The Last Quarter Is More Important Than You Think | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 117

Hello, everyone. This is Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach. And welcome today's podcast. As usual, we have Caleb north here, my son in love, like tolerable. But.

But hey, we're gonna go ahead and get right into today's podcast. So go ahead. What do we got to talk about?

Yeah, we're gonna talk about ending 2020 with a bang. And it's, it's interesting to me because.

You know, doesn't 2020 always end with a bang? Does it every year end with a bang?

Well, it always should all New Year's Eve. I mean, I guess that is the end. That's the beginning of the new beginning. But I think it can be easy to kind of start to, to taper downhill a little bit and kind of start coasting towards the end. And so definitely want to be talking about, man, how can we encourage agents to be actually kind of ramping up? You know, It's, I mean, 2020, I think it's a good time, personally. I think it's a good time to go back over, you know, goals from the start of the year. But walk us through, Chad. What do you do kind of towards these ending months?

You know, I just actually did a podcast for another organization. I was talking about how November, December are my strongest months always. I mean, there was a rare exception when I was gone, I think three months, three, excuse me, three weeks out of one December, my dude still did 3, 635,000 good. And so, I mean, nothing to complain about. I think last year I did 4.7 million in December and 1.8 million in November. And the year before that, 2018 was very similar. So I'm looking at, honestly, my November and December are going to be killer this year. And I actually have, starting, I think the 15th or so, I'm going to be gone for almost a three week stretch with a couple days coming back in between. Still, I think I'm gonna knock it out of the park. The main thing I know when we're talking the end of the year is you don't necessarily have as many appointments, but the people that meet with you are very serious about protecting their money. If they're gonna take time to meet with you when they got family in town, there's only two things. Either they don't like their family, which is very possible, or they really want to protect their money. They don't want to go into the next year. And I would even say January and February are great too, because you have people making New Year's resolutions. Hey, I'm not going to deal with market volatility anymore. But a lot of people, I tell them in that once again, you never, ever, ever sell from fear. You sell from safety and security.

Right?

So I don't say, oh, man, what if the market does this, what if the market does that? I just say, once you like a peace of mind going into Thanksgiving, going into Christmas, knowing that one of the greatest gifts you can ever give, ever give yourself is a peace of mind. And you're going to be less stressed when you have family around, because that can cause a lot of stress. But if you don't have to worry about any sort of market volatility and I don't know, I don't know if the market's going up or it's going down. Like I've said this for years, there's two things nobody can tell me, how long they're going to live for and what the market's going to be doing tomorrow. We don't know that. We don't. So when you're talking about finishing strong, you want to eliminate the possibility of the downside and still participate in some upside. And also giving it really a peace of mind for income where they don't have to think about anymore.

Yeah, that's really good. And so is that something that you actually say to clients? Are you talking to them and you're telling them, hey, one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, peace of mind, so you actually use that? Yeah, that's a good one. For these listeners to go back and note down and use in their appointments is.

Oh, yeah. Do you really, I mean, think about this. Do people want to spend their retirement watching business news all the time wondering if the market's up, the markets down? I remember 2008, I was going hunting and let's see. Yeah, this 2008, I was going hunting in October and the market just had a huge drop. And I'm sitting there going, in three weeks, I came back and there was a huge drop in the market. Those people that said, oh, I'll wait till you get back, what happened to them?

Yeah, they were wishing they didn't.

Absolutely. And actually, I take it back, I was gone for 13 days, but I had a client that was gone for three weeks. They did a cruise in Europe. And when we, when we met again, that's when the market had that huge drop. But I do remember when we were out hunting and I came back for one day into the gas station, we're just filling up and I saw stock market drops over 900 points. Now, remember, the stock market was a different place than it was right now. 900 points was a catastrophic drop. And so I saw that. And here I'm thinking, none of my clients have to worry about it. Went right back out hunting. Where a lot of times people, if they're in retirement and they run into that, that's a bad deal, for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I thought, I find it interesting that November and December are two of your best months, because for a lot of the agents that I'm talking with, they talk like, November and December typically aren't as productive. And I've got to assume that that's just a product of you've got Thanksgiving week where you're pretty well not doing any business, and you've got, you know, Christmas.

