How to Respond in a Down Market | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 169

Today we're going to talk about how to respond during a down market.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Annuity Sales Coach Podcast. Seven figure, amazing, awesome training.

Secure. What? Nope. Figure annuity. Seven figure annuity sales.

When we record, it's like a. It's like a brain damage for Chad, because we do. We do two webinars each month in the academy. And so you've got. That's.

Anyway, making all my calls, still interacting with clients. Like, sometimes you guys will see me if you do watch us. Like, I would recommend watching us.

Oh, yeah, go to the YouTube and watch us.

You have never seen a guy that is 7 years old with this type of voice. I'm telling you, it's like, it's so.

I mean, I'm in here. I sound like Tommy Lee Jones.

Tommy Lee.

I don't know.

It's all I can think of. You mean like James Earl Jones? Because Tommy Lee Jones doesn't sound like anything.

I'm American, by God.

Oh, man, you need help. Okay, see, you would have missed that. My sheer look of disgust discussed. So, okay, let's just get a. Why people actually pay attention to us, because it sure as heck isn't for this. Yeah, what are we talking about?

I just said what we're talking about. See, you get me so flustered.

How to respond in a down market. You know one of my favorite things about annuities, Chad?

What is that, Caleb?

You're the agent. You're selling an annuity. Market goes up, you look good. Market goes down, you look better.

I wish I could do that with my face.

I look good no matter what. That's not gonna happen. Well, you know what? There is an interesting dynamic to that, though, because I have had clients, and it's rare, but they do call me when, for example, last 12 years. What, the markets went up? They go, man, I wish I would add this run, but, man, you never hear that when the market's falling. You hear so many people cannot come out of the work. I mean, maybe in the past 10 years, I maybe have had five. Five. I would say, as a round number. Just. Well, that's actually not numbered. Six.

Well, it's still round. Four and a half.

That's true.

Good point.

But, you know, that may say, man, I wish I would have had this run, but when the market falls, I have people consistently emailing me, texting me, calling me. I mean, it's. It's way, way, way, way more than that, saying, I am so glad I'm not in the market.

And you just remind them hey, this was your idea. You wanted to do this.

It is true. Well, you know what, that's interesting you say that because it is true. Yes. Is that my idea that most people should have safety and security? Pretty much everybody should have an aspect of safety and security, any part of their retirement. But when it comes down to it, I want it to be their idea.

Right.

You know, it's. I have four kids. The most buy in I can ever get with my kids is when they think it was their idea. I mean, you.

I'm a case in point.

You're a case in point.

I've always been smart.

Now you are my kid, but I've always been. So the way to get him to have complete buying is when I explain it in a way to where he believes it's his idea. And I can still do that, by the way, even though he knows I do that, I can still do that.

I think I just have good ideas.

Sure you do. When I plant them in your little pea brain.

See, this is the beauty of getting to work with your son in love. Appreciate it. But you know, it's. It is, it is somewhat of an honor. But so, but you know, down markets, we do get to shine because a lot of our clients, I mean, man, it can be a catch too, because I remember 2008 to 2009, there were some clients that actually got out 2000, 2000, 2007 to 2008, thought they were fine, got back into the market 2008 to 2009 and got hit even worse.

Yeah.

So in most of the cases from 2007, 2008, it was about 2007 and a half, where they're like, okay, you know what, I need to sell my stuff now. And because they didn't realize this falling that bad. Right. So they sell it 2007 and a half, and then 2008, they think it's a bottom. So they get back into the market. And then 2008 to 2009 hit. It wasn't until March 9th of 2009 that was the low of low, where it started to slowly cripple back. Back to, you know, someone. I just had a guy today, I made a call. He said this is his exact words. Well, almost exact. But he said, I lost money 2008 to 2009, and I just got back to where I was.

Wow.

So I don't know if that means he waited a while to get back into it or you could have been. I mean, you could. The reality is you could have some stocks from 2008 to 2009, that actually went away. You lost everything, right? So let's say you have stocks that never rebounded because they went bankrupt. Maybe you could have something like that because then you stop 50% of your money trying to get back, but you only 50% of your money participating because you lost 50% of it or you got stuck in some sort of scumbag Bernie Madoff kind of thing. You know, I caught that slime, man. I just. The guy stinking has people doing his laundry and stuff. You know that he's like, he lives in prison right now and he has people doing all sorts of stuff for him.

