Starting Strong: Second Quarter Strategy | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 190

On this episode, we will talk about how to start the second quarter strong.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode. I am Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach, owner of Retirement Realize Financial and Retirement Realize Agents Academy. This is my sidekick, Caleb North, Boy wonder, the one and only. What are we talking about? I already know what we're talking about. That's why you need sleep. More coffee? Anyway.

Wow.

Yeah. Exciting.

That's how this one's going.

That's how this. And you have no idea how this one's going.

Okay, well, we are in the second.

If I had grandkids, I'd be a lot calmer, just so you know.

You think?

Yep.

I don't feel like that's my responsibility to take.

Okay, okay, okay. You're married to my daughter. How are you not responsible for migraine?

I don't think that my choice to.

You have nothing to say.

Create human beings with your daughter.

Take a moment in time. He was silent for, like, three seconds.

Silent for like, three seconds. I don't think that my. My choice to have kids now or not is my responsibility to help keep you calm. Like, I feel like that's your self control.

Justifies why I let you marry my daughter. That's justifies. It makes it a lot easier.

Okay.

Yeah. Anyway, okay, just so you know, he has no emotional complex. He doesn't battle depression. He's actually a really normal guy and he loves to be poked at. It's just fun. Anyway, yeah.

I'm one of the few that can handle Chad's poking.

And I told you, you're the one I can ignore the most.

Yeah.

I think I probably mess with you more than anybody else in your world.

I would probably agree with that.

Like, even your. Like, even your best friend, like, y' all joke and tease, but it's not.

But that's why your nickname's Mosquito.

I thought it was 4 wonder.

No, no, that's the. For the podcast. You're. My nickname for you is Mosquito. You just keep buzzing my ear.

I thought you said it was thorn this morning, Thor. Well.

And you clearly are not. Thor.

Similarly built. Our locks are comparable.

You're.

I was gonna say. Wait a second. Do you really wish you had that?

No, I don't.

Okay.

All right. Starting the second quarter strong. Now that we're, you know, two minutes into this thing.

I want to encourage everybody to review the quarter. One review the first quarter of the year. And. And look at that. You know, in contrast to your annual goal. Right. I imagine most listeners had a goal going into 2022. But you break that down into four quarters, you need to write 25% of that goal.

Which is interesting though, because if you can keep that same pace. So you break your goal into four, knowing that usually the fourth quarter is your biggest one.

Well, for you it is, but most.

Agents, it's not really.

Yeah, most agents. Because I think what it is.

I know what it is. It's because they take off three weeks for Thanksgiving, they take off three weeks for Christmas and New Year's Eve, and then they wonder why their fourth quarter is. And then of course, Halloween, we got to take two weeks off of that.

Got to. Yeah, I got to go. You know, you spend so much of that couple of weeks in a coma from the candy.

Well, you know what's interesting though, I wonder if, and I don't know if this is 100%, but I just kind of drew this. If they know the holidays are coming up, a lot of people taper their leads off.

Correct.

So if they know Thanksgiving and Christmas, they tapered the leads off and then they wonder why they're.

Which isn't a good idea if you're trying to have long lasting relationship with lead companies.

No, it definitely isn't. But you know, it's interesting because if you can do first quarter, second quarter, third quarter and these, I can assure you your best agents, 10 million plus dollar producers, their fourth quarter is the strongest.

Yeah, well, it's consistently been your best.

Yeah.

I mean with the exception last year. Yeah, last year was an exception. The year before, that was an exception to 2020. But that was more a product of the lack of time off. Like you.

You.

A good year for you is over 14 weeks off. 2020 with COVID and the shutdowns of things like you didn't get that. So you were just going all year.

That's kind of how this year's going a little bit. I haven't taken.

You haven't taken much this year. You're also working toward a very specific goal.

I am.

20 million by June.

Yeah.

Which you've never done. But you're also off to a better start than you ever have been before. But for those that you had, let's just take an annual goal. Let's say this year you wanted to write, you know, $4 million in annuity.

Business just to specify that's 20 million by June as an individual producer.

Right. That's with your own. It's not downline. That's down my real life financial.

Nobody's making my calls. Nobody's doing My pending business, Nobody does my follow ups, nobody runs my appointments. I do all of that.

