thought because you had a one set, one close, you're just kind of pressuring the deal, getting it done. And I'm like, no, if I feel any pressure, any hesitation, any uncertainty, we're not closing that deal.

Right.

I've had couples plenty of times that were ready to do it right there. And I say, you know what, I still want you to fully understand this before we sign anything. And so I'll come back, I'll meet with you next week, we'll go over questions. That's what I do. And so could you say, well, you're giving, why not just take it right there? I'll do that if I know they understand and they feel totally comfortable with it. But if there's any hesitation whatsoever, let's meet next week. Let's go over questions.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I put in my notes that closing with no pressure is not about the clothes. It's about everything before it.

Yeah, right. I mean, even the word close to me just is a little frustrating because I'm not closing anything. They're making a decision, making a decision. And it's their money and they think it's best for them based off of the information I presented to them and the information we gathered. So it's best for them. So, I mean, closing the deal, unfortunately, because I've been in sales Since I was 18 years old, it's all about the closer.

Right?

You know, and even in the jewelry business, we added something called to where you'd have to turn over. So if you feel like you're losing control of the sale, you would call someone else and go, hey, you know what? They're looking for this. Could you show them that? And you turn it over another person, then you double team them. And so, yeah, it's, it was. And if you didn't and if that other salesperson didn't think you turned it over at the wrong time and you closed it by yourself, they really. You should have turned that over a long time ago. I just close the deal, you know. But it was definitely harsh. But in this business, man, even when I was in life insurance, it wasn't a pressure deal.

Right.

Do you see the importance of having your life covered? If you do, then you should get it. If you don't, here's how it works. This is what it does. Do you see a benefit to that if you do get it? If you don't, then don't.

Right.

You know, it's the same thing here. We don't have to pressure sell.

Yeah.

We just don't. It's so much better to just present and I say it over and over again. Complete fact finder. Find this problem, find the solution and see if the solution is good enough for them to where they say they want it.

Exactly. And that's the thing is, I mean I would even say that majority like the clients that I've sat in on appointments with you in that grammatically works out but.

Well, you are from Texas.

That's true. In our ranch in Texas.

And didn't even graduate first grade.

Yeah. Yeah. No, not even first grade. Wow.

He's more educated than I am. He actually has a bachelor's.

Right?

I do.

Yeah. Business. Business management.

And I have a doctorate and double doctorate in hard knocks.

Yeah, it's true. I know some of your stories you've got that you aced every class somebody.

Oh no, there's definitely some things where I got some poor grades when I was just mostly because of attitude.

Oh yeah.

Where I just. I don't want to do this now. You will never hear me say the word. That's not fair.

Sure.

You know, I mean I've done enough third world missions trips to see that's not fair. I've seen enough people that were perfectly healthy end up losing a loved one that just randomly. So you won't hear that come. But there's some things where my attitude got in the way and especially when I had to report to an HR department. Yeah.

There's old saying your. Your attitude, not your aptitude will determine your altitude.

Sure.

101.

Yeah.

You know, I used to go to those and they would hype it up so much. And you get out there like I can accomplish everything. Then you get back to office, you're like, I don't even know where to start.

Yeah.

What do I do with all this, you know, I feel pumped and motivated, but I don't know how to do this. So you'll find what I do, a lot of is teaching, you know, the practical application of what we're in. That, you know, it goes back to the same thing. What do they have? What's the purpose? What do they want out of it? You know, so that's. That's how I teach.

Totally. I actually mapped out five things that you do in. We talk about the quote, unquote, close. It's not even about the clothes. Right. Like closing quote again, you need to watch the YouTube so you can see us do air quotes.

No, no, no, no. It's not usually us. It's just you.

It's usually is just me. If you want to quote, unquote, close.

With no pressure. It's not about the close. It's about everything before that. So I mapped out five things that you do before that that set that up for a. Hey, how do we move forward? The client's asking you, right.

What are those five things, Caleb?

Build your expertise in their eyes. Number one, and you do that from literally the first five seconds you ever interact with that client in any way, shape, or form, form the first call you ever make, you're establishing your expertise. Number two, you expose the biggest problem that they have. So if their biggest problem is just simply that, they say, hey, I don't want to lose any of my money, but you find out that all of their money's at risk, that's a problem. If they don't want to lose it. Right. If they're telling you that.

