Refining Your Appointment Process | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 129
Chad Owen walks annuity agents through refining their appointment process by watching client reactions and adapting questions to market conditions. He argues for learning from mentors and practitioners, not just books, and using martial arts and family analogies to show how proven processes get better through practice and small tweaks.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. We are excited to have another one. Of course. We do these every single week. And the whole purpose behind them is literally to keep you in front of knowledge and wisdom and revelation. No, just the latter two coming from.
This side of the table, the former coming from that side of the table.
What do you. Do you have alcohol?
Clearly he's hallucinating over there. And anyway, but what are we talking about today?
We're going to talk about refining your appointment process and kind of walking us through. How did you get to the point where you are now? Because obviously, you know, you talk about. And we train on it, the training platform and everything. We're walking agents through your appointment process all the time. And I can't imagine that the process that you're using now is the same one you used when you were first starting out, or maybe it was, but I just kind of want to walk through that process of how you ended up getting to where you are and then why? What's the why behind the way you do things now?
Okay, so I can use an example. How long have you been married?
I have been married almost four years.
Are you better now than you were then?
Oh, yeah.
How do you become a better husband?
You practice.
Okay. Yeah, practice. You pay attention. Right. So.
God, there's so many things like this. This is my son in law. So there's so many things I could say right now, but I'm going to stay focused. Yes. The reality is I've been married for 28 years. We have four kids, the two oldest are married. How do I become a better husband and better father? I pay attention when I do something wrong, I watch the reaction and know most of the time not to do that again. Sometimes it's just worth doing it again just for the reaction. We talk about that a lot, Right. Sometimes we just do things just to watch the eyes roll and the head shake. That's all part of the consistent part of life. You truly become at things when you truly care for who you're representing.
Absolutely.
And I represent my clients. And so in my marriage, I represent my wife. As a father, I represent my kids. So I constantly am watching how they react. They respond by when I say something, I go, oh, man. Having three daughters, I've learned over the years there are certain things you just don't tease about. Sure. Now guys, you can tease all day long, but if you tease a daughter, if I tease my son, he's going to respond differently than if I tease my daughter. And about the same Thing. And so you just learned. Whoa. You don't say that. You don't do that. You know, I remember one time, just joking around, I teased my daughter about, oh, you like that boy? And she started crying. And I look right at my wife, and I'm going, can you please translate? Because I don't understand what she's saying right now. She goes, you never tease a girl about who they like. I'm like, oh, well, I did not know that.
Yeah.
You know, because you tease a boy about. You like. Oh, yeah, I like her. Tease a girl, dad. So, yeah, it's. It's one of those things. You just pay attention. Sure. And this is literally in every relationship. You become better at the presentation and the better at the. The. I would just say the interaction by paying attention, the way what. How the person's responding back to you. And so when I'm helping clients, that's how I do my fact finders. My fact finder is the most changed piece out there. And it's because I watch people's reactions when I ask those questions.
Absolutely.
And if I get this question that used to be valid, but it's not anymore, it doesn't seem to be as big of a concern. I'll eliminate that question. I'll come up with a question that might suit better for a current time. So it's literally constantly watching your clients, seeing how they're interacting. And then that allows me to modify how, when, and what I'm asking, what I'm saying. And that's. That's what I'd say. You know, when. When we're. When we're trying to figure out what are the hot buns of a client. Because one will care about something else.
Right.
Completely different than another.
Absolutely.
And that's why we just got to pay attention.
Constantly watching.
Absolutely.
Now, one of the things in terms that's frequently used in the industry, especially in the relationship between a marketer and an agent, is this idea of strategizing. Let's get together and strategize. Let's get on a phone call and strategize. And I like the term because it makes sense. But I'm thinking about the appointment process, and I'm starting to think. And the important thing is not necessarily strategizing. It's literally just paying attention. I mean, that is the strategy.
It is. I mean, we can use fancy language and make us sound like we're really. Let's brainstorm. You know, let's. Let's really strategize. No, we're just all we're doing is we're finding out what your current situation is, what the problem is, what the solution.
Right.
I don't know how much strategy you have to put into play. I mean, it's just. This is what you can do based off of what you have, right? I don't know.
Pretty cut.