And that's why, that's why to me, the academy is such a no brainer. It's like if Chad, using lead sources that every other agent has access to, go and use, can write, you know, over 25 million a year. It's like, can a piece of that process one document, one, you know, little thing they change in their phone script or their appointment process or whatever, help somebody double their production easily.

Well, that's why people in the inner circle are high level producers, because they realize it's not about changing everything, it's about changing the one thing. Yeah, teeny little things here and there. Because you know what? You can have a 500 horsepower engine and definitely not a Chevy, but a Ford. You could do that and you could have the belt out of alignment just a fraction and you've lost a ton of power. And so you say, well, what about all this power? Yeah, your belt was off just a tiny bit. So let's get that timing right and we can fix all that. I mean, I've seen the most powerful engines get derailed by the tiniest little thing.

Right.

Like I said, we're not talking about Chevy engines. They get derailed just by starting.

Oh yeah.

But just how it is, you know, But I mean, even you think about it, a spark plug just not screwed in or right or not. What's called when they do the, the gap, the gap in the spark plug. You know, if you don't have the gap. Right, right. It can cause the timing to go up. All these little things and it's this big powerful engine and you just. These teeny little tweaks that happen that change everything regards the, to the actual power of the engine.

The whole system needs to be operating at peak, peak performance to get the.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's really what it comes down to. When you're starting your, your second quarter, you just maybe need to take it in for a little bit of a tune up. You know, if you're in the retirement realized agents academy, go through the platform again.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you could get through that entire platform, I would imagine, what, 25 hours, 30 hours, the end?

Well, you could do the full annuity sales system in about a weekend if you really like, you dug into it. But I have doubt about retention if you go through it that quickly, spend a week, go through the annuity sales.

You know what I would do? I would actually put open that up on the phone and as you're driving, just let it play.

Yeah.

Because there's some courses that I know we have out there that I tell people. I do it myself. I pay for my own training as well. I go and get training and some of these, they're only in E courses. So I just open it up while I'm driving and I press play and just let them move on to the next.

Yeah. But I was going to say too, if your quarter one was not what it needed to be for you to hit your annual goal, try and make the tweaks to recoup what needed to be recouped in Q2 so that you.

Can be able to do that with the market doing what it's doing, you should be able to do that.

Yeah. So plan to make it up this quarter and like Chad said, get your process in for a tune up. Maybe you've never done good annuity sales process training before and you need to, you need to go to retirement realized agents academy and sign up. I guarantee you it will help you. It's not a. If it's like, if you actually do what Chad talks about in the training platform, it will work.

Well. It's funny too, because people say, well, hey, I listen to podcasts every week. That should be enough. Number one, the fact that you're not willing to spend money on training tells you how serious you are about the business.

Yeah.

And anybody who's serious about getting better will find a way to make the training work no matter what. And, you know, I'm not just plugging retirement realized agents academy, Retirement realized financial. That's not what I'm doing. I'm talking about what is the commitment level.

Right.

Because unfortunately, most FMOs, they do not have good training platforms. They don't.

It's just a fact.

It's like, oh, we're going to do training this week and we're going to welcome everybody. XYZ Insurance company, they're not doing sales training. They're doing product training about why their product beats everybody else. I'm not opposed to that.

Right. It's important.

You're not getting trained how to do this. And if you want first quarter to reflect or do better than the first quarter in the second quarter, then you have to continually get better.

Yeah. There's got to be. Yeah. What did they say? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing consistently and expecting different results. The other thing is, I would highly encourage you that if you're in the mindset of your leads are making or breaking, you, like, do what you need to do to get out of that mindset because that's a very, very dark like place to be, I think just even in your subconscious because you're dependent upon something outside of you being at its best for you to be at your best. And you need to be at your best regardless of what is going on outside.

Yeah. So what I wrote over 27 million last year. My goal this year is minimum. 35 million. That's a minimum goal.

That's a huge jump.

But on top of that, $200,000 in life insurance premiums.

Wow.

So when I'm looking at that, I'm going, what does that mean? I haven't really done a lot of life insurance in a while.

Yeah.

