What to do After the Sale | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 144

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week's podcast. As you can see, I am wearing my new attire, Heaven's Armory. It's another one of the companies I own. If you want to buy this, you have to go to heavensarmory.com and you will be able to see. Not yet. It will probably be, I don't know, a month. We got to get everything up and running. But I'm definitely going to be creating a gun store and we're going to be doing Airsoft. And why? Because I like diversifying in safety and security, and you're dealing and dealing with safety and security to me. So anyway. But okay, what are we talking about today?

Well, today we're not talking about all of that that you just mentioned, although I do like the shameless plug. You're a wheeling and dealing guy. We're going to talk about the second half of the annuity sales process. Essentially the second half of being an annuity agent. The types of things that come up after the sale is done, after the policy is delivered. One of the things we face, a lot of agents do, agent reviews, annual reviews, dealing with client death, and now the spouse trying to navigate that, or clients asking about turning on income, that kind of thing. And so I want to kind of go through those few things. Pick your brain a little bit on that. That's a terrible term, but we'll do our best.

I never really thought of that before. I'm going to pick your brain. Yeah.

No, it's awful as having a daughter.

Who had brain surgery and they had to remove part of her skull. That is disgusting.

You don't want to. You don't want to deal with that?

No.

So how do you. Let's just take a step back a little bit before we get into actually dealing with the clients. After the policy is delivered and it's in force and everything. How do you actually prepare your clients to work with you once that does happen?

Well, so there's a couple things. I don't do annual reviews, but I make it very clear to my client, when you get your annual statement or your index allocation statement, call me and I'll go over it with you. Make it very clear. I state that multiple times now. There have been times where someone says, hey, you know, I had a life changing circumstance come up. I need a little bit of clarity. Can you come back out again? 99% of the time I will, sure. You know, so I train them from the beginning though, right? Is, you know what, you can call me because most of the time in our Indexed annuities, you don't need to do a review. The reason why we pick these products is because you know every year you're going to get some gains if the market goes up, right? Well, depending on what the cap, the spread participation rate is. But you know, your money's never going backwards due to market volatility. If you have an income rider, you know for a fact that income rider did get added onto that account. Sure. So when I'm looking, I'm really going, I mean, what's the purpose of an annual review? The reason why people generally do annual reviews is to get more business. That's really, they say, you know, and I'm saying vast majority of the time. Sure. Because there are some people that just, hey, I just want to meet with my clients, come into the office, we can go over everything. Part of the reason why I don't do this lives because the range of my territory. Right. I have 125 mile radius from where I live. So that's 250 miles as the crow flies from one end to the next. That could easily be a. For our apart appointment.

Sure.

So, you know, it's not realistic for me to do annual reviews, but I can absolutely do them over the phone. It's not complicated. I mean, I know all these different insurance companies. All the statements. I could tell you a go down halfway through the page. This is where you're going to see your income account value go up about three quarters of the way. I actually go down a quarter of the way on the back the second sheet. This is where you index allocations. On the back of the third page, that's where you're going to sign your name. I, I just, you know what they look like. Yeah, I can tell you. I don't even have to. You can just tell me the company. I, and I visualize in my head what that form actually looks like. But the second part of being an annuity agent, I mean, obviously a lot of people think sales is the number one and it's not. Solution finding is number one for me.

Sure.

But letting the client know there's still a value. Right. Because our industry has a reputation of saying, well, once you get the deal, you're gone, you'll never hear from again. I tell my clients, hey, if I didn't want to hear from you again, I would not be giving you my cell phone number. Like I literally give my clients my cell phone number and I say, if I'm not a date with my wife, out with my family, in appointment at Church or sleeping, I will answer that phone. And I do. Yeah, I just. Just last week, I answered the phone at 10:30 at night. Why? I was sitting on the couch not doing anything. Believe it or not, I was not doing anything. It's very rare that I get those moments where I'm not doing anything. Actually, I was. I think I had my computer open and I was looking. Yeah. You know, I was doing some work, but I wasn't. I wasn't occupied enough to where I saw the number, I answered it, and I was a client. And the first thing they said is, you know what? I can always get in touch with you. And it's true. Yeah. And if they call me and I'm busy in an appointment, whatever, the second I'm free and I check that voicemail, I will call them. Yeah. So it's important to let your clients know that you are available. Right. So I would say it's the solution, finding, Giving them a peace of mind and comfort. But then on top of that, making sure that you're available for them. Sure. And then also. Excuse me, I just. Opportunity. Two days ago, I could have told you I had a $900,000 sale. I could have told you that. Right. But I went to this client's house they were in nine and 10 years into these annuities. And every one of the companies, I knew what they were in, I knew what they had. Some had income riders, some didn't. But when I looked at everything as going, you know what? I told them flat out this. I said, you're with great companies, you're great products, you have great income riders on these. I don't want to move any of this money. Now, I will tell you flat out, and don't tell me you know this isn't the case because I know a lot of agents, I would say seven out of 10 agents would have walked out of there with some annuity sales. Sure. But I said, you know what? You're in it. I don't want 78 years old. I don't want you restarting surrender schedules. I know you're already getting a good amount of income. I could have probably increased it by a couple hundred dollars. Maybe between the 900,000. It just wouldn't have been worth it to the client.

