How To Word Important Client Questions | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 271

All right, well, this week we're going to talk about how to word important client questions. This is something, Chad, that I've gotten to watch you and listen to you and actually see the fact finder and use firsthand, even the way that you word some very specific client questions. Super important questions. In a scenario that I see, agents get wrong all the time. So one of the super important questions is all about risk tolerance. And the way that I often see agents approach that question is by simply asking clients, what's your risk tolerance? And leaving it, you know, open ended like that. Or they'll ask them, are you, you know, conservative, moderate or aggressive? Or they'll ask them to rate rank their risk tolerance on a scale of 0 to 10 and you approach the whole question completely different. So tell us how you approach that question.

Yeah, it's pretty simple. Are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money, or none of your money? And almost always when I ask that, they're like, well, that's a dumb question. You know, I don't want to lose anything. Well, just how do curiosity and I know this is why I'm here, but why do you have, if you, if you adamantly said you're not willing to lose any of your money, then why do you have all of your money in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and commodities? I mean those are all things you can lose money in. And so when you ask someone on a scale 1 to 10, what is their, what is their risk tolerance? That's kind of like asking someone, what's your pain tolerance? Now most people will say if you say what's your pain tolerance? They'll say, oh man, I can handle a lot. But if you've never had a kidney stone or you've never given birth to a child, you're probably not going to know what a 10 is. Or if you've even someone who's had a child but they had an epidural, you know, you're not going to know what a 10 is. But if you've had a kidney stone, I can tell you, you know, from experience, you can know what a pain 9 or 10 level is. It's all relative to a person's experience. So if someone, the worst thing they've ever done is cut themselves with a knife or a paper cut, they're not going to know what a 10 is. So if you have someone who's had risk in the money or risk their money into the market, but they may be have been the last 10 years and they haven't Had a significant loss. We can't really say that most have had in 2022 and most experienced the COVID drop in 2020. But it recovered way quick. And now the 2022 drop drop still has not recovered. I mean, I just talked to someone today and like, well, what if we would have this money in the S P a year ago? Well, that's all in retrospect because if we look at how much had been lost there, well, it's about a year ago when it started to lose and then it started to rebound a little bit. So you have to figure out what is that person's experience with risk. And not everybody's gonna have the same. And then you're gonna have someone that Maybe is a 55 year old compared to someone who's a 75 year old. Well, they're gonna experience risk loss or the possibility of risk loss a lot. Put much more emphasis on it. So that's why if you say, are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money, or none of your money? That's generally a no debt question. I mean, you've seen over the years the way I ask questions almost always gives a no question. I mean, do you want to make sure your wife is taken care of if you pass away?

Right.

I mean, if you don't answer that question white right. She's actually going to collect on a life insurance policy real quick.

I love the fact that you incorporate the concept of subjectivity to it too. Because one of the biggest issues that I have with the way that a lot of agents word that question when they ask them, you know, they'll leave it open ended, what's your risk tolerance? And now the client has to try and determine, number one, what does that mean? Number two, all of their preconceived ideas, notions, whatever, get lumped into the answer. It's the same when, when they ask them to put it on, are you conservative, moderate or aggressive? Or they ask them to rate it on a scale of 0 to 10. You're, you're literally opening the door for them to answer in a way not you agents that ask it that way, the wrong way. I know what you are literally opening a door for the client to answer it in a way that is based on their preconceived ideas and notions. Whereas the way that you word the question the are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money or none of your money? It doesn't matter what their preconceived notions are. It's about Willingness and preference.

Right.

So if somebody says, are you, you know, conservative, moderate or aggressive? People, I feel like, are pretty classically conditioned to answer, well, I'm moderate. Right. If you give somebody middle ground, most of the time they'll take middle ground if they're have an idea that that's the correct answer. Right. So if somebody's told them the old, you know, the age old adage, oh, you got to risk money to make money. And so now that's a mindset or a mentality that a preconceived notion, a misconception, whatever. You ask them about risk tolerance and they're thinking, well, I'd like to make money, but to make money I have to risk money. They're going to answer that with that misconception in place versus a process.

I constantly see that too. As they say, well, you know, I got to be kind of moderate, I guess, because, you know, I have heard you got to risk many to make money. And once again, we go back to what is the importance of the conversation. Most people, once they hit a certain age, do not want to go backwards. You know, there is a certain age, 40 and below, they're like, ah, if I go backwards, I'll come back up. And here's the other thing we run into now, you got to think about. We had literally from 2009 to now with a pretty up market, with the exception of some, you know, there's 20, 20, 20, 22, where there's some significant drops, but they don't understand pain and they don't remember 2007 to 2009. And so they've. That's why when somebody says, well, my broker's done really good for me, you know, and I'm. Since when? Well, you know, last 10 years, I said, everybody's done good in the past 10 years. The question is, what happens when we do see a significant drop that takes a while to recover. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. So when you get that I don't want to lose any money, well, that's pretty. That limits what they can actually be in where they don't want to lose money. I mean, we talk about fixed annuities or fixed indexed annuities. You have CDs, you have cash. You know, those are things you can't lose money. And when the market falls. But then you have to dig deeper into the other questions, find out, well, now I know you don't want to lose money, then let's move on to the next ones.