So it means I have to dig really, really deep into. I'm looking at life insurance with living benefits because I really want to make sure clients have some sort of way to, to take care of long term care. Right. And I don't like it with straight long term care policies because they don't guarantee premiums usually.

They don't have the built in inflation protection on a lot of them. Sure. And so these living benefits can help supplement, you know, especially when you add Social Security, pensions, things like that. But I have to learn and learn and learn. So sometimes that means I'm getting up at 5:30 in the morning and I'm studying. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know it because I just told you, but a lot of people don't know that, right? No, I have to make time to do this because it's important to my clients.

Yeah.

And so if you really want to get going and do better in second quarter, then you need to be better in second quarter. Well, what about third quarter? You need to be better in third quarter. So therefore you need to study.

Yeah.

It's a non stop process and I hate to break it to you, but it never stops, Right. There's never a time you stop learning in this business. That's reality.

It's. And man, how cool though is it that you don't have to. Right. Like I don't know, for me, I thoroughly enjoy the continuing education of things. I thoroughly enjoy getting better and improving. Like the idea of having attained or arrived at this is as good as I'll ever be to me is just totally unattractive. I mean like I just.

Reality though, there's times obviously you don't feel like learning, you don't feel like opening the book. Sure, listen to podcasts, but I mean so much of life is not based off of what we feel like. Or don't feel like doing.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the reality now. Of course. I want to take vacations. I really want to take a vacation.

Right.

Really, really, really want to take a vacation. But now it's not the time.

Right.

You know, so I have to sit there and go, okay. I need to be patient. I need to realize that this is a season where we have a huge opportunity. There's a lot of people right now with this market bouncing all over the place like it is right now. If I was on a vacation, I wouldn't feel comfortable and relaxed.

Sure.

Now, that's just this season. There's been times where the market's been bouncing all over the place. I felt totally fine.

Sure.

Just for whatever reason, right now is not the time.

Maybe in June after you've written 20 million for the year. And Hawaii's, you know, recanted their mask in vaccine stuff.

I don't. I don't know if we've been to Hawaii so many times. We're from there. We live there.

You want to go somewhere you've never been?

Yeah, I want to go Iceland, Scotland, Ireland.

I want to go to Scotland so bad.

Oh, yeah.

I found out I'm 24% Scottish.

I'm 48 Scottish.

Well. But I'm more Scandinavian, so.

Well, you got defeated.

Well, the Scots.

I'm pretty sure they did. The English took over. The Scots. I know it's a sad point. In my childhood, you know, back when I was that age, you know, the English came in and they came with their swords, and they started overtaking our village.

When you were in third grade.

Oh, yes. Yeah, fifth grade.

Okay.

But the vacation thing brings up a good point, Chad, because we may have listeners that they. They totally hit their. Their goal for Q1, and maybe they're in a surplus. Like, I know for you, what you did in January and February sparked this goal of 20 million by June. Right. It's like. So maybe they. They've written more than.

I mean, Honestly, what sparked 20 million by June is. I just said it.

You just decided. I'm gonna.

I just. Just decided it. And, I mean, I think I decided that the first week of January.

Yeah.

That is gonna do 20 million by June. So.

There'S. There's no way to either. No other way to explain it other than. There's just this drive inside of me. I mean, these hamsters are running a million miles an hour. There you go.

I was gonna say, for those of you that did hit your goal and you want a Little time away, and you've got the ability and you can do it. Go for it. I mean, I'm a firm believer, Chad, that burnout doesn't come from doing too much of something. It comes from doing too little of the things that fill you up.

Yeah. Burnout comes from people who aren't passionate. And, I mean, that's a reality. It's my passion that gets me up in the morning to help others. It's my passion that drives me to become better and better at what I'm doing. It's being, living with purpose and intent.

And even if you have that passion, like we saw this in 2020. Right. Where the passion was unwavering, but the actual fue. Fuel that you had inside, as the year progressed, it tapered because you hadn't taken the time to recharge and refuel yourself. So.

But I still ended up taking off, what, 13 weeks? I think 13 or 14 weeks?

Was it that much?

Yeah.

You just didn't go anywhere. It was like.

No, we went. We did local. We did. We did states and stuff. I mean, it wasn't 20. 20. The year we did that, when did we do the North New England?