Yeah. If they don't want risk, what's my biggest problem?

Me.

Glad you know what I'm. Yeah.

At least. Yeah. At least I can acknowledge.

Or income. Right. You're doing a fact finder. You're planning. Worst case scenario, you're finding the biggest problem. Right. Which is huge because a lot of times they don't even realize the problem that they have. So you help them realize it.

Sure.

And again, not about fear, but about reality, about truth, about facts. If you require $3,000 a month to live on and you only have 2,000.

Coming in, that's an issue. I mean, once again, you do not have to apply any fear tactics to that.

You don't.

Come on, you just say, hey, here's what your expenses are. Here's what your income is. Do you see a problem?

Right. And even. Even down to the point of getting into one spouse dies, other spouse lives, you know, vice versa.

That's why 80% of my deals are income issues. Right. Because once a spouse goes, it's not good.

So you, you uncover that problem and then you show them the best solution to the problem. Right. Okay. Then you explain in their terms, not jargon, insurance jargon and annuity jargon, but in their terms how that solution fulfills their needs.

It's important you speak English, not financial ease.

Exactly.

Now I just thought of that though. Unless you're a Spanish client, then it's important you speak Spanish and not financiales. I don't know, I have no idea what financialese would be in Spanish.

If the saying goes, it's important to speak in English, not financial ease. If you have a Spanish speaking client, it's important to speak in Spanish, not English or financial ease. Sure, both. Because neither one's going to work well for you. And I've had that. I've had, I've had some agents that work specifically in the Spanish market. And that's a real thing.

There's one guy that was on Spanish radio for years and that was his thing, that was his target market and he did really, really well.

Yeah, yeah. When you can carve out a nice niche like that.

Yeah, well, because the reality is, I mean, I know people that work in the Indian community and I know there's multiple languages or multiple, what do you call them, dialects, and that's their niche.

Right.

And so, yeah, another client or agent I know of that works heavily into the Eastern bloc type of Russian or, you know, Russia. And I think Russia, Ukraine, Belarus are all kind of very similar. I think they can kind of understand each other. But that's his thing, you know, he lives in the community. So, yeah, absolutely. Whatever works in your niche, absolutely, go for it.

And then the fifth one that I had was make you make room for questions and you outline the next steps. Right. It's like, if you want to do this, this is what it, you know, this is what it would take. And then. Well, I do like, let's do that.

You say that. I say if you want to do this, if you'd like to proceed forward, this is what we do.

Right.

And I always, because people like, well, where's the clothes in that? There's no clothes. Right. If you want to do this, this is what we'll do. Yeah, that's, it's that simple.

It's just that simple. You make the decision. So those are five big things. And you'll notice that they all loosely revolve around the concept that you're not and I don't know why this theme has come up so much in my brain lately. But you're not just positioning a product and hoping that something about the product is something that they like. You're positioning the product as a solution to a problem that they either realize they had and talk to you about, or you helped them realize it's all about the solution.

It's interesting you say that though, because there are people that I've went over a fact finder with and they never realized, they never even thought about the fact that one of the Social Security's would go away. Right. You know, the lower of the two, they never even thought, they never thought that they didn't have enough income when. Because they, they're like, hey, we're both alive, we're doing fine. And it's funny because I guess that makes sense. I mean, there's things that I could, I could go out on an oil rig somewhere and some guy could yank me off the oil rig going, whoa, whoa, whoa. You almost just died. I'm like, I didn't realize that. Why? I'm not familiar with that. So by doing what we get to do, we get to help people understand what the potential problems are out there. Yeah.

That's so good. So, yeah, if you want to close with no pressure, and we say close loosely, you want to have those clients convert by them asking, how do we move forward? You need to focus more on your call process and your appointment process and your fact finding process than you do even considering closing. Closing will take care of itself if you get the other three right.

A good person that sells doesn't need to close. Yeah, they let the client do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's so good.

Okay, hope this helps you guys. You have a great day. And of course, happy selling.

Sam.