The Importance of Having a Strong Brand | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 201

Hey everyone. On this week's episode we are talking about branding and why it is so important.

Good morning, afternoon or evening or midnight, as some people do. Some people listen to our podcasts really late at night and I, I need to start selling products because we know if you watch it like at midnight, 1 o', clock, 2 o' clock in the morning, you're likely to hit the buy button. That's just the reality.

You know what I did at 1:00 clock in the morning two nights ago?

What's that?

I took an IQ test.

And what were the results? Caleb?

I got a 1:30 and 1:00 clock.

In the morning and we know that's all a lie. What is genius? 140.

Elon Musk's 155.

Huh? I'm 156 but I would call Elon pretty smart. So I would say he's a lot smarter than me in a lot of areas. I would.

I mean, and again, of course he.

Did vote for Obama.

Well, I mean, to each his own.

Yeah.

But yeah, I was proud. Get a 1:30 at 1:00am I'll take it.

That's. Those aren't real. What? Those are not real IQ tests.

This one, very real.

Just the fact that you think they're real IQ tests just lost you IQ points.

Is there like a society for this? Yeah. You have to do it through Mensa or something.

No, not quite like that.

I may, I may join Mensa.

Yeah, we're supposed to be talking about branding.

We're supposed to be talking about branding. I wanted to talk about.

I don't know if I can now because now I can't. I got a question. What you're going to talk to me about because you took an IQ test that you thought was real at 2 o' clock in the morning.

It was real and the score is probably a little bit lower than accurate.

So I got a 300 IQ. I did it on the web as well. It came with a certificate as to.

My IQ is what I bowl.

And if.

I'm in deep trouble then man, I got like a 51 IQ that maybe every once in a while I might get a strike. But I'm not a good bowler. You know who's really good at bowling? Your mother in law.

She is.

And especially when she's pregnant.

When's the last time that?

That was a long time ago considering our youngest just turned 21. But she actually, when she was pregnant she bowled and played putt putt like no other. Yeah. Okay, so company branding what is branding?

I like to call it a Primo. As we just established in the last episode last week, a Primo being a promotion that precedes you, so your brand goes ahead of you before people interact with you in a lot of ways.

That's a good way to put. But have you seriously not heard of Primo Beer?

I don't. I know Primo's. Yeah, Turkey calls.

No, it's the hunting brand, but I've.

Never heard of Primo Beer.

Yeah, Primo Beer. The guy used to wear this was back when I was in high school. He would wear this hat.

Yeah.

The end of the two kind of tail things hanging down. And that was the Primo Beer guy.

I have never.

I did not know you. Okay. So I like that, though, because the Primo is actually pretty important because the more information or influence you can have to client before they meet with you, the better if it's done right.

Right. Well, it's. It's the image that you want people to derive from you and your services. So the question that I always ask agents regarding their branding is, does your branding convey the same level of excellence that you claim to have?

Well, I'm bobsmithmail.com buy a $300,000 annuity for me.

Probably not. Going to. Going to, going to. I mean, you may. You may strike lightning in a bottle.

I just saw the same clipper on Word, Microsoft Word that you actually have as your logo.

Yeah. Well, and, and I get it. Right. I think that sometimes agents don't want to eat the cost of branding to have it built.

There's a bigger cost in not doing the branding.

Right.

There's the cost of doing branding. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, what is it, Pepsi like? All you do is see the swoop now or that, that. Not the swoop. The little, the emblem with the colors. You know, you, you, you need no words.

Exactly.

You know, the Nike Swoop, the Amazon Prime, These are all things that literally. The logo without any words. You know what that is, Right. So much so. There's certain companies out there that just. The color scheme, you're going to know. That's what. That's in a company. It relates to this company.

Right.

Versus having any words. It's.

You know who, you know who didn't design those logos? Jeff Bezos did not design Amazon's logo.

Nope.

I can't imagine. Steve Jobs. I can't imagine.

No.

Did not design Apples. Right. Bill Gates didn't do Microsoft. Why? Because there's value in hiring a team.

You have to hire the experts.

