How to help the Client and Close the Deal | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 120

Hello, everyone. Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach and as always, my sidekick. I'd say shotgun, but he can't shoot. Well, you could, with a shotgun, have a better chance.

But happy post Thanksgiving. I hope everybody had a great time with their family. I hope you just got. Oh, you're able to really soak it in. I mean, it's so easy to have family but not enjoy them. So wait, that's not true.

You're not around them.

But what are we talking about today, Caleb?

Yeah, you know, it's. We're getting close to the end of the year.

Right.

We're getting close to the close of the year, Pun intended. So what I want to talk about is.

What do you mean, pun intended?

Well, I'm getting to the pun part.

Close of the sale. Oh, the close.

We're getting to the close of the year. Let's talk about closing some deals. Let's talk about getting clients off the fence. And we've talked about this a couple of times in the podcast before. I want to kind of take a different approach and really talk about the theory behind getting clients off the fence. And I know your process and you are not, you are not a hard sales guy. No, these are not hard sales products.

Nope.

But I do know your process well enough to know that when you're. Objection. Handling your hard objection. Handling.

Yes.

And when you're presenting the product, you are hard presenting the. I mean, it's like every part of the process is. Is full. Full go full bore. I mean, it's, it's all out there, but then the close is very soft and intentional. And it's really, it's really the client kind of getting to that realization themselves. But I want you to walk us through what that looks like for you. Kind of your idea of closing. Yeah. How do you do it?

And do it well, it's important because you talk about I'm full bore in the appointment, but when it comes time to the close, it's soft. And the reality, I have to be full on when I'm talking about these products because there's so many misconceptions. There's so many people that say negative things about our products. I'm telling you, it's. It gets tiresome. I just, it gets so tired of somebody or some broker saying, well, I'm long term planner. You're not really. You're a long term planner. You can't even predict what's happened in the market tomorrow, let alone five or 10 or 15 years from now. How are you a long term planner from 2000 to 2008 to 2013. This the s P was almost at the exact same spot and you still got your paid your fees no matter what you're. They are long term planners for their retirement. I've got it figured out.

There you go. There's revelation.

That's a revelation.

Clients get ready not to start using that one.

There's great long term planners for their retirement. They know as long as they keep you a client for the rest of their lives, you're their retirement. Huh? Pretty good. See, this is why we do the podcast. I just came up with a great idea that I absolutely. Iron sharpens iron.

We're talking about the clothes. The clothes should never have to be a really hard thing ever. You should never force a clothes. You should never close out of fear. The clothes literally. Is someone going, you know what? I love what you talked about. I need to get into this. What's the next steps? And that's my favorite way somebody tells me they're ready is, you know, I love this. This sounds great. What do we need to do to get into this? What are our next steps? That's my favorite part of a close. Not hey, you know what if you don't act right now, you're gonna lose this deal forever. Or what if we meet next week and the stock market falls 5,000 points overnight? Those are just dumb type of closing. I mean it's just, I mean, are we. Why can't even say used car salesperson? Because a lot of those guys have actually done really good. I've talked with quite a few of them. But that perception of the life insurance salesperson or the used car salesperson where they try and use these fear closes. Well, if you don't act right now, this entire thing is going to be gone. Think about what you're saying. If you don't act right now, this product may not be available. And I've heard this before when people have talked to their clients and I'm just. It makes me cringe because if we're talking about safety and security but our products gone in a week, how are.

You going to say that?

Wait a second, doesn't. So remember closing is always getting an agreement from the client that what you talked about meets the problem. It takes care of their problem and it has a solution to their problem. That's the whole idea behind the close. It's not, hey, did you get a deal? It's not, did you, did you plead your case enough? That's not what this is about. Did you Present the information to where they understood what their problem was. And did you present it to where they understand that you have a solution to it? That's the best way to close, right? Absolutely. Don't hard close anything. It just gives us a bad reputation as salespeople in general. I've been in sales. Wow. 28 years I've been in sales. And I always say, oh, you're in sales? Well, it's not necessarily like that as much anymore. Why? Because people are truly starting to do about the. I mean, here's the thing. Hard close. You're always talking about features. What it, what is this? What is it? You have this bright red sports car that literally has 7,000 horsepower. And I'm exaggerating. I mean, we are talking about Ford versus a Chevy. So we know 7,000 horsepower. You're talking about a Ford guaranteed. It's like not the wind up Chevy toy. That's why they have that emblem on the front. That's like a little cross. You pull it out and you wind it. Oh, my gosh.

