Have you ever considered the experience in getting a haircut to the marketing of annuities? They are very similar in the process.

Many agents call me and want me to help a specific case with all sorts of contingency issues. The agent wants to make the sale and if he could get some help on a certain point then the prospect will surely buy. Generally this is a situation where the issues are not as clear and the agent thinks. My experience has shown that resistance to buying is based on one thing…a lousy fact finder.

When I encounter this issue in my own practice and a prospect I think should buy will not then I just use the “barber syndrome.”

NEXT!

It is so much easier to move on to another sales situation than to beat a dead horse to death. Put your energies to work in marketing and finding new prospects than worrying about one prospect. If they haven’t bought after you presented the solution developed in the fact finder…they are never going to buy from you.

The idea of firing the prospect and moving to the next one is totally liberating. It puts you as the salesperson in control and makes the business model work so much better. Our products are not for everyone and our prospects situation can never be put into a prefabricated mold. By retaining control over who you do business with gives you an attitude of control and professionalism. Do not be afraid to fire a prospect and move on. There is always someone else to see and someone else to tell our story too.

Next!

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity.com

A “pitch book” is a short explanation about what you do as a salesperson and a brief insight into our industry and our products.

My pitch book changes constantly as situations in the financial marketplace change but it is always the same. It tells the prospect about me and our industry. I like to keep it fresh and always in movement as situations evolve. This business is very competitive and keeping a pitch book fresh will have an impact on your ability to build relationship quickly.

Here are some tips to building and managing a successful pitch book.

A historical perspective of the past is important. If you are an annuity salesperson then show how annuities have helped so many people in the past. Connect the past to the present with human evolution such as “Did you know that Benjamin Franklin owned annuities?”

A nice touch is to relate the American economy with the possibilities of the future. This allows for your prospect to relate to their present situation w by viewing a longer period of time such as 1950 to 2000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S/P 500 can be very persuasive in making this point.

A good point is to show how world events can affect the financial markets and by showing the possibility of a downside will strengthen the overall presentation. This allows the prospect to understand that there can be times when investments may become more volatile and that a plan that stays the course is a plan that will work over a long period of time.

Third party information is essential. By referring to another source will show credibility to you. These can be newspapers and magazines that are relevant and allow their use.

Explain the process about how you work and the time frames and the steps to working towards a goal. Try and place the client into understanding how this process can be personalized to his situation.

Fully explain your services and what the prospect may expect from you. I always include a list of references in my pitch book and I always give my book to the client as a first meeting gift. If possible package the book in an upscale manner so that your prospect fully understands you are a professional and you expect to be treated that way. By setting the stage in this manner you will remove many obstacles that will appear during the final sales process.

1. Describe how any unique features of your approach that are aided.
2. Close by showing samples of what your thinking might look like if it were pulled together into a plan or specific portfolio for today.

A good pitch book helps point out what you have to offer, how it’s different and what you hope to accomplish. Your pitch book will set you aside from other salespersons and by taking the extra step in content and packaging will take a huge step in making your prospect your client.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity.com

While watching golf on TV the other day I was inspired by the name on the hat that Phil Michelson wore. I Googled them and found out they were business consultants. Their expertise was consulting with medium to large companies to evaluate their business practices and to locate bottom line methods to increase profit. I thought how in the world did I miss this for my little annuity business.

I hired a business consultant to look at all aspects of my business and help me make better business decisions so I can be just like GM, Boeing and United Airlines. The overall cost was a little more than $5,000 and I spent about 2 days answering questions and filling out questionnaires. All the information was entered into their computer and it must have cranked on it for at least a day. The report was mind-blowing; things I had never even considered were introduced to me.

They had evaluated all my expenses and the bottom line were these ideas.

- Send E cards and save on postage.
- Buy all my stationary in bulk based on a 12 month need.
- Use only ATMs that have no fees.
- Cancel magazine subscriptions and use the internet for my news.
- Cancel my whole life insurance policy and replace it with term.
- Make my 2 employees coshare their health insurance cost.
- Cut back on Starbucks and make coffee at the office, quit going out to the coffee shop.
- Buy copy paper in bulk one pallet at a time and make the stationary company store it for me until I need it

I read all 99 of their suggestions and thought… not no, but Hell No!

Who wants to live like that? Who wants to be that extreme. What should I do if I want to have a better bottom line? It was very easy, see only 10 more people in a year and this will result in 1 ½ more annuity sales. Based on my average care size of $77,000 this would provide an additional $10,000 to my bottom line. Only 10 more new seens a year! How simple is that?

Here is my plan for expense reduction….DON’T!!! Life is way to short for this type of bottom line drive.

When your whole focus is on reduction and not sales you become very negative and not proactive. We are annuity salesmen and we need to be active and proactive.