Sure.

Now, if you're thinking once again in our industry, I could have walked out with a $900,000 deal, that's a huge compensation, but it was not best for the client. So I was like, you're. I reassure them. And when I left, I Can tell you they were, like, just over the top. Thank you so much for letting us know we're in the right thing. Yeah, I've seen. I've seen annuities replace that were 2 years old, 3 years old, and they were pretty good annuities. But the. And from the same agent. Sure. So the agent would come out there and churn it, which we all know that's illegal, but they do it anyway. I have. I have a. There's one agent in my area that sends out letters. I actually haven't seen one of those in about a year. But he would send out letters to all his existing clients, and about every two to three years, he would churn the policy. Wow. And it was crazy. And I looked at the surrender fees. He would fill out the surrender fees already for the client, fill out their surrender fees because he knew it, because it was their client. And then he would go, if I put you in this bonus product, this is how much you would get. And so it is. It's a slimy industry. And so we got to be the ones to make sure we're not just there to make the annuity sale. We're doing far more than that. We're actually being. Go figure. We're looking at what's the best for the client. Right. It's their money, man. It is not ours.

It is. I remember you telling me that story earlier this week, and you wanted to mention it in the podcast because that is. That is something that you come across not super often, but often enough that inevitably other people are going to be coming across it, too. What do you do when you get to an appointment and the client's already in the best product for their situation, or at least something that isn't worth moving them? And you have to be willing to say that. You have to be willing to walk away from, in this case, pretty much a done deal. Because if I remember correctly, it would.

Have been a done deal.

Well, and you talk about being able to be contacted. I believe you said that this client was upset at the agent that originally sold them those policies because now they had all these administrative workers that they were able to get in contact with, but they couldn't even call the agent. They couldn't even talk to the agent.

I actually, I resold that product for that previous agent. Yeah. Because they're saying, well, why is the index value so low and the income value is this high? And they said, well, I'm sure when you met with this previous agent.

Right.

Your primary concern was not outliving Income, not passing more onto your heirs. And they're like, yeah, we're more concerned about income. Said so just to make clear, you're more concerned about you having enough income to never outlive that than to pass more onto your heirs when you die. And said, that's exactly why this agent did that. And I'm telling you, you're in really good products. She did a great job. You know, she picked the right products. I can tell you at that time, because it was over the past eight years, or eight to. Over past eight to 10 years. I said, at that time, that was the best product. At that time, that was the best product. It was three different companies, right? And I said, she did a great job. And they left there feeling good. They still don't like the fact that she didn't contact them.

Absolutely.

But they did like the fact that I went there and just solidified what they had and why they had it.

Peace of mind, able to bring them peace of mind.

And I'll do that for anybody. But, man, having someone in their latter 70s knowing that they made the right decision, that is really good.

It is. That's amazing. Let's talk about if a client dies and the spouse of the client ends up calling you to try to figure out, okay, how do I get the death benefit? Or. Or let's say they're doing income and it's a joint. It's a joint lifetime payout. And now she wants to continue that, trying to navigate all that with interest.

Walk them through every little step. And if I need to, or she wants me to, or if vice versa, it's the spouse, the wife that passed away, I will go out there, right? It doesn't bother me. It's not an inconvenience. That's part of my job. And I. It's funny, though, because I do get clients go, I'm sorry to bother you. And I always. I go, it's not a bother. This is my job. You know, because the people make this assumption that you got paid your commission, you're never going to hear from me. No, I committed to the rest of your life. And if something happened to where, for whatever reason, I'm not in the annuity business. Fifteen years from now, I'm going to have someone that's available to talk that client.