I don't agree that there's definitely been some. I'll usually have two days where I'm running appointments. So usually do Tuesday and Wednesday. And I've had some monster sales in that week, once again, because if they're willing to meet, it's very important. It's on their mind, they want to do it. And the reality is how many people, truly. And we talk about, with all this pandemic stuff going on, we may not be having gatherings. I know we are. We're gonna have family together. But I know in some places they're saying you can't even. You can't even have more than two groups of families or something, so who knows what it's gonna look like this year?

Yeah.

But I know a third of my business is generally done October, November and December. That's in November and December.

Definitely the bigger third of the business done in a quarter of the year. Yes, that's pretty good. And what I was gonna say in that was, you know, it's almost like they maybe go into it with the assumption that people don't want to meet over that week. So maybe they've got leads, but they're not calling them because they're just assuming. I'll just call after, I'll just call later, that is.

Why do we ever get in that mindset? Somebody's not going to meet at any time of the year.

And that's what I'm saying. It's a mindset.

It's like a mindset. I mean, I remember Christmas or. Excuse me, in summertime. We used to be told in summertime, everybody's gone, they're on vacations, they're not going to want to meet. So I bought into that mindset for two years, and I used to take all my vacations. So I take literally a month and a half off in the summer. And I was like, wait a second, what am I doing? Because I was told that, sure enough, I decided to space out my vacations, only take like one or two weeks each month. And it was amazing the amount of business I was right over. I wrote over a summer that everybody else is saying summer is not going to be good.

Right.

So it is, it's all mindset. If you say you're not going to sell, you're not going to sell. If you say you're not going to be able to help people, you're not going to be able to help people. But if you sit there and just every day, hey, I can help someone. Today you're going to help someone. Doesn't mean you get Right. Sales every single week. But even if I run appointments, I don't get sales. I still am able to help people.

Right.

So I don't, I don't base my success off of, did I write a big annuity? Was I able to help someone? Right now, obviously the byproduct of that is the sales, but the primary concern is helping someone.

Exactly, exactly. And, and the reality is too, if the mindset isn't in the right place, meaning I'm not, I'm not thinking that I'm going to be able to book appointments because of the time of year. I'm thinking I'm not going to be able to book appointments because it's Thanksgiving or it's, it's Christmas or whatever. It's a week around that. Whatever. That's the mindset you're. They will inevitably be leaving people on the table that need to be helped 100%. Yeah.

And somebody else is going to get them. True.

Somebody that's willing to call.

Yeah. I mean, when you think about a lot of times people that do seminars, they stop doing them November and December because people aren't going to schedule seminars. I don't believe that's true at all. I think the people, once again, that are hungry and eager to meet with someone and get their situation fixed. Absolutely, they'll meet with you. You may not have as many appointments. But honestly, I'm kind of fine with that. I had 15 appointments last week and I'm just like going, please, somebody cancel. Please somebody cancel. You know, I actually had someone the six o', clock, they canceled. I'm like, yes. And most people wouldn't do that, but I was tired on Thursday. That's a lot of appointments.

So, yeah, man, I Remember last December? Yeah, it would have been December 2019 was up until this spring, your record month. And it was almost 5 million in one decision. And I remember seeing a video of you. I think it was either either your wife or one of your daughters got a video of you and, and you were doing like this. Yeah, you're dancing because you had a record month.

It's not a proof. There's no video proof of that. I think we might have to figure.

Out how to get that video up somewhere.

No, we don't want that video up anywhere. But there's no proof I've danced anywhere. Yeah, except on our wedding.

Okay.

On my wife and I's wedding, not our wedding.

Well, no, we don't have one of those.

No, we don't have one of those. No, that's good.

But it's true. I mean, you, you. It's not just, oh, yeah, November and December are my two best months. Like, you're not. It's not just hype words to help, you know, try and get agents to go and do what they're doing. I mean, that's truly your numbers. Back that up. I mean, almost 5 million in one December. I mean, you think about Christmas being in that same month, it's like that's, that's. That's kind of mind boggling, the amount of travel that people do and still being able to produce that number. But it just goes to show, if you're not willing to stop, there's still business to be had, there's still people to help. There's still money to be made. It's. I mean, it's all the way around.

