How to Increase Your Average Case Size | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 122

Well, thank you for joining this week's podcast. This is Caleb north, agent relations specialist. And Chad, how are you? Good, good.

You didn't introduce who I was.

Yeah. What do you do, Chad?

I run this place.

When I'm hardly ever here.

But anyway, Mondays and Fridays for half.

I'm the poster child. You can clearly see that.

Yep, you're our puppet. We pull your strings and you definitely pull my strings.

But I am not your puppet. I promise you that. Anyway, let's get going.

We should. So today we're going to talk about increasing your average case size and your closing ratio. So walk us through, Chad. If you were to get 10 leads, how many would you close? And about what is your average case size?

Right now I'm probably at about a 40% closer ratio. I'm not ex. Pretty close, right? Yes. Right around there. I'm like, you're there. I am the guy that runs the numbers, statistics, and you're the one that keeps track of all of them. But yeah, I believe it's around 40%, but that is a very skewed or not necessarily accurate number to a number of leads I get because I get a lot of leads that I just can't help. They don't have enough money or I go to the appointment, find out that their circumstances a little bit different than I thought or because I don't always know what their income is and what their expenses are before we meet. So a lot of times I go there and I'm going to, yeah, you require too much to live off. You don't have enough main. Do that. So I walk away from deals all the time. I mean, there's a lot I could actually close that I choose not to close. And that's where it. Once again, it always revolves around solution. There's so many things that I could do or so many times that I could get a deal that I don't because it's just not the best. Yeah, it's always important to protect their money, but when they need $10,000 a year off of $100,000. Right. That's not realist. And I'm literally setting themselves up to fail. I'm setting myself up to fail. It just doesn't make sense to do it. So I would say about 40% of my deals I would close. I could close more, but because of morals, ethics and integrity, I don't do that well.

And that's the reality of it too. You know, we talk about it. It's not a hard sale. It doesn't need to Be a hard sale. It shouldn't be a hard sale. And so if you're approaching it from more of a soft sale type of scenario where you're genuinely trying to figure out what is best for this client situation every single. Then it makes it really easy to go into the second appointment or third appointment or whatever it ends up being. And listening, answering questions. And then if they're asking to move forward, then you. You do that. And you have that happen a lot, don't you?

A lot. My favorite part is when they say, what do we need to do next to get this started? That just happened to me. I was talking to a client on the phone and it basically. I'd met with him one time, he had to go out of state for work. So I called him and we went over it and I said, what questions do you have? And he just goes, I have one simple question. What do we need to do to get started? I'm like, well, gee, well, there you go. But I mean, I'd already met with him in person and he already read over all the material. I'd addressed all the questions, and he was just ready to get going on it. So that's my favorite type of closing, because literally, it's the client closing the deal. Right. Me, Right. You know, I don't like closing the deal. I've never have liked closing the deal. I like, even when I was in the jewelry business, it was all about them going, you know what? This really makes sense to me. I like this. I love this piece of jewelry. It makes me feel a particular way. Or even wedding, you know, they're getting married, so of course, having wedding bands and matching, it's just everything's great when they're the ones closing the deal, not me.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And what would you say is your average case size if you met with, you know, a couple or an individual?

I don't know, what would you say?

I would say around 400,000. That is. And that's remarkably high.

It is very high.

And so how do you get that high?

Well, you know what? I have a lot of conversations with agents, and one of the common things I hear is, well, you must have better leads than I do. No stinking way. I have the exact same leads you do. Right. It's. The reality is, here's a couple things. Number one, you know, they need to have 50,000 emergency funds or saving and savings or 50,000 and 50,000 investable amounts. So let me say that again without stumbling. 50,000 emergency funds and savings and 50,000 investable amounts. So I don't write hardly any deals that are under 50,000. Now I will write annuities that are under 50,000. So if they have a Roth that is 20,000, they have an IRA that is 100,000, they have 401k that has 30,000, it equates to more than 50,000 in investable amounts. So a lot of times I have annuities that I think my average annuity size is like 280,000, something like that. But my average case size is about 400,000. Because there are the annuities I write that will only be $15,000 annuity. But that's the Roth. But if you put them all together, it adds up to the amount that I require for that. There's a lot of agents out there that will write the 15, $20,000 annuity because they may have 10,000 dol the bank and they have 15,000. I just won't do that. Here's what I found over the years. People that will have lower dollar amounts generally don't understand the value, and this is a very general statement, they don't understand the value of saving for retirement. Now that being said, there are circumstances I've ran into where it was a health condition, a single mom trying to make things work. I mean there are circumstances that happen where I totally get why you weren't able to save for retirement. But vast majority of the times I look at the two cars in the driveway, sometimes three cars in the driveway for two people, I look at the house that they have, that's way more than what they need. They took out a 30 year mortgage at age 50 years old. I mean, there's certain circumstances they put themselves into that in reality they could have not gotten such a big house, things like that, and had more for retirement. So you know, I have the exact same leads. I help agents all the time. You know what, have you ever used this lead source? I have for six months and it stinks. I can't get any deals. I'm going, I've used that lead source for eight years and it's one of my best lead sources. So I would say vast majority of the time, and this is vast majority, I've had one or two lead sources ever that I got that I'm like, this is really challenging, this is not good, it does not work. But most of the time the, the, the problem is not the lead source. Let me put that in as gentle way as I can. It's the agent I am so challenged by in my mind what wants to explode when I keep having people say, well, what leads to use? What leads do you lose? What, what, who cares what leads I use? Yeah. How do you make that lead work? In other words, towards the benefit of the end result, which is the solution to the problem.