Yeah, it is. It's pretty cut and dry. I mean, strategy is when you have to deal with a lot of the unpredictable. Sure. You know, that's why strategy and war is important, because you can always have something thrown your way that you never expect. If you're using an indexed annuity, especially if you have an income rider and you're working on an income plan, that's not a lot of strategy. That's just. This is what it does. This is when you can activate it. This. I mean, you could layer, I guess you could say you could, you, you could ladder annuities in and income plans. Yeah, I mean there's, there's times where you may have a five year loan on a car in five years, you don't have that payment anymore and you plan on keeping that car till the wheels fall off. Well, then you have less payment there. So therefore you have more disposable income. So. Yeah, I guess you could strategize there. I don't know.
Well, it's kind of, it's kind of like a. You've got a sandbox and this is the perimeter of what you have and all the stuff in it is yours to play with and figure out how you're going to make it work. And that's the extent of it. I mean, you've got these different moving pieces and that's, that's really it.
It's just necessarily worse because I would dig deeper than the sand and now I made clay molds of things and I guess so.
Gotta just poke right through that analogy, huh?
Right. I'll just, I'll create entire empires just off of the mud under the sand. There you go.
Well, I like it. And that kind of brought. Brings me.
Actually, you know what I'm going to add to that analogy and then I'll poke it. Sand shifts all the time.
It does.
If you make something with mud, it's going to be more stable than sand.
It'll dry and it'll be solid.
Solid, exactly. So you want to have, you want to get past the sand, the variable products that move all the time, that cave in on each other and get to the mud, the deep where you can actually make something that's stable.
There you go, nice, good clay down there.
There you go.
If we live in Texas, we got plenty of the clay or we have.
Rock two inches under the ground. I'm gonna dig a swimming pool. No, you're not. You're gonna blast through some rock.
Yeah, that's really what it is. Well, and that, that kind of brings me to the last thing I wanted to talk about is giving agents practical things for them to start doing right where they're at to refine their appointment process. And I mean, just based on the conversation that we've had today, sounds like they just need to start paying more attention, just start listening better, start observing more what their clients are doing when they say certain things, when they do certain things, and then refine accordingly.
I've done so many talks and stumped the chump and things about objections. And the reality is most objections happen because you didn't address the first questions. So therefore they don't feel confident that you're even listening to what they're asking or, or you don't know how to explain the solution to the problem. So therefore they don't have confidence in who you are. That's helping them. So therefore more and more questions come up to where they just don't understand how you're going to be the one that will help them. And the reality, when it comes down to very simple process, it's simple. Go through the platform over and over and over again. If you want to get to the upper levels of our event or our training, if you're not part of that, then then you have to become part of our marketing organization. And when I'm looking for an expert, for example, if I'm going to. And I love martial arts, I did, excuse me, I did Taekwondo a long time ago when I was a little, little kid. But I've done Krav Maga for years. I haven't practiced for quite a while. Cause of the whole Covid stuff. But when I want to be trained by an expert, I'm not going to go and train someone who is. Or train with someone who still is not practicing.
Sure.
Who still is not trying to get better and better at their skill. Right. I'm not going to train with someone who has read every book on how to be incredible at Krav Maga. I want someone who actually can physically kick my butt. I mean literally, I always want to train with someone who's better than me. And that's not too difficult to do. I remember when we had this jujitsu guy come in and he was a black belt in jiu jitsu. And I consider myself fairly capable. I mean, I can do some damage. This guy treated me like a cat toy, man. I mean, I used all my strength, I used all my what I thought was skill. And this guy, I could not get close to him because he kept sticking his stinking knee in my chest. And I couldn't even get close to him. He would leverage my weight against me. This is a guy that practiced every single day. So when I tried to go against him, there was no way. I mean, if we were able to start throwing punches, it's whoever gets the lucky shot. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Because even there, your skill doesn't matter. I mean, yes, you can block, you can do that, but there's times where I've seen the best of best get a lucky. Someone gets a lucky shot in and that best of the best is knocked onto the ground. And, and, but if we're just doing skill set to skillset, my strength meant nothing because he just toyed me around. Well, what good if I had someone who's book smart in that they could not get down and wrestle on the mat with me. They just couldn't. If you're in the annuity business, you want someone training you that is literally wrestling on the same mat.
That's a good analogy. Yeah.