It's.

You can't tell me that guy doesn't know where the money is. It's crazy. But anyway, back to a happier note. You can see how I feel. I mean, I feel anybody scams people in any way, shape or form, I don't care if it's money. I mean, we just have someone dear to us.

One of the people doing construction on their home ran off with their money.

Whoa.

I'm just like, this is just. How do people sleep at night, man? I mean, even it's. I know you guys have heard me say this before, and if you're newer to the podcast, you may have not heard me say this, but I have said, you will never see a fixed indexed annuity guy jump out the window when the stock market crashes.

Yeah.

You know, and is it heartbreaking when someone is that destitute, that broken, that they have to kill themselves because the.

Market, they feel like they can't get out of it?

But here's the sad thing about that. A lot of these people in the variable world that got in that situation, they knew exactly what they were doing. Sure. I mean, it's funny, and it's not funny in a way. You'll never see a movie made out of a fixed indexed annuity guy. It's too boring. It's too boring. But you see the boiler room, the big Short wolf of Wall street, and then there's the sequel that came. These are all about scams from brokers, how they treat people. And that's actually unfortunately true for some of those brokers. Now, balancing statement. I know some incredible brokers that have really good hearts, Absolutely, really know how to protect people's money. And then the leftover, they can play around in the market. I have no problem with that. They have great ethics, great integrity. I mean, some of these guys, the fixed indexed annuity, or the financial world in general, when you get good brokers, Good variable people, good bankers, good indexed annuity guys. They are the most generous people you ever meet in your life. They just give money and give money and give money and they're incredibly generous. And they're not about, you know, you can tell the slime balls that want their name up here and things like that, and it's all about, what, where's their name in it? You know, when they give money, they make it a big deal how they gave money. But man, I know so many that aren't like that. They just give money and they're generous. And the brokers that will protect people's money, once again, the slimy guys, you don't see them being generous. You just don't. But the good guys, they're just incredible. So I say that as a balancing statement because there are some great people, but the biggest people that prey on people during down markets. And it's the same thing in the indexed annuity world. And if you ever try and sell an indexed annuity through fear.

Yeah, that's.

To me, you're just as bad as the broker that's trying to scam people out of money. Any safe money person that tries to get sales through fear is just as bad as the broker who's trying to scam because they're both scams. Anytime you try and make someone scared to do something, you've got issues.

Yeah.

And down markets, a lot of people look at that as an opportunity to use scare tactics. And I'm telling you, if I ever run across someone who's done that, I'll turn them in in a second. You know, that's. There have been people that have been prosecuted and convicted for elder law abuse because they would do the seminars. The seminars would be recorded and then they would see what they were saying during the seminar and the fear tactics they would use and they actually ended up in jail.

Wow.

And they deserved that. You know, and then five years later they get out of jail, somehow mysteriously they get back, and you find out they're doing seminars again. I don't know how that works, but.

Well, here's the thing. You don't need to try to use fear when the product can protect people from the two biggest retirement unknowns and uncertainties. How long are you going to live and what the. What's the market going to do?

Caleb, how long are you going to live for?

I don't know, Chad.

I mean, there's some hopefully mess around with me, maybe shorter than others, but you don't know how long you live for. You don't know what the market's going to do. The indexed annuity with an income rider is the only product that can address both those issues.

So you don't need to sell here when you're protecting them from unknowns.

And if you think there's something different, put it in the comments. No, you know, send me an email because I've done the research. There is nothing that can protect the. I don't know how long I'm going to live for and I don't know where the stock market's going to be tomorrow, let alone five or ten years from now.

It's beautiful, beautiful situation. And the down markets are inevitable. Right. And there's going to be kind of two sides of the coin. When we're talking about responding a down market, we're talking about the front end sales and we're talking about the back end client support down market. Obviously if you're using index strategies that don't have fees and the way making sure the product is set up the right way there, you're not going to, you're obviously your floor is zero. It's just, it's not going to go backward because of the down market. Assuming again you're not using index fees on the front end, you've obviously got an increased response.

Right?

I mean it's inevitable. A lot of times with the fixed indexed annuities. Fixed annuities, whatever that is, the safe money products, like we like to say, we see just an increased response, increased lead flow a lot of times when the market falls, but it is. You mentioned this a couple podcasts ago. It's still important to make sure you're doing every bit of your process the same and that you don't become an order taker is what you were talking about.