If you deep dive the creative design of big company logos, there's this thing called the golden ratio that is derived from the Fibonacci sequence, which is the standard of aesthetic perfection in the natural world that a lot of people are probably. Yeah, that's probably the. But my point is.

Sorry, you were saying something Good, good.

Creative designers and agencies will use that to create logos. Agents that have never heard of that before, I'm sure many of our listeners.

Have never heard of that, are going.

To go to design their own logo, spend their time to design it, be out the time that they could have been writing business and end up with one that was not designed to that level of excellence.

Why? When our team starts to design a logo, I start to fall asleep because it's not really important to me because they know what they're doing and I.

Don'T your more concerned with the results of the 100%.

I don't care how it's done. Don't build me the clock. Tell me the time. That's all it comes down to. I don't even know how many times.

I've heard that one.

Oh yeah. Well, because it's true. I mean, I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at and designing logos is not what I'm good at. But I'll tell you the impact of a good logo. I mean, I've had people say that's a great logo. And that to me just solidifies the importance of why branding is so important. I mean, the whole reason the Safe Money Kit was created was. Was because I went to an appointment and I had the black folder that I took and printed the label, put it on there with my logo on it, which I did. I know my first one, I had a horrible logo, it was Clipart and I had it on there. And then I went to the client's house trying to present and they. He had three folders from incredibly big companies with much nicer logos. And I'm like, why would he pick me? Yeah. And I said that's not going to happen again. And that's why the Safe Money Kit started and that's why it's quality. What it is, is because I. Yes. Did I have a better product? Yes. Did I have a better presentation? Yes. I think, I mean it proved in the numbers because I rarely, rarely ever lose a deal with someone else, especially nowadays. But the. It's when I lay out that Safe Money Kit, I have my Safe Money book, which is the stress and rocking chairs book. I, you know, my business cards. I have a magnet that I give whenever somebody buys an annuity from me. Which reminds me, I need to grab those because I'm out of them. But I have a magnet to where. Hey, when you get this, I want you to put this on the refrigerator. Why? When somebody dies, they always clean out the refrigerator, which is true. So then they look and they go, hey, who's Chad Owen? The financial guy. Oh, I bet that's where my parents money is. So it's all things like that that add up. Little things here and there that make a huge difference. Yeah.

Yeah. Branding hits the client in one of three areas. It either hits them ahead of you, it hits them with you, or it hits them after you. Most of the time it's all three. And it should be all three.

That's right. Dang, that's. That's. Maybe your IQ is right. I don't know.

You. If you, if you agree with me, it makes me have to kind of go backward into the humility side. But if you're disagreeing, then I can kind of self promote a little bit. That's true.

But no, you've said some pretty good things.

But it will. Once it'll. It'll hit home either before you, with you, or after you. The idea is to have it in all three areas, all three stages. Okay. So if we're talking, obviously branding is important because without it, what, what are you. I mean, ultimately, Right. Like, clients aren't generally looking to do business with a sales rep for an insurance company. They're looking to do business with an individual that owns an agency company.

Right.

And, and this company is a distributor of this financial product.

That's why I actually wear a shirt that has my logo on it.

Yeah.

Because there's so many people out there. Now, granted, anybody can buy a logo shirt anywhere, but I see people staring at the logo often when I'm. They're just. Are you really with them? Okay. You own them. Yeah. It's all the time.

Right.

And then when they see, oh, wait, your. Your Safe Money kit has the same logo and the same everything, same color scheme, it just continues to solidify. And we're not pushing our branding. We have branding packages. I mean, that's phenomenal branding. But we talked about this before we ever do branding packages because it's. I mean, man, we've only had to increase you for, I think two years now. And that's actually what the company we partner with to do our branding packages. But that being said, I talked about this when I built the Safe Money kit. Right. Probably 15 years ago. Yeah. And it's so important. And when I had that experience, and it's probably longer than that, I would say it's probably closer. How long have I been doing this? 18 years. Yeah. 15 years ago is probably when I really got serious about branding. And it's just if you look that. What was that? Didn't you do a online search of what the most expensive brand was or something? Logo. It was.

I did, yeah.

It was so high.