We agree on safe money. We disagree on automobiles.

Your wife drives a Ford. She does.

That's fair enough.

How do we get on that? It's my fault. But you know, car sales, we get, we get this perception of being a salesperson is bad. And I would rather be known as. I'm someone who finds solution to problems.

Right.

That's really. I'm not a salesperson. I present a case. I find the problem, I find the solution. And you agree that this works for you?

If you.

If it doesn't, not my money. It's okay. You don't have to use me.

Yeah. And. And I've heard you say that.

Yeah.

And I know that to be true. And I think that that's phenomenal. You know, one of the things that I've gotten to hear you, you talk about too, is the way that you handle objections. Right. And when I say that, you close soft, but you handle objections hard. What I mean by that is you don't allow the objection to still be there after it's asked. And most of the time, objections arise from lack of confidence, lack of certainty. They miss, they don something, there's questions, or they don't trust one of the two. Right. And so there's a lack of. Or all of the above. There's a. There's a lack of confidence there. So they're throwing these things out that get deemed as objections. And then I've heard the way that you handle those objections. And really what it does is it builds their confidence. It's not a you versus them headbutting. It's a. Okay, that's a legitimate question. Let's talk about this. You explain it. Now the objection is gone. Walk us through. What is that?

How does that have to play direct into things and being. You know where you hit an objection hardest? When somebody tells me something about my own product that isn't true. Well, I heard. Somebody told me this. No, that's not true.

It's not true.

Well, I heard the product. No, that's not true. It works this way, not that way. Right? And they make this accusation during. As a statement because of something heard from someone else. And I have no problem going, that is not true. That's not how this product works. This is how it works. Right. And I'm the expert. They're not. I mean, think about, you go to heart doctor, and you're like, you know, I use this analogy. I don't know how long you guys have been listening to me, but some have been for years. But I love this analogy of this Oriental doctor that I had. And he's to date, the best doctor I've ever had in my life. And I've only met him two times, but I went into him, I was having heart palpitations. And I'm like going, doctor, what's the matter? I was £262 at the time. And he. I said, why am I having these heart palpitations? And he literally, this is verbatim of what he said, you fat. You always be fat. You always going to have heart problems. I'm like, what did you say? He goes, you fat. You always be fat. That's why you have heart problems and you're always going to have heart problems. I'm like, holy cow, I will prove you wrong. And I ended up losing £40. Come on. Convinced he knew that that's what he needed to say to me. And I'll show you. And he is. I love it when a doctor is straightforward and just, this is your problem. This is what you need to fix. Instead of saying, hey, here's a bottle of pills. Take these and you'll lessen the symptoms. You're still gonna die, but lessen the symptoms. Keep eating your fried chicken. Go for it. Mine wasn't fried chicken. It was carbs, man. And it did turn out it wasn't because I was fat fat, but it's because and still am. So I just gotta lose ten more pounds anyway. But it was because I was taking ephedrine back in the day. And that was, you're too young for this. But ephedra, man, that was, that was no joke, man. Your heart would start racing and it was supposed to be a pre workout stimulant and it did that, but it kept your motor running a lot longer and your heart would start to do palpitations. But he said that and he was so direct. And I have told people flat out, you cannot retire if you keep spending this way. You cannot retire if you don't have a budget. You either tell your money what to do or it will tell you what to do.

Right?

