Observations from an Annuity Agent in the field | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 321
Chad Owen (host) and Caleb discuss field observations from annuity appointments: high current interest rates and payout percentages, clients hesitating to move full committed amounts from the market into annuities, differing client risk triggers compared to prior decades, misconceptions about market returns and sequence-of-returns risk, and the practical rationale for owning annuities (e.g., protecting spouse). The episode mixes humor and sales coaching, with Chad noting he still runs appointments weekly and personally owns multiple annuities.
Chapters
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Seven Figure Annuity Sales. I am Chad Owen, the host. Caleb is my sidekick. Partner in crime, although we haven't committed anything yet. Got to figure that one out. Maybe a nice little misdemeanor like tipping a cow or something. We'll start with your cows. Let's do your cows first.
Oh, they're, they're so sweet. You could probably walk over to them and just push them over.
Well, then there's. There you go.
Actually, we got them same down. Pretty good.
And you don't mess around with cows in Texas. You know, you can be, you can still be hung for that, I think.
Well, you used to say there's three things not to mess with. Your truck, your phone, and your computer. Yeah, I think. Weren't those the three things?
Yeah, and my wife.
Well, of course. But.
That, that is, that is a definite death row sentence. That's funny. But anyway, so we're doing a little different. You know, one of the things we like to do is teach, obviously. But one of the things I found as well is most the interaction we get back with people is the positive response when I talk about things I had to deal with in the week. Because literally that's one of our major advantages. Actually, I believe we're the only FMO where the CEO actually still runs appointments every single week that has a training platform. You know, there's people out there that say they do, there's people out there that do. But part of it is not the intensity that I do it at. And you can prove in the numbers. I mean, there's, there's some people out there do 5 million a year, 7 million a year, or even 15 million a year. And it's a, it's a big difference than 30 to 35 million a year in rent premium.
And it's the difference between a full time job and a part time job.
It is. I mean, you know, when I think about it, I definitely.
I would say if I just did annuities, I could probably work 35 to 40 hours a week.
Yeah.
Without a problem.
Actually, maybe even less sometimes because sometimes I only have appointments on two, Tuesday and Wednesday. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm done, you know, nothing else to do. But we're gonna cover. I always, I'm gonna start writing down things I run into throughout the week. And I already sent this to Caleb, but I found an interesting one. I'll start off a little with a kind of a little joke is how do I identify my liberal clients? And it's actually I think it's true. They want a three year myga, that's what they do. I'm getting every person I gotten so far that one in a three year MYGA has been a liberal. And so I'm like, huh, so now when I look at my lead and I say once a three year fixed annuity, I'm like liberal. So, and obviously, you know, I'm running appointments. I don't care who I'm running an appointment with. I have fun with them. I want to help them, I want to do my due diligence, I want to make sure I'm doing what's best for them. But it's a weird trend I'm seeing lately.
You know, it's, it's interesting because that's, I mean that's basically the, the remainder of the presidential term. So they're, they're probably thinking, oh, somebody else get in there and then they go into, go back into the market or, or what?
That's, I don't know. I mean, I mean Vance is probably going to take over this.
Monarchy.
We'll see if they're smart, they, they.
Buy themselves a long term myga and lock these interest rates in, project that over the next five, seven, ten years.
Yeah, I'll tell you there's, that's what I'm trying to tell people right now. The interest rates we have right now are some of the highest I've ever seen in my entire career. Payout percentage are some of the highest I've ever seen in my career. So when I look, I'm going, why wouldn't you want to lock in right now the highest rates ever?
Totally.
And I'm just, it's, it, it boggles me. And that ties into the next thing ever into it ran into is people committing to move the amount of money they said they're going to do. So I have clients that have, you know, they said they're going to move 500,000, they end up moving 200,000. Someone who says they're going to move a million trying to decide what they're going to do. Someone who says they're going to move 300,000, end up moving 250,000. And they say, well, you know, I've lost money in the market. And I go, okay, that's true right now if the, the market's the same place it was approximately a year ago. But if you zoom out five or 10 years, you've made so much money right in the market, if you've been in the market, so why not protect what you have right now, the micro.
Analysis is, is a, it's a problem. When you look at it on a day to day, oh, I'm down today, I'm up tomorrow. It's like that's, it's a wild way to think.
Yeah. And I don't get it too, because when you think about it, you look at the big picture and we've heard the saying many, many times, it's a loss if you sell it, but you don't capture the gain unless you sell it. So if you look at how much you made five, 10 years from ago, over the past five to 10 years, you would have made a ton of money. It's that whole concept. I want to squeeze every last bit I can out of my money and it always bites you in the butt. I mean, that's, that's just what happens. If you think about 2007 to 2009, there were so many people that kind of got back into the market. So they got out maybe 2007, they got back in 2008. 2008 was actually the bigger drop. But the other thing I look at is if you, if you got out in 2007, you would start back when the market started to recover in 2009 in an indexed annuity. If you followed the market all the way down like the S and P, and you went 2007, you lost the 52 plus percent, you wouldn't be back till 2003, 2013, 2014.