One terrific tax benefit I did receive from my consultant, I got to write off his consulting fee. My attitude is that it is much simpler to sell than to reduce.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity.com

Sales organizations love to sign you up. Contracting you is one of their greatest joys and why shouldn’t it be. You do the work, you invest your money and they get the cream of the overrides. What do they invest in you…Oh yes I know….Service!
In my book, service is a synonym for greed.

Answer these questions:

- How many times have you had an annuity marketing company attempt to recruit you?

- How many telephone calls and emails do you get each week from annuity marketers?

- How many times has a marketing company offered you free leads as an incentive to contract?

- How many times has a marketing company offered you their “secret” CD to learn what how the big boys do it?

Insider Secret Number 1:

You control your contracts
Here is my very first rule and one I hope you will adopt. Get a pre-release letter!
When you contract with a marketing company they forget to tell you about being released in the future!

- What if your situation changes?

- What if you found a marketing system better suited to your personal situation?

- What if you wanted a change?

- What if we did not satisfy your marketing needs?

- How do you get released?

Do not become a slave to your FMO, demand the pre-release, they all will do it!

Insider Secret Number 2:

Most annuity sales marketing organizations do not know how to sell annuities. It is the old saying.. Those that can’t sell, TEACH!

Learn how to sell annuities and how actually market yourself and your business from “those that do.” This is an easy topic to check out, just ask your FMO how they would make a sale in a specific situation and their answer is always based on product. Try it and see for yourself. If you are committed to working with an FMO, also hire yourself a coach, one who has sold and who can sell. This is the very easiest direction.

Insider Secret Number 3:

Insurance company products are designed for only one reason, to maximize profit to the insurance company.

The newest, latest and greatest annuity is just a new wrapper around the same old product. The insurance company buys bonds to guarantee the performance and no matter how you look at it, the yield and the annuities are all in the same arena. Just more sizzle. If you chase the new products you will be just that “a chaser.”

Chasers never build a practice, never have anything worthwhile to sell to their clients other than the newest wrapper on the same product.

Be different! Sell annuities based on the benefits they can provide to the owner. The real reason to buy an annuity is not based on yield but on benefits.

Learn these secrets and do as much for yourself as possible. Rely on the FMO as little as possible.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity.com

Selling annuities and being able to sell tons of them boils down to a simple concept, being polite. We all want to be nice and want people to be nice to us but being polite is different. I have used this concept for my entire sales life and not only does it work but it becomes the basis of a business plan that is not taught in business schools. And yet it is the full basis for any successful relationship, be polite.

How do we use it in our business plan to convert it to sales. If you are basing your sales efforts on building relationships then you are not an annuity salesperson, you are an order taker, an amateur not a professional.

How do we begin this process? We do it by learning an very important phrase. A phrase that will transcend your selling efforts to actually becoming a salesperson. What is that phrase and how does it help you to become more successful?

The important phrase to learn is “would it be a bother?”

Would it be a bother?

What is this actually saying? It is saying may I have permission. It is saying I am polite. It is a link from one subject to another and a powerful tool to change and control a relationship.

It does have some limitations and those limitations have to do with your desired target market. If you are working with people who were in their early 20’s during the Korean War, World War II and older as a target market, this is complete power. This generation operated on the premise of “politeness”
“Would it be a bother? Is based on being polite and can bridge any two subjects and allow you to dig deeper into the relationship.

Try this….”I know Mrs. Jones that you are not in the market for my services but “Would it be a bother” if I can over this afternoon and just introduced myself?”

Dead mortal cinch she will say yes…if she is in this target market age group.
You are really asking permission to change a relationship from looking at you as an outsider to one where you may become a friend. “Would it be a bother” is a bridge from one topic to another and a method to explore more fact finding questions and to seek answers based on how your prospect actually feels.

Adopt this attitude into your selling and it will become part of your life. Being polite is the secret of developing suspects to prospects to clients.
Once a relationship is developed on being polite almost any question can be asked. With the freedom to ask feeling questions begins the basis of selling annuities.

- Politeness
- Feelings
- Relationships
- Suspects to prospects to clients.

It is this approach that sets the true professionals form the rank amateurs. Amateurs make $5ok a year; professionals make $5ok a month. Learn this approach and join the ranks.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity Selling

Want to sell more annuities? Here is an easy way to connect with your market providing your target market falls in this category.

Senior adults who were 20 or older during the Korean conflict. That would make them from about age 68 and above at today’s date (2007). This group all has one common underlying social connection. That connection is the famous philosopher…Will Rogers.

Will Rogers was the most famous man in America from 1918 to his death in 1935. He had a national radio program, a national newspaper column and starred in movies. This time period was before television and many people obtained their social interaction only with the available media, newspapers, radio and movies.