And I didn't know this was a thing. Honestly, I. I had no idea. Companies spent. There it is 1 million 200. Was that semantic brand? 1 million 281.

1 billion 1. 280 million.

They spent 1 billion. So that means there had to be a ton of research behind that one. Oh, it had the British logo. 210 million. Right. I mean, that's what they spend for these marketing companies to come up. And guess what? It's working. Because what are we doing right now? We're literally searching or searching. Most expensive brand.

Next time I see some semantic logo somewhere, I'm gonna know.

Yeah. It's crazy what people spend, but I would say the cost of not having a good brand is way higher than the cost of building a brand.

The cost of not having it will hit you in two places, like your individual company or income, bottom line. Right. And that's what I'm referring to. It'll hit you on the front end because there will be people that try to find your business or try to find you, and they can't. So now they're like, I don't know about this. This seems a little bit off to me. Something feels weird here. Trust factor goes down or they won't bother on the front end looking. Most do, but some won't. You go into the appointment, you. You'll have to send them an email. They'll have to send you an email. They'll start to see some things. They'll see, you know, something will. Will tip them off to the fact that this is just an individual person.

Well, you want to hear the trust factor goes down? And there's a lot of times where if somebody, if I'm going up against another agent, I will actually Google them while I'm there with a client. And so I'll pull it up and I'll look at this and it's cookie cutter website or something. I'll say I was spinning around. This is a guy you want managing your money. This is the quality you want.

Because does your branding perpetuate or does it, does it convey the same level of excellence you claim to have?

Now, in all fairness, if somebody does have a good brand, good logo, I'll say, wow, these guys look pretty sharp. Yeah, you know, I will say that openly because I'll recognize that, yeah, they look really sharp. Wow. They got, they got good reviews.

The problem is most don't.

Most don't. I'm telling you, it's in this industry, it, I don't know why it is, but in this industry it's so hard for agents to think they don't have to build their company.

Right.

They don't have to invest in their company. They don't. I mean you look at these people that start storefronts, they know they got to pay good money for a sign. They know they got to have a sign.

Right.

They know they got a marketing. But in this industry it feels like agents often don't feel like they need to do their marketing. They feel like they don't need to have a good brand or logo. They feel like. I don't know why that is because every other business, in every other industry, you have to have that.

You have to. And, and I, I agree. I don't quite understand why that mentality is so easy for agents to buy into. Of, of the feeling of they can get away without it. If it's a barrier to entry thing for them. They're like, I just don't want to spend the money. But you're on the back end.

So what does a realtor do? Often Realtor will find someone like Remax or whatever, a big company that's already well established, give up half of their comp because they want a recognized, well known, well branded company when all they have to do, if they really did it right, they could take, I mean you saw a couple of big homes, you're losing half your commission. Right. If you invested that in a good branding and good marketing, you wouldn't need that other company.

Right.

So yeah, I just, I'm not quite sure. So I want to encourage you, make sure you invest in that whether it's through us, whether it's through someone else.

That's the key, is to have it.

It's to have it, it's to have your email address with your right domain name. So whatever the domain name you use, not at Comcast or, or Google or Gmail or Yahoo, you just, you don't need to have that as your last part of your email address. And that all has to do with branding.

Right.

You know, if you, if you want someone to take you seriously, then you need to seriously do what you need to do to make them feel comfortable in who you are and how you present yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. So as far as branding goes, there are some key pieces that you're going to want to have in place. You, you pretty much have to start with the logo. I mean, ultimately, because that is the.

Everything goes on it.

It does. I mean, your website, your email signatures, your business cards, your folders, your company merch. I mean literally, whatever it is, we'll use that. That's the heartbeat. And the logo itself should convey. And our team is really good at doing this. They spend a lot of time on the front end with their, with their clients to make sure colors everything, even individually, like to get an idea for what, what type of feel, what, what emotions, what does this agent want the client to feel when they interact with this logo. And then you design the logo that creates that feel.

I mean, it makes sense why somebody would spend so much money on the logo first. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

It's the, it's the soul and the heartbeat of the brand as, as a whole because it touches everything. So you start their website critically important. Especially like we said last week in the day of robocalls when it's hard to get people on the phone. You leave a voicemail, they hear your name, their company, your company name, they are going to look you up. If you just leave a name, they'll probably look you up. You send them an email website.