So it's an interesting dynamic and I, I wish I had an answer to this because I have found this over the years, my clients are changing and their triggers are different.
So. Yeah. So like what is that? What are you seeing? Like you're seeing people that are. What, I guess, what is the. Bit less conservative in nature. What's the.
I would say they believe there's more opportunity for gain because literally in the past 10 years has been nothing but a huge run, with exception of a couple years. And.
Instead of my clients going, okay, let's take back 10 years ago, that puts us at 2015. That's 10 years before that. They already experienced a huge drop. So it was fresh in their mind. As a matter of fact, in 2015, a lot of them were just getting back to where they were. So they still had that kind of, okay, I remember that drop. But there's this false perception that they're, they're going to win in Vegas all the time, they're going to constantly win. And then we've also seen, unfortunately we saw 20, 22 where there was about a 34% drop and then almost immediate recovery, we saw 2020 where there was a 32% drop, almost an immediate recovery. And it's because of the market manipulation. And so they've got this perception, oh, it will bounce back, there will be a time. And I personally believe this is going to be one of them, where the market is going to drop a good 40, 50%. Yeah, I just think that's going to happen. I mean, it's already got hit pretty hard. Go ahead.
No, I just said it might. It might.
Yeah.
And you know, it's interesting too, right, because one of the things we always talk about is don't sell on fear. So even when market's fallen and recovers a little bit, whatever, it's, it's being volatile, it's being, being funny.
Yeah.
Even in the midst of that, we're still not trying to sell people on the concept of fear and we're still not trying to position annuities as an alternative to equities. It's a matter of what does that, what is this money supposed to do for you and can it accomplish that in the market? Regardless of market conditions at all, if you need that money to be guaranteed retirement income, it's not going to do that in the market. It's not going to be guaranteed anyways. So it all goes back to purpose.
It does. And people still, once again, the perception changes. I think the other thing too, I find with clients today is, you know, you go back 10, 15 years ago, clients understood pensions. They understood, okay, this is what a pension is. This is what a pension does. And nowadays since pensions aren't really a thing anymore unless you're in the government, and that might be changing too. See, you know, I mean those, those five year olds getting pensions, I don't know how good that are the 150 year olds getting pensions. I don't know if this is a good program, but the point to that is, you know, they don't understand the concept of what if the market doesn't average a 8% return? You know, I mean, I hear financial people say now, well, you can pause 7% per year and it should last you the rest of your life. That's based off of the last ten years. Maybe. Yeah. You know, well, Dave Ramsey suggests eight. Oh my God.
He says because the, because it's averaged 10. Where's the other two going? And it's a zero concept of sequence of returns in the slightest.
Absolutely.
He doesn't understand sequence of returns.
You just triggered Me, Sorry, I'm now, I'm now triggered. Go ahead.
No, well, it's, I mean, at the end of the day, it really is everything, the market being down simply causes people to start moving a little bit. It simply causes people to start think, oh, what are some other options? You know? But the, but the truth, to your point, Chad, is when clients talk about, oh, well, I can't do anything right now because I'm, I'm taking a loss. It's like, well, first of all, no, you're not from where you started. Look at where you're at. Number two, if you plan to try and capitalize on your gains at the top of the market, you won't, because you don't know where that is. And when you're there, you don't think it's going to come down. You think it's going to keep going up. So you stay. So the idea of, I'm going to, I'm going to get out at the top or I'm going to wait for it to recover. When you're still blind about the future, it doesn't work. And then when that opportunity is there, you don't do it. Because think about how many top of the market moments have we had over the last 10 years that you didn't do anything with it? So this idea that you're going to do it at the next one is a facade. It's, it's a, it's not real.
Well, and that's why I tell people, if we could time the top and time the bottom, we'd all be billionaires. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's, I have stocks that I bought in the past that I thought for sure were going to be gold. I still have not done well in the stock market because I, I change things. When I should have stayed in Google, I should have stayed in Microsoft, I should have stayed in Apple. I should have, but I didn't know. And so I'm sitting there going, okay, I'm going to capture those and capture the gains. And then it continues to go way higher. And, and so I've literally learned the best place for me to put my money in. I own three annuities. Why do I do that? Because I want to make sure that if I die, my wife's taken care of. Now, you know, I have multiple businesses, I have multiple streams of income coming in. But when I look at my number one thing is if everything goes bad, we have annuities. And that's what I tell my clients. And, and I never trust a skinny chef. You know, I mean, it just, you've. You. How can you trust someone that believes so much in annuities, but they themselves don't own annuities?
Yeah.
You know, interesting concept. So.
It is. And I've seen. I will say this, this has been an interesting thing for me in the IMO world. I've worked with a bunch of new agents over the past, I mean, really this year, and I've had a bunch of brand new annuity agents that are selling.