Will Rogers is the single most important name and most recognized name from that era.

America had a national day of mourning at his death in 1935 and Will Rogers laid in state at the United States Capital. His funeral was so attended it took over 11 hours for the crowd to dissipate after the services which were only attended by 400 inside but by 125,000 outside. His funeral caused the largest traffic jam ever recorded at that time.

Will Rogers was and is an American icon. So sell to that time period. Buy his books and the books written about him and you will learn how senior adults now feel about their affairs. He was that big of an influence over the American culture, and still is.

Memorize several of his quotes and use them like this: My friend Will Rogers used to say………..Your prospects will relate and you will have an advantage on building that beginning relationship.

My favorite quote is this…”The only person who really likes change is a wet baby!” And that may apply to you because always doing the same thing in every sales situation makes you stale. Make some changes and see your annuity selling take off.

Another Will Rogers tip is this…his advice is timeless. Read his books, learn about his thinking and it will also help you become a much better salesperson. Guaranteed.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Selling Annuities

These are really interesting when you break them down. The differences between how men and women look at life. Here are some thoughts.

REMOTE CONTROL.
Female…. A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
Male… A device for scanning through all 375 channels every 5 minutes.

Female… The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one’s partner.
Male… Leaving a note before going drinking with the guys.

Gender selling, is there a different approach? Here are my experiences:
Selling annuities can also be separated based on the gender of your prospect. If you are selling to a single female (senior) safety and security is at the top of the list and trying to sell indexed annuities is not a good idea.

Single men are much the same way, generally safety and security is important and I have found that single men are always interested in how much of a monthly income they receive at some future point in time. Single females don’t seem to have this concern.

Now put them together and a whole new chemistry is developed. The male always wants to know how much can they make and to the female it is less important. In a married couples situation an indexed annuity almost always will win and it may have something to do with the hunter/gatherer/nest builder syndrome.

I am not being sexist here, but based on my experiences, men are hunter gatherers and women are nest builders. A nest builder goes through three stages, build the nest (early family), keep the nest tidy (family years) and clean out the nest (later in life).

So it is important to sell to the situation, married couples will almost always have an interest in indexed annuities because of the thoughts and needs of the male. Focus on upswing and yield as a benefit.

- Single females will almost always want safety and security and would not be a good target for an indexed annuity. Focus on safety and security.
- Single males will always have an interest in future income so focus on the benefit of annuitization.
- Married couples will almost always have more interest in how the money can grow. This can always be accessed by who is talking the most. If the husband talks the most then it is an indexed annuity sale. If it is the wife talking the most, then safety and security is the benefit to focus on.

By separating sales concepts via gender separation will in fact provide you an edge in selling annuities. Whatever you do always focus on the benefits an annuity can provide and how those benefits can be of use to your prospects.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity marketing

I mean it, selling annuities is the easiest sale in the insurance industry. It is all a matter of positioning and having a focus. The focus is simple: numbers. Having lots of people to see and tell the annuity story to is the secret. Leads and lots of them is all that it takes.

Insurance agents all have one thing in common, who can I see today? Many agents even have such a fear of not having anyone to talk to that it makes them almost paranoid. The solution is very simple, do more marketing. Remember, it is all about numbers.

Here is how to do it. Decide on a target market such as seniors age 65 and above as an example. Your target market can be almost anything such as any age group, any income and any asset level. Once you have located your target market then place your marketing plan in motion.

The marketing plan can be built around many different approaches so for the sake of simplicity let’s use direct contact (direct mail.) With your selected target market decide on a subject that will be of interest to this group. A sample topic may topics like this:

- Reduce your social security taxable income
- Protect your assets from nursing home expenses
- New rules regarding your IRA and how to reduce taxes
- Avoid probate cost for your heirs
- Etc. Etc. Etc.

Next select a service to do the marketing so the actual work is outsourced. Numerous choices are available and trying several will help you select one which fits your geographical area and personal approach. A simple Google Search will locate several choices but my personal favorites are (America’s Recommended Mailers, Kramer Mailing Services and Russ Jones)

Next do this, mail 5,000 mailers a month for a solid year. Do not stop and do not evaluate the program for the whole year. Be focused and do not quit. The cost will be approximately $1,300 a month and you should expect a return of about 2%.

Take the expected returns of 100 leads and have a professional telemarketer set your appointments (cost should be about $10 and a little spiff to her/him will go a long way, start small and bonus). If averages hold, you can expect approximately 40 quality leads a month or an average of 10 a week. The leads that you are unable to see place in a drip system and have your telemarketer recall every 2 months for a year. Working 10 quality leads a week for the work year will provide you with 1 (one) sale and the drip system will provide ½ sale every other month.