Yeah.

So someone goes into home and this happened. My two biggest deals this year were a basically, I met with client. Like one, this guy wrote a $300,000 annuity, met with them three months before I did $300,000 annuity. They had $25 million. I got a $4 million annuity out of them. Why? They felt. And actually they knew this guy before, so they didn't even really want to do this. They just felt they had an obligation to do this with their friend. But when I came up with a solution to a problem, when I came up with a solution to what they, here's what they wanted to do. This is how we do it. Then they did 4 million. And this will probably be a client that I get another 2, 3, $4 million out of once the right products become available that I think are necessary because these are not income products producing products for them. They have more than enough income coming in. So these were straight indexed annuities. Well, to me, if I'm going to use indexed annuities, I'm going to use a company that has high rate integrity, in other words, a great renewal rate. But the point is, why did that one guy only get 300,000, yet I got 4 million? Why did another client that I got 1.3 million out of, the client, the agent that met with them four months before that only got $30,000. So they got $30,000 and I got 1.4 million. It's because they were product pushing. They were just, here's, here's what I want to do. And first of all, that's what they put on the lead that they had, that they had $30,000. So the agent goes in there and goes, well, yeah, $30,000 annuity. But what they didn't realize is because they didn't do a thorough fact finder, they didn't find out that they had over 2 million total in this. They didn't even take the time. They didn't ask the questions about what are your expenses, what's your income, what's your retirement plan? They didn't ask any of that. Literally went in wanting to write $30,000 annuity.

Right?

And it's like, what is the better deal there? The $30,000 annuity or the 1.4 million well, obviously the 1.4 million, because it provided a solution to their problem.

Absolutely.

So does that influence my case size? Yes, absolutely. So if I would have went in there like the other guy, and because they put on the lead, they only had $30,000, and they go in there with a $30,000 illustration. Actually, they didn't come up with an illustration. They just basically said, this is what it was, how it worked, and explained it and wrote the application. They didn't have the illustration. They didn't have product brochures. They didn't have anything. And so that happens all the time. And it's crazy to me how much.

I'm a little ornery today. So I'm going to try and keep this as nice as possible as possible. Once again, I am blown away of the number of agents that think they can just put this business on autopilot and they're going to be successful. It's a lot of hard work. You know, I may have my time when I'm in the office on Monday and Friday, but these guys often, even the people that are by me all the time, they don't see. Even this last weekend. I probably put in this last weekend about nine hours to 15 hours of work this last weekend. Why? It's just something that had to be done. You know, I was still able to have good family time. I still able to enjoy. But, like, the day after Thanksgiving. This was a little while ago, but day after Thanksgiving, I actually worked and a lot of agents. Oh, no, that's not a good day for me. That's not. No. I got a ton of stuff done that day.

Sure.

And I even came into the office that day. Now, it's weird because nobody was here, but that's something that you have to do. There's a difference between being an employee and actually being an entrepreneur. And if you want to make in this industry, you got to do things that you are. That others aren't willing to do to get to where you want to be, because they're not where they need to be because they weren't willing to do what they needed to do is get to where they want to be. I'm not going to try and repeat that. But the reality is it's a lot of work to study all the different products, to bring the illustrations, to put together a full complete kit for every client, whether they're buying or not. I always come up with my complete kit. And if you're part of the academy or you're part of our fmo, it's we provide those materials for you. In other words, you can print them out directly from the back into the website. But every client gets a kit. I didn't say every qualified client. I said every client I meet with gets a kit, gets an illustration, gets product brochures, gets a copy of my book Stress and Rocking Chairs. Why they deserve that they need to have. Even if I can't help them and they don't have a situation that can work, I can still leave them with information that may be able to help them in the future. Plus, when you think about. Anyway, there's nothing better than a business card book.