That was.

That was last year, I think that was 20 last year.

Yeah.

So I don't know. It's One of the 20s years are.

Starting to run together.

They are starting to run together. And I heard it, when you get grandkids, it's even longer and, like, it's. Life goes by faster. So they say, and you're in your teens and your 20s, you think you're gonna. Like, it's never gonna end. Then in your 30s and your 40s, you start to go, okay, man, I'm getting older quicker than when you have grandkids. And I think it's because you're watching once again, a little one grow up, and it just speeds it up anymore. Then once you get to your, you know, 60s, 70s. I mean, the two things I hear my clients say more than anything else is, I got older quicker than I ever thought I would, and I'm living longer than I ever thought thought I would. Those are two very, very common things I hear clients say, hmm, Gosh, that's.

Well, I mean, I'm not old, but I can.

Grandpa. And you ask them, how quick do your days go? And I think a lot of that has to do with.

I think it's percentage of. I mean, think about it. When you're a year old, one day is 1 365th of your entire life.

Or maybe when you get older, you just forget half the day and it feels like a blank.

Maybe, but it's also a day is a smaller percentage of the time you've been alive.

Yeah. I mean, that's why titled in book stress and rocking chairs. Two common killers of seniors. I mean, stress because you worry about everything. Rocking chairs because you don't do anything.

Right.

Whether it's you don't have money or you just physically can't.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's. Yeah. Now it's kind of depressing.

Well, I'll give them three things then you do three areas for you to focus on and work on in Q2, number one, calls becoming more efficient and more effective. And what do I mean by those two things? Efficient from the standpoint of when you're calling a lead for the first time to book an appointment, you don't need to be on the phone for 30 or 45 minutes.

No.

Okay. You can get the information you need, build rapport via your expertise, and book the appointment in 10, 15, 20 minutes. If it. I mean, 20 minutes is a 20 minute call. That's a long.

10 minutes is a good time. Booking appointments, getting information.

Number two, the appointment process. Right. Conveying good information and good education.

Effectively.

Yes. And also, I mean, you could incorporate efficiency there. I mean, a long appointment for you is 50 minutes.

That's a long appointment.

Because they're in that.

That generally means where I'm asked, I can explain everything, hands down, 30 to 30 to 35 minutes in detail. I can explain how the indexed annuity works and get all their information.

Right.

But I always allow two to two and a half hours in between appointments or for an appointment because I don't want anybody to go. I got to go.

Right.

You know, I just. That's why I don't wear watch during appointments.

Yeah.

I never want my client to feel like something's more important than them. Now, a lot of that has to do with the balance you put into it when you go to doctor's appointment. A good doctor will absolutely make everything very important to what's important to you. But they realize there's other people they need to help. So you do need to be honorable in time with that from that standpoint. Totally.

And then the third one was your closing. Right. And that being a deal where your clients are closing with confidence in the decisions they're making.

Notice what you said there. Who's closing the deal?

Clients. The clients they're deciding. I want to move forward with the.

Sales person that closes the deal. It's the client that realizes this is best them. How do they come to that conclusion? Because you presented appropriate information, not scare tactics.

Right.

You presented appropriate information. They put the emotions they think are important to them, and then they made the decision what's right for them. No, it's not. I mean, I had to tell a client just recently. They like, hey, you know what? You know, you go through your sales pitch. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, this is not a sales pitch.

I heard you. Yeah.

I said, and this was on the phone.

Yeah.

So this is not a sales pitch. I said, I will explain to you how products work. You decide what makes sense. But if you think I'm out there to sell, then we don't need to meet.

Right?

And we met.

Yeah.

You.

You pumped the brakes on that client real quick. But here's the deal. It set your appointments up to be so much better and so much more fruitful. Deal aside, like them actually deciding to do the annuity or not aside, it set the appointment up to be a bet a whole lot better because they understand your intention going into it.

My intention is to present my. My total intention is to present information and facts that allows them to make an educated decision on what they want to do.

That's it.

That's all it comes down to. Come home.

Let's make it an awesome Q2.

Let's do that. Talk to you later. Of course. You guys have a great day, and happy selling.

Sam.