Yep, I Love it. One of the other questions that's obviously super important when determining the purpose of the money, that a lot of agents ask it again, incorrectly. A lot of agents will approach their clients with the question of, okay, so are you looking to generate income or are you looking for accumulation? As if they're mutually exclusive, first of all. And they're not mutually exclusive. They don't necessarily have to be. Can be, but they're not necessarily. And then the other problem with that.

Too, but if you think about that, every time you ask that question, they are always going to say both.

Or.

They want accumulation or income. They're going to say, well, I want both. No one's going to say, just want income with no accumulation. Right. So that's why it's almost like it's.

A choice one way.

Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you can. I mean, the products. You pick the right products, you for sure can. And that's as you know, why I asked that question. Do you want to plan for a living or plan for dying?

Exactly.

And I do always preface it from the standpoint of obviously, if you pass away prematurely, when we want to make sure that your heirs get the benefit or they get the account value versus the insurance company, and they're like, I mean, there's probably been one or two times where someone, nope, I'd rather have the insurance company. I'm like, well, then you were a bad parent because something went wrong somewhere. But they always say, of course I want my kids to get it instead of the insurance company. And so, you know, that still doesn't negate the fact that they want a living plan. They want to make sure they don't run out of income.

Yep. Yeah. The problem that I see with agents asking the question, do you want income or do you want accumulation? Like I was saying, number one, it, it approaches it from the standpoint of they're mutually exclusive and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. The other thing that I have an issue with in that is.

Goodness, I lost my train of thought.

Well, that's not that unusual.

It's the preconceived notions again, like we were talking about. Like we were talking about with the risk tolerance question. Question. If you ask it a certain way, it elicits their preconceived notions to be a part of their answer. If you ask it a different way you ask it, the way you ask it, it breaks those down to where they're not even a. A factor. So if you ask somebody, do you want income or accumulation? You have to consider that they have perceptions about both of those concepts. They have an idea.

Yeah. That's why I think it's funny though, when, when you have so many agents out there though, to say, oh, none of the clients I meet with there is all about index, it's all about accumulation. I'm like, then you're not asking the questions, right? I mean, honestly, there isn't a product out there that I could not sell. If I wanted to do variable things, I, I could sell against the fixed index annuities. If I wanted to do just accumulation or just mygas, I could sell against anything else and promote what I'm talking about. But the reality is we're not trying to push the product we want to push. It's what is best for the client. And the only way to know what is best for the client is to ask questions. The no duck questions to get the, the speculation or the interpretation isn't there. It's flat out I have the answer. I need to present the right product.

Yeah. So I want to, I want to clarify one thing too, because I've used this terminology a couple times now. Misconception, preconceived notion, those types of things. Regarding the income versus accumulation question, if you ask them that and they have an idea of how retirement income is generated, and perhaps that idea is, I have a retirement account and I make withdrawals from that retirement account, they may not understand the concept of guaranteed lifetime income. So if that's their idea of what retirement income is, and you're asking them do you want income or accumulation, they're probably going to say, oh, I want accumulation. If they're any kind of distance from actual retirement, if they're two years away from retirement, they're probably going to say accumulation. If they're five years from retirement, they're probably going to say accumulation. Because their idea of how retirement income works is wrong. It's not wrong, it's just not entirely correct.

It's wrong because they generate, they could.

Take withdrawals, that they could do that, but it's not the only option they have.

Well, but even taking withdrawals is still. If somebody has that perception that they need to have this huge lump sum of money for retirement, but they can still risk it, that's wrong. You know the reality, the only way I could take a smaller amount of money and get better guaranteed income that will last them forever versus taking a large amount of money, keeping at risk. Because the reality is at sun some point, you're pulling out your 4% of a million dollars, which is you know, your, your 40,000 a year, and that drops down to 500,000 because of a market fluctuation and drop. You're not pulling out that 40,000 a year. So it's the long steady. It's, it's almost. I've seen this many times. It's the tortoise and the hare all over again. That story has a lot of deep meaning. That when I first heard that story, of course it didn't mean anything because I was a kid. But as I get older, I start to realize the importance of slow and steady wins the race.

Yeah, that's good. So I guess the biggest key takeaway here would be, number one word the questions. The way that we're encouraging agents toward the questions, are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money, or none of your money? And is this a plan for living or a plan for dying? The heartbeat of those two things. And again, there's going to be other questions you need to ask clients. You want to word the questions in a way that tries to get them out of the ideas and the misconceptions and preconceived notions that they're bringing into the appointment. You want to get to the root of the desire and the root of the need without having to jump over those hurdles of, of just incorrect mentalities that have been built up over years of probably working with a bunch of variable type things.