Right.

God willing. I mean, obviously, if I'm dead and, you know, whatever. I mean, if you're taking it over and we die in a plane crash, then we gotta figure that one out. So we don't have that one Figured out yet?

We don't have that one figured out.

But we are flying on the same.

Plane in a week.

Wait a second. How do we. Yeah, I used to. I used to have another business part. We had a rule we. We would not fly in the same plane, but.

Huh.

Yeah. Interesting.

Figure that out.

Maybe I'll fly in the front, you can fly in the back.

And then hopefully somebody makes it.

Well, then my daughter has to fly in the front because, I mean, I don't care.

She can sit by me.

That's good. Well, and it's interesting, Chad, what you're talking about here, because.

Inevitably agents view themselves as salespeople. Ideally, the mindset needs to be. I'm helping people.

Yeah, right.

Because as soon as you get into the mindset of salesperson now it's. It changes the driving factors a little bit. You and you were talking.

I actually take offense to if somebody calls me a salesperson. Like, no, I find a problem and I find the solution. That's what I do. You make the decision.

Protect people's retirement. It's all about the protect.

I'm not trying to sell anything. If you act right now, I'll throw in a free pen signed by me and maybe one of my books. Yeah, I just. Oh, man. Boy, I went infomercial voice on that one, didn't I?

You did.

Okay, so what were you.

But for the, for the sake of the discussion, right on the front end, it is a transaction of goods. Right. So you're dealing with that part of it.

Sure.

But you're also the customer service.

Absolutely.

As an agent, you are both.

Absolutely.

You are both the. The person that is again, quote unquote, making the sale. And I don't like it.

No. Though we've. We've seen there are some agents that literally, they have the per. Another person make calls. They have another person set the appointment. They have another person do the follow up. They have another person. And then the. The agent is really the guy that signs the sign application.

Yeah, it's true. We've seen it. And then if the client wants to call in, they get somebody else other than the agent.

Yeah, but you know what? If you're going to be like that, I'm not knocking that at all. There's some efficiency. I know some very good agents. There's some efficiency to that. But the reality is make sure your client knows that. Right. You know, I've seen really good agents. They'll actually walk the client to. This is the person that will take care of you if something happens.

Like in office.

Yes. Yeah. So they don't just go, okay, I'm done. They actually will escort the client to the person.

That's good.

And I like that because now there's that expectation. Absolutely. But I say, you know, if I have a radio program, if I'm talking to them on the phone, whatever is, I say I will be the one to help you. Yeah, of course. And I always add this, unless there's some unforeseeable circumstances.

Right.

You know, there are certain things that happen in life we have no control over. So as long as I'm capable of doing it, I'll help you.

Yeah, well, and I'll say to Chad that from what I've seen of your business, you get referrals not because you're asking for them.

Yeah.

But because of the way that you service your clients.

Correct. And they know they can always get in touch with me and they know that what and how I told them how this product worked.

It actually did.

Go figure.

Yeah.

You know, that's why always present from worst case scenario.

Right.

If the market does nothing, your worst case scenario, if it's a straight indexed annuity, you have no riders, you're straight. Your worst case scenario from market volatility is you earn zero.

Right.

If you surrender prematurely, you're going to have a surrender charge.

Absolutely.

So that's worst case scenario. There's not many anything else out there that you can represent that I know of where you could use a worst case scenario to present it.

Yeah.

Like Chevy trucks. I mean if you went there and you said, you know, if you buy that Chevy truck, you might as well put an extended exhaust on it because you're needed, gonna need to turn into wheelbarrow because you know when it breaks down and that big toolbox, you're gonna want to put a big toolbox in the back. But you have to be careful what kind of tools because if you torque anything on it's gonna break. You know, that's why so many people don't buy Chevy's and Ford's the number one selling truck because you know, you worry about them breaking down. But anyway.

Yeah, well, I just lost, think about it.

I just lost 10% of our agents because we know that are 90% are going to do Fords. We know that.

Oh my goodness. This is an age old discussion. Since the I think the day been going back and forth Chevy versus Ford.

Still said you could marry my daughter. What the heck.

That's good.

So yeah, I think that would help you. Once again we always take care of our clients. Our clients are our top priority. And if you do that, you just don't get complaints. You don't have issues. You have clients that feel comfortable. So remember, your client needs to feel like you're the one and know that you're the one that will continue to help them. So I hope this helps you. You have a great day and happy selling.