Yeah, I mean, I don't care if I show up to the house and the guy has all his statements laid out and the first thing they say is, hey, I want to, I want to move my money. Move your money into what? Well, whatever you talked about. What I talked about? Well, I don't know. That's why I need to explain it to you. So I still go through the complete fact finder. I mean I had a guy one time that I could tell even why was explaining it, didn't pay attention, didn't do anything. So he just, he just was dead set on moving his $750,000 and he's dead set on moving it. So here's what I had to do while I'm filling out the application when I was going through the suitability form, I had him initial what I was talking about. So I went through the explanation why was filling out the application. So I went through the full presentation knowing he didn't pay full attention. So when I was filling out the application, I went through the presentation again, had him initial because I wanted him to know, this is your surrender schedule. This is your index strategy, this is your income roll up rate. I wanted them to know every little thing about it. To this day, he's still on the best product that was out there. Sure. But I will not go through an application if I don't know the clients paying attention. Now if he wouldn't have paid attention during that, I wouldn't have had him sign it. Yeah, I would have said, I'm sorry, I can't help you. Just as, and this is, you know, side note, I've been in appointments where I saw somebody's kind of hurting a little bit. And I would find out, like, you can tell their backs hurting them or something like that. And I'll ask them, are you on any pain medications? And they'll say, well, yeah, I'm on ibuprofen. Okay, are you on any narcotic pain medication? If they are, they cannot sign the application. If I notice someone, and I've done this many times too, not many times, but enough times where I can say it, I would go, man, the person doesn't seem super sharp. There might be beginning signs of dementia or something. So I'll say, okay, I explain everything. I say, hey, do you have a daughter or son or someone that could be with you next time when we meet again? And then I explain everything again and make sure that the daughter or the son or the spouse signs the application. Because I don't want to ever have the perception that I'm not listening to my clients needs. And listening to my client needs means I have to listen when they're not saying anything too.

Yep.

You know, if I see them kind of disoriented and I'm telling you, there's been, there's one time I knew a guy that he wasn't acting right. Obviously I didn't have him sign anything, but he said, I think you need to call the doctor. And he was in the early signs of a heart attack.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, just make sure you never take advantage of a client. And the reason why I'm stressing that so much when we're talking about down market is down market.

Often it causes impulse decisions and we don't want impulse Decisions. We want educated decisions. So if they're calling you and they're saying, I want to move my money, that's panic. Now, do they have a right to move their money? Absolutely. But I want to make sure I want them to know what they're getting into.

And the same goes for existing clients that maybe want to put more into annuities when they start seeing that happen, depending on what you left out or whatever.

But part of the thing with that, though, is they already know how.

They should understand.

Yeah, they should understand it. A lot of times people, they just get this panic mode because they see the market dropping and they. They want to do that impulse. And I'm all fine with the impulse. As long as you're making an impulse decision while educating.

Yeah, impulse response to a market condition is a fine response. As long as it's not an impulse.

Pull of the trigger. You got to make sure that, you know, you as an agent, recognize that, and you make sure it's an educated impulse decision, not just pulling the trigger. And here's the thing. I tell agents this all the time. My job is to help you be able to sell more annuities, but my job is also to keep you out of trouble as well. And so if I can do that by making sure we're serving our clients the best way possible, by making sure we're doing absolutely everything necessary to make sure they understand. Obviously, if I want to fly in a rocket, I'm not going to have a rocket scientist be able to explain to me in a way I know or I understand and be able to build a rocket. But we're not rocket scientists, and this is not a rocket science product. And I know I can explain enough to where they fully understand it in a language. Remember, I say it all the time. I speak English. Not financial, lease.

Yep.

So that's it, right?

Yeah. So whether it's the front end or the back end of a sale, if it's something that's already happened in the past or whatever, Whatever situation you find yourself in with the down market, remember, you just got to do things the right way.

Yep. And remember, Christmas is not that far away. So just Merry Christmas. Still, what, two months? I think.

Yeah.

But I always love giving people that little bit of anxiety. It's not even Thanksgiving. Stop saying Christmas.

A lot of people haven't done their Christmas shopping yet.

I went to Costco. They have Christmas decorations right up to the Halloween decorations, Christmas trees. I'm like, no, not yet. Okay, guys, well, I hope this helps you have a great day. Happy summer.