Well, if you think about it, you know, I think it's very important that you ask questions the way that nobody has heard before. So in other words, you know, even in my own industry, I get a lot of sales from agents that are in the same industry I'm in. They use the same products I do, or the same companies I do, but they don't get the sale. Why? Because they're so used to asking the questions like, well, what's your risk tolerance? Instead of are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money, and none of your money? You know, how important is long term care to you? How do you in. My way to ask is, how do you intend to pay for long term care? You know, these are definitive ways to ask, to get accurate responses based off of what the person's really feeling, not what they think they should be feeling.

Exactly, exactly. That's the, that is the, the key takeaway of how to word important client questions is get them out of what they think they're supposed to say and into what they actually desire.

Yeah, well, and that's actually not even desires what they Need.

Correct.

Because if I think about what I desire, I often don't get what I actually desire, but I often get what I need. And it's because I surround myself with people that will ask me questions that, like, hey, you know what? You think you want this? I mean, my wife and I just got in a discussion yesterday and actually is a little more intense than I expected it to be. But, you know, it wasn't a fight. It was just. It was a heavy conversation about, this is what I wanted, but this is not what we needed. And when I say we, it also involved her. So being a salesperson, I can pretty much word things the way I think I want it. But then she comes in and she words it the way of thinking for the family and what's best. And I'm like, going, okay, you're right. This is what I want, but this is not what we need. And, you know, it's. It's so important because when you're thinking about what you need versus what you want, it often tries to get rid of some of the emotion behind it and puts more facts to it. And if you think about all the major decisions that have been made in. In your life, no matter if you're 25 years old, you know, 12 years old, like Caleb, or 100 years old, like, sorry, I had to throw that, Jeff. But yeah, 100 years. Okay, good. Good one. But, you know, if you think about the major decisions you've made in life, very few of them were emotionally based. They're all factually and logically based. The ones that were the most successful and most. The decisions or decisions you made that were emotionally based, a lot of those didn't turn out. And so that's why it's so important when we're doing those fact finders, to make sure we're asking the questions off of logical answers.

Yeah.

Because logical answers will also combat the guy who comes in and says, well, I'm going to average you 15% over the next 10 years. That's not logical. Emotionally, that sounds great, but it's not logical.

Yeah, I like it, Chad.

I feel like Spock right now, you know, he just goes, it's not logical. But I mean. I mean, if you go through, this is what's so important. You know, we love doing these podcasts, and, you know, I really do. But the one thing I find amazing is there was someone I knew that they were charging a very nominal fee, incredibly small, like a couple cups of coffee small to get all this information. And there were so many people this group went from 4,000 people down to 200 because he wanted to charge a $20 fee for an crazy amount of information. And I look at what we provide on this podcast for free, and then we, I think what is ours to get into the Low1 is $37 for our monthly subscription. Right. The academy. And you know, we got all this information, but they'll go, hey, this is good information. Why won't you spend $37 to get the rest of the fact finder information? Like to ask, right, to do the right thing for clients. And I think because I go into the same thing for agents, we have to ask as a trainer, as a mentor, I have to ask people the tough questions as well. Logically, you know, why don't you invest in the time? Because how many more questions are on that fact finder where I go into getting the direct answer?

A lot. There's probably a lot.

And so we know for a fact. And I love, obviously, like I said, I love the podcast. And we have thousands of listeners that listen thousand thousands of original downloads each month for this particular podcast. It's time for agents to get serious about what we're doing and learn how to ask these questions. Right. Because we owe it not only to our clients, we owe it to our industry, we owe it to ourselves. We've got to start asking these questions to where we're getting.

Really answers based off of what our clients need, not what they want.

Yep.

I mean, I want, I want, right now, I want a 50% return every single year, compounded tax deferred, by the way, when I draw money from it, I don't want to pay any taxes on it at all. And I want to make sure that this is indefinite. That type of guarantee is in depth. That's what I want. I mean, might as well forget all that. Just let me win the $1.7 billion lottery. You know, let's just go there. And I don't want to pay any taxes on it. And then I want 50% compounded interest. I mean, that's a want, but it's not logically based. And I have told clients that before. When they give me an answer, I'm like, you know, just an outlandish answer that probably their broker has influenced them on. Now, the good brokers don't do this. It's just like the good annuity representatives don't do this either. We have just as many bad apples in our industry. This group. I was talking some of the questions that were being asked. I was like, how's that question even asked on this platform? Why isn't your market or why isn't your trainer? Why aren't they teaching you this? And they would continue to go on asking these questions. I'm going. You're actually meeting with people that need help and the answers aren't being done right. So, yeah, I think that's a wrap. There's my raise around that is how.

To word important client questions. Get to the.

So my question, my. My important question the agent is spend the $37 a month to get the training. If you really want to get serious, spend 197amonth to get the training because that actually gives you access to all my handouts and all my documents. And if you guys know what I do in annuities, you know, what I'm making on the academy covers the cost. That's really what it is. There's a lot of people involved in that. So let's get serious about this business and let's ask the right questions.

Love it. Thanks, Chad.

Okay, see you guys next week.