You know, I am in the field, wrestling training, studying, learning. I'm getting my hands dirty. I'm actually out there. And so when we're trying to help clients and we have market conditions change, we have political conditions change, we have everything that changes. I'm adapting to that environment. Once again, if I have a trainer in martial arts that's used to fighting one person at a time and all of a sudden six people rush them, that's not going to be a person that's going to usually be capable of taking care of six more people. But we actually train. We'd have, we'd have a dark room, they'd be flashing lights. We'd have spin our head around on a bat, and then we'd have five people attack us. And I'm going, okay, how did I learn how to do that? Because the instructor knows how to do that. He taught me how to do that. He's like, get in the corner. If you're disoriented, get in the corner. That way, you know, you only have one area you're literally trying to guard against. Wait till you get reoriented. I could learn that because that person was actually training every Single day. Just like I wanted to be, I wanted to be that person. So there's been people in my life that I constantly watch and follow. I have a mentor in my life right now in business that he's so much farther along than I. I mean, I'm a long ways away from where I need to be compared to where he is. But I'm watching, I'm learning, he's training me. I'm not going to do some. This is where colleges can be a challenge. You just graduated. Right. You can take a lot of that knowledge from the books and apply it. But what's EAS said you. I remember you telling me that actually being in the environment where you're actually real life practical application, that's how you do it. Why you were watching me, you're watching Josh. You're watching people that are going through business and you're going, this is real life application, not just book smart. Right. So that's why being part of our organization is important, because you have someone that's actually training. You're actually out there, just like you. So I think it's a constant adaptation to current market conditions. Sure. Because it's always going to change.
It is.
We are never. I mean, even if I do this for 20 more years, I guarantee you next year is going to be different than this year.
Absolutely. Well, just like in 2019, nobody ever expected 2020 would be full of COVID and look at what that we don't know. Nobody knows.
Nobody knows. And that's. And we have to be able to adapt to that. And the only way to do this, to have that person that's out there with you experiencing the same things. My dad used to have the saying. He was in the army and he had this saying that the sergeant in the battlefield has way more pole than the lieutenant that just came out of school. You know, he was talking about in Vietnam and he didn't go to Vietnam, but he knew people that did. But he was talking about his training. He goes, you know, people want to know that sergeant, that guy's been out there for a year. He's probably pretty stinking smart.
Right.
You know, and got lucky many times.
Right.
But he knows, okay, you know what? Something doesn't look right over there. Let's. Let's fix that. The lieutenant comes out of school, and I'm not knocking rankings at all. I'm just using an actual principle. And the people in the military will tell you that, you know, someone who's been in the military a long time will tell you, if you're going in a battle situation, you want the people that are experiencing battle with you, and that's the same thing.
Absolutely.
I'm in battle with you.
Absolutely. And so that's a great point is when you're talking about refining your appointment process, or refining any process for that matter, is don't necessarily try and just start from scratch and refine. Start with a baseline of something that has worked and continues to work for somebody else.
Sure.
In this case, you, Chad agents are able to come and see your appointment process and understand how you do that and then start there, use that process, and then they adapt it accordingly based on their personality or the type of demographic that they're dealing with and they're wherever they're located in the country, things like that. Very small tweaks at that point. But it's like, I mean, it really is a lot simpler to get to a really solid system and process when you start from somebody or with somebody like yourself that frankly is doing it, has done it and continues to do it.
I would not want to have to go back to ground zero again. Absolutely. And start over again. It's a tough industry. Tough to learn this, especially when you're. I mean, now we have YouTube, we have technology. You know what, YouTube. I've watched some of these videos from these experts. I'm going, you are so far off. I mean, I. It's not that common. I run into people that explain annuities on YouTube. I'm going, no, that's not how that works. Nope. You're not explaining that. Right. No, if I did that, I would never get a deal.
Right.
You know, I mean, I just watch. Because I watch a lot of YouTube videos on annuities and fortunately know enough about annuities, know what they're saying is not true. And the product they're explaining, that's not how it works. There's this one guy that's really, really well known, and he explained this product. I'm going, that's not even remotely how that product works.
Sure.
But they, I mean, you couldn't tell from listening to him and watching him that he didn't know what he was talking about.
Right.
I mean, he had a really good, great video, looked good, but holy cow, the information was just so far off. So it's important. Just keep refining your process. Allow me to help you with that. And we are in an incredible industry. When it's done right.
Absolutely.
When it's not done right, it can be miserable. So I hope this helps you guys. You Have a great day and happy selling.
