How to be Robotic Without Being Dull | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 155
A podcast conversation (hosts Chad Owen and Caleb) about annuity sales strategy. They stress using a methodical, repeatable fact-finding and sales process ("robotic without being dull") while tailoring solutions to client problems. They advocate indexed annuities with income riders for many retirement-income situations, recommend planning off worst-case guarantees (example cited: 4% minimum income benefit base), and caution against comparing only upside figures from past market returns. Practical points include product access limitations and agent behavior (avoid emotional attachment to deals).
Chapters
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. I am Chad Owen and here's Wonder Boy. Boy Wonder, wondrous boy.
What you mean to say is boy that wanders. If I'm Wonder Boy, you're Wonder Bread.
You already said that.
Yeah, something new, you know. Okay, I will. Hercules girlfriend calls him Wonder Boy in the Hercules movie.
Girlfriend.
Yeah. His girlfriend calls him Wonder Boy.
What does that have to do with anything?
You just call me Wonder Boy.
You are not Hercules. I've seen you try and lift things before. You are not even close to Hercules. You hurt. Hurt Elise. Hurt Elise.
Yeah, there you go.
Okay, let's get. This is so bad.
People out there just cringing down the road.
It is funny though, because we have so many people that comment and make. I just say things about our podcast and they go, you guys have a lot of fun. No, we do realize how rare that is to have a son in love that you really enjoy and you like being around. I'm not saying I have that. I'm just saying, do you realize you have it? He just doesn't work here. Yeah, that's true. He's working at the. That's true. The diesel mechanic. Yes, of course. How well did I do that? So I have a son in law that actually has access to 5,000 acres of hunting land, which is great. And then I have another son in law that actually is really into guns, which you are too. But he's also a diesel mechanic. Yeah, I think I.
And you happen to drive a diesel.
Yeah. And well, unfortunately. Well, no, no, fortunately, it hasn't broken down. I don't have any issues. I'm like, unfortunately, no, fortunately, it still gets me to where I need to go.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, it is good. We do have a lot of fun. And you know what? It's not always about serious. I mean, you can. As I said, if you've watched any of our podcasts, you know, we're not polished. That's. I can never be accused of being polished. But the reality is, is we have fun at what we do. And I do this in my appointments. I mean, I love having funding my appointments. Yeah, I talked to especially I said, if you want to have a really, really good marriage, really good marriage, and I'm talking to the wife. Is to take out a million dollar life insurance policy on your husband.
Yeah, he'll straighten up quick.
Okay, what are we talking about today?
Oh, man, we got a couple of things. Well, first I want to talk about the idea of getting emotionally attached to a sale. Getting emotionally Attached to a deal. You know, we talk about that periodically, but I want to bring that back up again. And I also want to talk about the importance of being robotic in your process. And, and not robotic from the standpoint of it's, it's drab and kind of dull.
Yeah.
But robotic in that it is very much a system and a process.
You're just bringing it just a doll.
No.
Gonna go to supper later please, because it's dinner. It's not supper.
It is.
Okay. But it's true. You don't robotic people automatic when they talk about being robotic.
Right.
Has nothing to do with animation, you know, so very animated. Because I'm passionate about what I'm talking about. I'm robotic in the. I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna say this. And that's mostly in the fact finder process. You know, the actual mini fact finder and the actual fact finder, it's very robotic. When I'm explaining the product and how it works, that's robotic. But when I'm talking about the solution to the problem, that's not robotic. Because everybody's problem is different. Now you will find in our industry and the clients we work, we are usually running into people. And this is why it drives me nuts when people only use indexed annuities and they don't do income riders. It's like, why would you do that? You might as well be a broker. Because once again you now you know you can't have a market downturn, but you still are basing some of these 10 year historicals off of 7%. What happens if it doesn't do 7% and you're trying to plan income?
Right.
I mean if you're doing income, if there's an income problem, and I will debate with anybody all day long that 90% of people, you deal with at least 80, but 90% of people have.
An income problem at least in their worst case scenario.
Yeah, well, I mean even the fact that when one of them passes away, the lower two, we know that's going to happen at some point that's going to happen. Unless they're both in a car at the same time or a plane or.
Whatever and then it's yeah, death benefit.
Yes. But the point is most time it's income. Now the problem is, is most times people go into the income play, they think hey, everything's fine here. But they forget to talk about what happens if one of them passes away. So robotic doesn't mean sterile. It Just means methodical in the process.