So if you would have go, maybe, I don't know, four years ago, they would have told you to have one website page that you scroll and you have all the information on that. It doesn't work that way anymore. You need to have a page that can be, you can navigate it easily. Especially for our client base, we want to make sure that it's not complicated. There's not a whole bunch of moving parts to it that they can fully make this easy to get the information they need right when they come to our website. So that is very important. I mean if you look at Eagle Shadow Life and annuity.com retirementrealize.com or retirement relates financial retirement. Realize agents academy.com are our agents. Increase you.com with it's just a letter you. And I'm just saying these are companies that we know have been branded and you look at how easy it is and then just go type in financial planner and go to like the seventh or eighth page. Don't do the first five, seven pages because those are all people that understand branding. Right. But I would click all the way, go back to like the 20th or 25th page and see you can find.

Some pretty poor examples.

You can find really poor examples.

So you. Do you definitely want the logo. You want to have the website. Business cards are a staple.

Absolutely.

I mean, I told the story last week. Maybe it was. Golly. When did I. I don't remember. I was on a plane.

Yeah.

A week ago. And. And having a conversation with this lady. And I'm. I work in the imo.

Yeah.

Retirement. Realized financial. I'm not. I'm not in the field like you are.

Yeah. But every day, trying to watch out for your father in love and make sure, you know that I pass the love down through sharing compensation. Yeah, yeah, of course.

But she wanted my business card.

Yeah.

Well, thankfully, I worked at a company that has a business card for me and a very nice business card at that. So I handed it to her. And it's different than most business cards because it's almost. It's like a credit card almost like the thickness, it's. It's, you know, it's solid.

Something that people don't want to throw away.

Right. They see it like, oh, okay, that goes in a special place. But she wanted that. If I didn't have it, it would have been, well, let me just get your phone number, you know, and punch it in. Whatever. It's like, have. That have a business card. Have. I mean, leave behind kit folders. This is huge. And then email, signature, those kind of.

That's why they go, why. Why would you spend $30 or $35 or 40. I don't know what they run, including book. But for this folder, I'm like, that's a big business card. Because they have my cell phone number on the front and the back and my email address on the front and the back. People keep those. Yeah.

Yep. You can. And if you're using books, you can tape or staple your business card to the book because books don't get thrown away. We're in process of a pretty awesome adaptation to the book that I think agents will absolutely eat up. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but you'll want to stay tuned on that.

It's going to be good. Yeah.

So those are the five key areas that from a brand, like when we talk about a branding package, that's what we are referring to. The logo, the website, the business card, the email signature, and the leave Behind Kit folder, there are obviously plenty of other areas. Company merch. There's all kinds of different branding things that you can do to hit those three stages with your clients beforehand, during, and after the appointment. You want your brand to be present in all three of those places and have a good presence.

For sure.

Yeah.

Well, I think that about wraps it up. Right?

Should.

Okay.

We beat that horse.

You talked forever.

It's a good habit. I have.

It is a good habit. What? Okay. Of course we appreciate you just taking this extra time out of your day to listen to this and it will help you. I know we have a lot of testimonies from that. We do have books. We do. I'm looking at them right now. We just got in another big order. So remember, they're in orders of 50. Right.

Well, we can do bulk of 50. We do bulk of 100. We do individuals.

And they go quick because we always announce when we get a big order in, and then we have to go through the process of trying to get them reordered again. And then they give this long time frame. It's just crazy. But we do have books. So go to our website, order them stressandrockingchairs.com or we have. Do we have it actually on the website?

It's on our website now. Yeah. If you go to rragentsacademy.com There is a tab at the top called Shop and you can click Shop and you can order books straight from our RR Agents Academy website.

See how efficient you guys are. Come on. Okay.

If you're an agent in the academy, so we have a lot of those that listen to the podcast, there's a link in the back end, so you just log in. You're doing your normal training. You can order books from there.

Good. Well, once again, appreciate your time. You have a great day and happy selling.

Sam.