That's the reality. You can be that blunt. But man, you've got to have facts and confidence that back set up because well, I can to retire. Well no, you can't. Here's how much you're getting Social Security, here's how much you have in retirement, here's how much income we can get guaranteed. You can't retire. I just told a 68 year old guy three weeks ago he could not retire because he literally, he bought a house with a 30 year mortgage on it two years ago. His payments, 2,400amonth and he gets 1200 from Social Security and is 100,000 in savings. You can't retire. There's no way you can retire, right? Well, what if I take 1200 divided by the number of months I'm going to be alive? Oh, how long are you going to be alive for? Well, I'm going to die soon. You don't know that. You know, you can change a lifestyle or get some sort of treatment, you can live a lot longer than you ever expected. But if you're pulling out $1,000 a month, which still wasn't enough to cover it. So let's say he's pulling out $2,000 a month because he doesn't just have a mortgage, he has his other expenses. So he's pulling out $2,000 a month. How quick is that 100,000 going to be gone?

Fast.

And so I told him, I said you can't retire. Well, can you help me? No, I can't mean I have no problem and is not based off of how much money someone has, right? I've walked away from guy who had $20 million that there was no way I could help him retire. And you're like going, how's that possible? They required $2 million a year to live off of. There's no way I could help him retire. He was 69 years old, his wife was 54. He still had four kids at home under the age of 18, you are not going to be able to retire if you still require $2 million a year to live off of.

Right?

And he leans over and he goes, I really don't care what happens when I die. And I packed it up. I said, I'm done. Nobody's ever told me they can't help me. I'm not nobody. And I'm telling you I can't help you, so I can't help you.

It's not about the dollar amount.

It's not about the dollar amount. It's can you find a solution to the problem?

Right.

I mean, if you sit there and you're worried about the commission, I mean, most agents would be drooling. As someone who has $20 million, I don't. I actually. My favorite niches between 200 and a million, because it's people that generally aren't living like crazy. Now, I've had plenty of clients that have had more than that. I mean, one of the things I will say about Texas is there's some good old boys that have a lot of money and they just don't live it. You know, they still have the old pickup truck. They just have spent their entire years working their tail off saving money, and they can retire very comfortably a lot of times in a very big ranch, which is really nice because they've inherited over the years. So, you know, you just got to be careful when you're talking to people about making sure you're speaking in confidence or why they can't retire. And that's where the close isn't even something that we really have to push.

Right.

It isn't.

And I know your second appointment that you go into is. It's primarily question answering. It's primarily.

That's the first thing I say. Yeah. What questions do you have for.

What do you have? Let's talk through this. When it's the right. When it's the right thing and you understand the way it works, you understand that it's the right thing. We'll. We'll move forward with it and we talk about getting client. Getting clients off the fence. And I use air quotes there because we're not really getting anybody off the fence. If you think you're going to push somebody off the fence or pull somebody off the fence, you're going to end up doing more harm than good. But reality is, we got a ladder, and we can show them how the ladder works and the fact that they can step off the fence and not be at risk on the fence anymore.

Well, and that's the reality when you have products that still can participate in some of the gains of the market, but you have income guarantee. I mean, I asked people, well, when's a good time to get into these? Well, when do you not want to have the risk of losing money anymore? When you want to make sure you never have to worry about income for the rest of your life. I mean, I used to have agents run appointments with me and I about, I'd say 15 to 20% of my closes are one set, one close. And they automatically assumed I was a hard closer. And they were so impressed because literally this is what a one sit close usually happens. I present it, I explain how the problem work. Excuse me, product works, if I can even speak it. Trust me, I do know what I'm doing. But I explained how the product works. I find the problem, I find a solution. And they literally go, this is exactly what I've been looking for. This is what I need. How do I get into this? No clothes. Just explaining it, how everything works. Do you like it? Yeah. Does this make sense to you? Yeah. Well, what do I need to do to get into it? Well, this is the next step. And so it doesn't have to be a hard close.

Yeah. Funny thing I just thought of is if you go in, you build that confidence, that you build their confidence in you. You answer their questions. You'll have to answer their question, which is, how do I do this? Yeah, I mean, it's, that's, it's pretty straightforward.

And I guess the one thing I want to leave you with, this or we're wrapping this up, is close. Yeah, I mean, you've heard this for years. Like I said, I've been in sales for 28 years and there's all sorts of books, all sorts of experts on how to close the deal, how to close the deal, what to do, what to say. And mine is don't. I mean, I guess you could say your close is getting their buy in, that you know, you can help them find a solution for their problem. That's really what it comes down to. So I hope this helps you. Till next time, happy selling.