Oh, absolutely. I think about even like the business strategy sessions that I do, the questions that I ask, I don't have it written out because I don't need to have it written out. I know the questions that I'm going to ask to get an agent's whole process and system that they have in place. How are they doing their annuity business to find the holes necessary so that then the solution can be discussed. It's the same exact thing. Once you figure out how you're finding the problem, which is what you're doing with your clients, then it's a matter of doing that each and every time you're bringing them into a flow, not taking orders like you're a waiter or a waitress.
And you don't have to think about necessarily what your next step is because you do it so often.
It's just there.
Yeah, absolutely.
I want to go back to what you said about just using fixed indexed annuities without income riders. I know 80. It's got to be 85% of your clients are using income riders and those that are not.
Yeah, we got these clients because there are, I think numerically this year and Last year probably 75% of my money actually moved with clients was income riders and 25% because I had some really like at a $4 million case last year that was just straight indexed annuity.
Income was more than taken care of. Everything was paid off. They had income coming in.
Yeah.
Is, is it? I mean there was no need, There wasn't a problem even in the worst case scenario, income wise. So you use an fia. But the problem that I hear about a lot is when an agent will try to take the back tested returns of this particular annuity, this particular fia. Look at what this index has done over the last 10 years and try to position that against the last 10 years of risk growth and what the client's been able to accomplish in their risk.
We don't know what it's going to do.
Well, you don't know what it's going to do. And you're comparing a partial upside to a full upside. You're not even talking about the downside.
Correct.
The downside is to me, where the FIA actually becomes more valuable than any other thing. That's like the fact that you can't go backwards.
Yeah. Why are you not looking at whereas an income rider. Now the problem is, and we have to be careful, you know, because we're, we're speaking to a large group of people right now. There's lots of agents that listen to our podcast.
Absolutely.
But what I'm trying to say here is, you know, in general, if you're using an indexed annuity and you use a worst case scenario, you're in. Worst case scenario is 0%. But if you have an indexed annuity that let's say has a 4% minimum guarantee on the income and then they have plus growth, that's where I'm going, hey, this is incredible because your worst case scenario is a 4% compounded growth, right? I mean, I have a product right now that does that. Worst case scenario is a 4% minimum growth. And if you're interested in that product, just reach out to Caleb and you do have to be contracted through us because it is a very difficult product, very difficult situation to get because there's not that many that have access to it. But that being said, my worst case scenario, Hypersena, is the 4% minimum guarantee on that income benefit base, period. That's a worst case scenario. Then if the market does well, hey, you've got the plus added for the index growth. Now of course there's a time frame on how long that 4% is guaranteed for, but the index growth, when you're building that, when you have a 7% return and a 4% plus 4% on the benefit base, that's huge.
Absolutely.
But if the market does nothing, zero, you still have the 4%. So when I'm presenting it to them, I always use, hey, here's your worst case scenario. Let's plan everything off the worst case scenario. It's at 4% minimum guarantee on that benefit base. And that's what I love. Now if it does better, then they can do more. But worst case scenario, this is what you would be at. Right. And I love that because when you use some of the income annuities and they have a 7% roll up rate or whatever, the problem is is when you get to that point of activation, that's all that person's getting. So two years later you activate it, that income is not increasing. Yes, technically I know it could, but it's not going to. I haven't seen it. I mean, we just went through really 11 years of a straight, pretty much up market with a few exceptions, and none of the incomes have increased in those types of products. But the ones that I've used recently, absolutely, the income just increased and it's locked in. It can't go backwards. So how many things can we use where you have a worst case scenario and it still works? Yeah, Now, I mean, I also told a 76 year old person just recently they can't retire. Why? They don't have enough money to live off of, period.
Flat out, do not.
And that's, man, that's tough when you're telling someone at that age, hey, I'm sorry, you can't retire. Oh yes I can. Okay, show me the numbers. Here's the numbers. Show me how you can magically make this work when you're spending 12 to 1500 dollars more than your minimum or your expenses. Yeah, it's just crazy.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. One and two, you got to toe that line of if you're insurance only, you don't advise into or out of the market, period.
Yeah, you can't. Okay, can't do that.
