In this article I am going to cover annuity opportunities that can be uncovered. This article was taken from a video I did where Mr. Stephen Burgess joined me to discuss this topic.

Most of the content in this article is based on Stephen’s dialogue in our training.

Here’s the video if you’d like to watch:

Stephen Burgess Introduction

If you don’t know a little bit about Stephen, Stephen Burgess has worked with me for many years, helping my agents cross-sell annuities to their existing network of prospects and leads.

The reason I’ve got Stephen on here today is really to give you a very detailed training and analysis of the very same fact-finder he uses to help my agents uncover annuity opportunities, as well as in his own personal business.

Read his self-introduction: “I’m David Duford’s insurance trainer, Steve Burgess here, and I want to give you a history of my background with the fact finder. 

I started very similar to David, going into final expense and dabbling in a couple of different areas and not really getting a good footing. And then I came out to Orlando and I got into what would be called an annuity house: a lot of managers, a training office, a guy with a Mercedes with a fancy watch that was recruiting, a back office.

And these guys every morning from eight to nine o’clock trained and trained and trained and trained new agents on how to get started and what they emphasized most was how to do a fact finder.” 

So, we are going to cover using a fact finder to identify annuity opportunities.

What We Will Cover

What to expect today on today’s training, we’re going to do a deep dive into how to use the actual documentation for the fact finder.

The fact-finder itself, if you’re wondering, should be able to be found in the description box below this video, if you’re watching this on YouTube, or if you’re on our training site, you see it down there.

The goal of this is that we’ll better put you in the position of uncovering qualified opportunities to move annuities.

Just because a client has money, doesn’t make them necessarily eligible to be a good annuity prospect. And by doing these fact finders in advance, that’s going to help us help you.

Whether you are an agent already with Duford Insurance Group, thinking you got an annuity opportunity, or maybe you’re just an agent out there and you’re like, “Hey, I’d like to sell some annuities!” and you want some training on it, this particular training’s going to help you perfectly.

You will be in a better position to uncover those opportunities to then have us help you better write the deal, uncover the opportunity better, and hopefully help you close business and make a good income off of the annuity sale.

Handling The First Meeting With A Potential Client

I think the most important thing to remember is that when you’re going into a person’s house and it is their home, but you’re taking control of the situation and you’re asking permission.

The first thing I do, and this would be for a Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, final expense, somewhere along the lines, when you think there’s some other business there, how to introduce this product. “Mr. Client, if you don’t mind, I’m with the Department of Financial Services.”

And one of the things that we do is we make sure that people’s affairs are in order.

To do that I ask “Do you mind if I do what’s called a confidential needs analysis? I’m going to gather some information in each of these four areas. If it’s alright with you, ask you a few questions just to get a good understanding of your family, your family background and do you have your affairs in order. Would that be all right with you?”

Always ask permission.

Collecting Basic Information

That’s your cover sheet and what you want to do once you get past the cover sheet is you start with just basically the information.

I always write my name there while I’m there. You’re going to be writing a lot, and again, get the idea that the pen and the paper are important.

Asking questions such as: “What’s the date today if you don’t mind me asking? And then sir, “what’s your name?” “If you look here, you’ve got a name, spouse’s name, primary address… is that correct?”

Are they single or married, have they ever been married…  Again, all of this is gathering information for when, at the end of this process, I’m going to be pivoting back and I’m going to need to know this.

The name, date of birth, just the year of birth… “What year were you born, DOB, or what year were you born?”  Generally, if you ask for the year, you’ll get the year and the birth date.

You got to be careful when you’re doing this. You’ve asked permission.

Approach This Interaction Carefully, Be Polite And Ask Permission

This is a very polite process, but as we go through, you want to be extra polite in the beginning, because as you work your way through the process, you’re going to be asking some very interesting questions that they may have a hesitancy towards that you’re establishing upfront as being extremely polite in the beginning.

Be very careful about the date of birth. Just ask for the year of birth. “Is this your home phone?” “Do you also have a cell phone?” “Do you take a text on your cell phone?” “Do you use email or your computer?” “Do you have an email address?” 

Do they have children and do they have grandchildren? “When you were working, where were you working?” I want to know work history on the wife and I want to know work history on the client.

Stephens Favorite Person/Client

My favorite person is an engineer down at NASA. Why do I love engineers down at NASA? They’re all retired. They bought houses. They never moved and there’s always a 401k and retirement plan, generally already an annuity that I can help.

I like to work the Cocoa, Titusville area so that’s one of the things I look for. Name, address, spouse, children, grandchildren, and add to that work history. It’s not listed there, but if you can add work history, you’ll do fine.