The total sales you should make is 52 plus 6 from the drip system for a total of 58 a year. Next calculate your average premium per sale and for this you may use the industry average of $37,000. Multiply the $37,000 times the 58 sales and your total premium will be $2,146,000.

Multiply the premium ($2,146,000) times the average commission of 7% (varies and should be higher) and your gross income will be $152,220. Now subtract your cost of leads (12 months times $1,300 = $15,600) from the gross income and that will leave you a net income after sales cost of $136,620. You also need to average in the cost of the telemarketer and that will depend on your personal situation but a good rule of thumb should be $500 or so a month.

An annual income of $136,620 will place you in the top .6% of income earners in the United States. And it is all done with a simple process based on numbers. One important type is this; throw away the leads that you cannot reach and those who want to be contacted later. By throwing away the leads will set you free, truly.

There it is, simple, easy and totally manageable. Oh, one other thing, it is very profitable.

Bill Broich is a 30 year annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads. Visit his website to learn more - Annuity.com

Had a phone call from an agent who said that by following these five marketing strategies he went from being blind about marketing to tripling his annuity production.

Check it out…

1. He was blind to the fact that he needed a good quality mailing list to use when he mailed out a series of postcards he received from our marketing system. In fact by following our “3-Step Postcard System” and mailing a 1,000 to 1500 postcards every week his production increased.

In addition, he found by mailing the same prospects at least three times over a three month period his response increased.

2. He was blind to the marketing fact that he had a horrible phone approach and door approach that cost him sales. He took our advice and by using just three key words he was able to set two appointments for every six seniors called who had received his postcard, but never responded to his 800 number or website he placed on the postcard.

These three magic words I’ve tested for years and I could personally call in the morning just six seniors (preferably widows) and I would have two solid booked appointments for the afternoon.

3. In addition, he learned in my marketing system that he was blind to how to approach prospect at their door. I gave him a door approach that I used when I was full time in the field working that allowed me a 65% in the house ratio for the initial interview. He used this approach with the people who he mailed out the postcards, but never responded to his request for a free report, or a benefit kit.

4. And that’s not all…he was blind to the fact how important it was to stay in touch with his current client base on a monthly basis. He uses both our Annuity Pro Lead Capture Web Page and monthly Client Newsletter to stay in touch with his clients.

5. And here’s the kicker…he started using our referral technique that gave him an average of three referrals on every appointment.

You will slap your forehead when you learn this technique.

The above five steps allowed this agent to average three solid appointments per day and literally triple his annuity production.

You can read more success stories and also my story how I was a lead junkie and always had 50 new leads a week in my shoebox on my front seat.

Go forth and prosper,
Russ Jones
http://www.ultimateinsurancesystem.com
http://www.PmrSystem.com
http://www.89Million.com (new)

Heard of Squidoo? I’ve only been using it a few weeks, but the website has major buzz and justifiably so. The site is an incredible marketing tool. Basically it’s a web page builder… You can build what they call lenses which are simply web pages. Your lense can be about any topic you choose. It could be a professional bio, an article about insurance, maybe you want to review an annuity product or you simply want to show off pictures of your grandkids or pets.

You’re probably saying, great. I can build webpages. Big deal. What you really want to know is how Squidoo can help you get more leads and make you more money. When you setup a Squidoo lens pick search engine key words and phrases people are searching for. You can get a general estimate of keywords people are plugging in on the search engines and how many searches a word or phrase gets every month by using this keyword tool.

Type in annuity here and you’ll see the number of monthly phrases and other related keywords.

These constitute the number of searches performed on Yahoo. Google tends to run 50-100% higher. Plus you have engines like MSN, AskJeeves and the others which provide even more searches.

If “Annuity” is the key phrase you’d like you would want to attempt to secure www.squidoo.com/annuity. Granted that’s a highly desirable word and (I’ve checked) it’s already taken. But why not secure phrases close to your area… why not grab.

(Note: For some reason unclear to me the Yahoo keyword tool only returns singular words. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plural searches as well… don’t discount plural words and phrases because there doesn’t appear to be searches.)

Google and the other major search engines love Squidoo and tend to rank Squidoo pages very high on their search results. If you get a good ranking and take the time to write useful, original copy with your contact information you will likely pick up leads.

Squidoo is fairly straight-forward and easy to use, but it can take a while to learn. I ended up reading a short very well-written manual to help me navigate the Squidoo system. Check it out: Squidoo Marketing

Squidoo is just another tactic in the neverending quest to obtain leads. It should be a part of a comprehensive annuity lead generating and selling system, not used as the sole method for attracting new business. The best part about Squidoo is that it costs you nothing. It’s 100% free to use.

Bill Broich is veteran annuity salesman who helps agents generate annuity leads and close more sales. Visit his website for more information: Annuity