What, what often comes up and what I've seen a lot is this idea of comparing upside to upside where, where an agent will go and they'll look at what this client has done over the last 10 years and go, oh yeah, awesome. Well look at the upside here. And they'll show a back tested return of 6,7%. And the client is just like what? Like that doesn't even look good to me. Right. Because we know what the last 10 years has been. Right. So point is, if you're going to show upside to upside, show downside to downside and sell from when I say.
Sell, I would tell you reality. You show upside, upside. Even the past 10 years, indexed annuities have been keeping up with what I've seen with client statements.
They've been, they've been phenomenal. Especially, okay, you've got to know your index allocation strategies at that point because there's still plenty of allocations out there that have back tested one and a half to 3%. And then there are those that are up, up into the 5, 6, 7.
You know, I mean I've seen indexed annuities make 20% in one year. I've seen them make zero.
But I'm talking average.
Yeah, average. So I mean you can still get some really good upsides. But the point to that is if you're going to do the highest potential, because I'll have someone go, well, you know, I made 100% on my money this last year. No you didn't, you lost the money.
Yeah.
And then you had to recoup. And so if you take the money you lost, you actually did. Now you add your fees into that and they're going, oh, I never looked at it that way. Because right now, if you remember and It's a little bit later, but if you look at March, April of last year, the market was down really low. I think the high was a little over 32%.
Yeah.
So if you have a 32% loss, that's. If you didn't have one of those companies that actually disappeared. I mean, there's some companies where the stock disappeared. And I think. What was it? Hertz? I think it was Hertz, don't quote me, but I think they actually had to declare bankruptcy or reissue the stock. I can't. It might not be them, but it was in the industry. It was in the rental car industry, and now they reissued it. And it's important to understand that the people that lost that, like I said, don't quote me on that because I'm not sure exactly which company it was, but the people that lost that, they're like, they're out that now.
Right.
And now they're allowed to reissue stock. Yeah, I remember that. With the airlines that happen, I mean, even some car companies, they go bankrupt, the clients lose all that money in stock, and then they're allowed to go and reissue stock. There's something wrong with that. Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't make sense. So in our products, you know, you're not running into that situation once again, I'll say it again. I personally have not found an insurance, a fixed insurance company that sells annuities that has disappeared in the past hundred years. Right. I've seen some bought out, but they keep it the same. But I haven't seen any disappear. So use worst case to worst case. Worst case stocks, Worst case annuities, fixed indexed annuities. Best case, fixed indexed annuity. And actually, I don't use best case. I use what it's done in the last 10 years. And I still say, you know what? Last 10 years does not predict the next 10 years. So let's just pretend like it does nothing and we have the income value. Now, if you have a client that doesn't need income, which is rare, but it does happen, then just say, hey, this is what it's performed at. Once again, it's not guaranteed to do this in the future, but I will assure you your money doesn't go backwards when the market falls.
Yeah, well, well too. I mean, don't sell. Don't just try and sell the product. You know what I mean? Find the problem and explain how the product is the solution. Because an FIA versus the market, sure there are similarities, but there are vast differences. Vast differences. One may be able to Whatever, whatever. The other may be able to. Whatever, Whatever. The point is.
What is whatever. Whatever.
They do different things is the point. Yeah, they do different things. Point is, if you don't know what the problem is, all you're going to be doing is trying to show how somehow, some way, this product is better than their investments that have grown their money or lost their money or whatever that's, that's been for their situation. When you know the problem and you have selected a product based on how that is the solution, then you can focus on that and not just the why this product is somehow better than what they're in. It's about finding the problem, show them the solution. And when you can do that, you'll, you'll be able to get out of all the weird stuff with the upside versus upside, downside versus downside, this versus that type thing that a lot of times agents fall into.
Well, when you think about it, the indexed annuity or the fixed annuity is the only thing that can take away the market uncertainty other than cash at a bank or cd. But when you're talking about something that actually has better than a 1% return, I mean, the CDs, I don't know if you've checked them lately, but they're not at all. And so even the fixed annuities will be a cd.
Yeah. And those are not very good right now either.
Yeah, they're not too bad. I mean, 3% in a five year, that's not too bad.
Yeah, that's, that's high end though, right?
That is high end.
Yeah, of course.
But you know, once again, what's a high end in a bank right now? 1.8.
Fair.
Okay. So once again, remember, if you're going to compare apples to apples, make sure you compare an upside and downside in both. But remember, you're always trying to find the problem, find a solution. So I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day and happy selling.