Well, and I'm still enjoying Christmas, too. I'm still enjoying Thanksgiving, too. I mean, I'm taking time. I'm able to have time with my family. Yeah, but man, you know, my family's trained. When I have really big November and Decembers, Christmas just mysteriously gets bigger and bigger, you know? I want to change my Christmas list, dad. Yeah, okay, sure. No, Mom's already got the everything bought. Sorry, we can't buy anymore.

That's good. Yeah, man. And that's true. It's. It's a way that it, it doesn't just help your clients. There's. It's trickle down. I mean, it's generational. And that's the beauty of being in an industry like this. Now, Chad, do you set goals. Do you set goals at the beginning of each year? I know. I've heard you talk about your goals.

I don't say goals. I mean, in My mind, I kind of have. I want to do 32 million this year, but every week, every day, it's. I'm going to do my best today to help everybody I come in front of.

Right.

So the side effect is the numbers.

Right.

But once again, my goal every day is to help the next person that I'm meeting with. That's really what it comes down to. I don't think about. I used to do if I want to write 250,000 a week, and then I was like, you know, it just doesn't matter anymore. I just want to help whoever I can with whatever situation they're in. And the numbers got bigger, and they got bigger, and they got bigger. I remember this was probably eight or nine years ago. I actually had a tracker for the year where I'd color in once I hit a certain number. And I. I wasn't even into March, I think, and I just tore it off and threw it away. I was like, I don't care, you know, whoever I get to help, I get to help. And the other thing I look at, too, is I'm very particular about spending time with my family, too. So if I start to feel it in a normal year where we don't have all these restrictions, I just feel like, you know what? I need a break, so I'm going to take a week off. Well, if I look at that little tracker there and I go, oh, man, I'm taking a week off. I'm taking two weeks off. I mean, we did a couple vacations last year where we were gone for three weeks. I mean, how would I look at that? I'd see stress. So now every single week, I just want to help who's in front of me. If I have no appointments, I still have other people I can help, other people I can reach. I mean, it's not just about business. If you just constantly have in your mind, I want to help whoever I'm in front of today. Like I said, the side effect is a success.

Exactly. And I would be willing to bet that when. That's the mindset that you're almost always going to end up producing more than what you would have set as a goal to produce, because you're going into every single lead call, every single appointment with that mindset of, I want to help this person. And so it's a hundred percent every time you don't look at the numbers and see, oh, wow, you know, it's. It's. It's March, and I'm 45% of the way to my goal for the year. Oh, I now I can just kind of coast. It's every single one, 100%.

But I also, I think goals. And once again, I'm not saying don't set goals. I'm just saying how I do it. If I set a goal, I'm going to subconsciously value someone that has more than another. And so when I meet with someone, if you have $100,000 and my goal is to help you or you have a $2 million and my goal is to help. To help you. It's. It's equal. I mean, I want to help you, so I don't care. I mean, I actually have found over the years have more joy in helping people that thought they could never retire. They only have two to $300,000. They thought they could never retire, and then realizing, oh, my gosh, I can actually retire. I can actually have a plan to retire versus I meet with someone's $10 million, pretty good chance they got an idea they could retire.

Right.

I met with the lady that had a couple last week, and they have, like, 14 million in cash and 14 million in property. I assure you, they have no. And they're actually pretty darn frugal. They're good, but they don't care about am I going to retire or not. They know they're going to retire, but somebody has $200,000 helping them. Man, that is rewarding. Yeah, that's rewarding.

That's awesome. I love that, Chad. And that really is such a great mindset. And I encourage every listener take that mindset into the holidays. You know, it's not just another sale. It's another person to help. And when that is the mindset again, the sales are just the byproduct. So that's great. And I think that that is a recipe to end 2020 with a bang.

What do you say? I agree. I think that's a recipe for pure success in your life in general.

Yeah.

Because once again, it doesn't. It does not revolve around how big the deals. Do we track that? Yes. I know what my average sale is. But if you go in there just saying, I want to help, what can I do to help you? What can I do to serve you? I'm an expert in this area. What can I do to serve you? You'll watch what happens to your sales. Watch what happens. It's a byproduct.

It's so good. That's so good.

So is that it?

That's a wrap for this?

Wow. That's it?

Oh, yeah.

Good thing. Happy selling.