Right?

People throw away business cards all the time. They don't usually throw away books. So it's a great business card to leave behind. Yeah, it costs seven, eight bucks, whatever it is, but it's a good one. It's a good business card.

That's awesome.

That's a long answer.

It's something I could keep going because people focus on so much on the leads. Think about this. If you were only concerned about the leads and you spend your $300 for a lead, you can get a $30,000 annuity or you can get a $400,000 annuity. Which one's better?

400,000.

Because you're working it. That's the reality. In the average case size in this industry is $120,000.

Right.

So I have more than three times average case size, yet I pay the same amount of lead per lead as everybody else.

Yeah.

So just work. I mean, this is why mentorship is so important. I don't know if you took. I think it was the top 500, and I can't remember when. This is very recent, where they had this article talking about the top 500 most successful people. And some of these guys are multi. Multi billionaires. They have multiple mentors and coaches that they pay huge amounts of money for. If you ever go to any of these Fortune 500 companies, these executives have coaches that cost them 200, $300,000 a year just to pay for mentorship and even more. But think about it. If you're a billionaire and you pay someone a million dollars a year to coach you, that's just common sense. If they provide a billion dollars worth of success, I've said this. Even my inner Circle, at $1500 a month, $18,000 a year, one $300,000 annuity more than covers that entire year's membership.

Absolutely.

And I'm just past 25 million. So you don't think I could help you write another $300,000 for a year at least. I just talked to one of our inner circle. This was such. I had no idea he was at this dollar amount. He did 4.7 million all last year. This year has been incredibly challenging for him. Not just the COVID junk, I mean, all sorts of other issues. And he's at 7.4 million for the year.

Through the midst of all this, he's almost. He probably will double what he did last year.

He will. And I was like, Derek, this is incredible, man. I mean, you've. He's had challenge. I have another guy that's tripled his volume. He had his house want to slide down a hill. He had all sorts of other issues, had a baby. I mean, all sorts of things going on, and he's killing it. So do you think they think that subscription and mentorship is important? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, who won't want to take their volume from 4.7 million to 7.4 in one of the most challenging years we've seen in our industry in a long time?

Oh, yeah, this is. This is kind of at the top when it comes to just kind of cultural challenges we're facing. It is an election year and we've had a crazy virus come through. So you talk about face to face and people being emotionally kind of just haywire and the market doing what it's done. I mean, there's so many different avenues that agents are getting hit by this year.

I mean, I think it's going to be. I'm hoping to pass 27 to 30 million. I don't know, because Decembers are always monster months for me. But even if I passed 27 million, I still have been able to take off six weeks this year. I mean, come on, if you work for. With the company for 10 years, you maybe will get four weeks vacation, maybe. And I took off six weeks. And still, I mean, trust me, if I could have taken off more.

Traveled, man, we. Yeah, so, yeah, that's really. I would say, as far as when it comes to the actual case size, stop worrying about the leads, stop worrying about how to close, how not to close. If you provide a solution to the client's problem, they will be asking you, what do we need to do next? I hear that all the time. What's the next step? How do I get into this? If you're not hearing that, then something's wrong.

Yeah, well. And when I get to answer these questions and field these questions with agents, because they do, they call in and they ask, hey, Caleb, what can I do to do this? What can I do to increase my average case size? What can I do to increase my closing rate and all of that kind of thing? And I always like to go back to the fact finder because the reality of it is the fact finder, it does a few things. It expresses and shows your expertise. It shows, it shows your excellence and your willingness to go that extra mile. And that's the reason you think about it. That's the reason you've got 1.4 million. When another guy's got what, 30, 30,000 or whatever it was, whatever those numbers actually were, it just shows that. But then two, you literally are getting a full picture of their situation. So you hear that they actually have X amount in their account somewhere. Whereas other guy that comes in just excited about what's on the lead. It's, that's. He's just assuming. That's all it is. Right. So you really, it's use the fact finder.

Absolutely.

Use the fact finder.

Well, I hope this helps you guys and obviously push through the end of the year. We're going to be making tons of sales here, but you're doing sales based off of actual solutions to problems. So I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day and happy selling.