Discussing Medicare Advantage Plans

The next thing we’re going to do is to just put my little toe in the water here. This may be your bread and butter on working a fact fighter, which is health insurance. “Do you currently have a health insurance or Medicare Advantage plan?”

Now, if you’ve gone in on a different type of lead and you’re asking these questions up front, basically as I understand it you’ve gotten permission to go back and see this person when open enrollment comes around.

You want to get this information. The main reason I’m looking at this information is I want to know do they have a Medicare Advantage plan, tells me their finances.

What am I looking for as an annuity specialist? I’m looking for a Medicare Supplement plan. Medicare Supplement plans are people that have extra income and can afford them.

I’m very, very interested in finding out if they have a Medicare Supplement plan. As you go through there, you don’t want to get too much detail, but it also asks “do you have any other health insurance, such as a long-term care or hospital indemnity plan”? Again, setting up the opportunity to go further.

The only thing I can say about this is having worked hundreds and probably over a thousand or two before I actually put it aside because once you get the questions, you just kind of ask them in the normal state of conversation for what I do.

But what I found is that long-term care, hospital indemnity, those are all available to you, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time there because, again, I got to balance my time.

I’m only going to have about 10 to 15 minutes here. And I want to get to the section on financing or at least to the section on insurance.

I’m going to dabble here, but here’s an area where if you’re dealing with seniors and you want to show compassion, care and interest, find out what they want to talk about. And I’m going to tell you the favorite subject and David, you may agree with me.

Senior’s Favorite Subject

What is the favorite subject of seniors when you’re working with them is what’s wrong with them. They love to talk about their medication, their diabetes, their gout. I got this, I got a back problem.

Now, if you’re a final expense person, you’re basically filling out the application here.

Don’t do the deep dive at this point because we’re going to wait for that one. We’re going to close on insurance business, but we’re going to have an idea.

If I’m talking to a guy that’s had a triple bypass two weeks ago, I’m not going to be dealing with a $50,000 life insurance policy when I get to that.

But again, setting the foundation but the key feature here and what I have found most advantageous to the agent, as far as building that trust and compatibility with the client, is people like to talk about their medications and what’s wrong with them.

Asking About Long Term Care Policies

The next question to ask is: “When you were working at NASA down at the Space Center, did you consider taking out a long-term care policy?”

Last piece of business I had, two long-term care policies on the husband and the wife. I helped them with that policy.

They were going through a decision and by helping them with the decision, again, I gained credibility. I showed interest.

We may want to review that those policies are good policies. You want to keep them in place and you compliment them on their decision.

Long-term care insurance is set up to avoid the legal term of spousal impoverishment. Learn that. Long-term care insurance is set up and the legal term for that protection is to avoid spousal impoverishment.

Spousal impoverishment is the Medicare spend down law. Medicare spend down is I will impoverish the family before the state of Florida, the state of Nevada, the state of California, the state of Georgia, the state of Tennessee will pick up that bill.

Again, if I had to put a balance on it, I put most of my emphasis on the first section on gathering information, family, work history, parent and that, a little bit of information on the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, work history, a small amount here.

But the key emphasis here is to introduce the topic of spousal impoverishment.

Discussing Life Insurance And Final Expense

Here you want to get just a snapshot, a picture of what’s currently in place and there’s a couple of little giddy ups that’ll help you sell.

Ask “Do you currently own life insurance?”

If they say no, “Are you self-insured for final expenses?” Again if they say no, “Oh, that’s unusual.” But generally you’ll find life insurance on the man. “And do you have a small policy?” “What company it’s with, is it term?” 

Here’s the thing that the fact finder has already established for you, we’ve got their health history. We know how old they are. We know if it’s graded, qualified, you’ve got some information there.

You can go that direction. Again, I’m not looking to go that direction. What I’m primarily looking to do in this area, because again, you generally write what you look for.

And I look for annuity so I’m trying to get to that last box. I haven’t gotten there yet, so I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time losing their interest here when I need to gather their interest there. But I do want to ask these questions.

“Do you have any prepaid funeral expenses?” Here’s the key feature here for me: “Do you have a will or a trust in place?” and soon as you ask that question… “And has it been properly filed with the county clerk’s office?”

Nobody knows the answer to that question and they should. Even if they went down to a lawyer and went down to his office and did everything, “Did you get a copy of the verification that it was filed at the county clerk’s office?”

It’s a way to introduce yourself into a subject that were now talking about legacy, people passing and this estate being moved on.

It’s very key here to ask that question and to tag it with and “has it been filed with the county clerk’s office?” Most people don’t do that.

All we’re doing is to try to convince this guy, who thinks he has his affairs in order, point out to the fact that he doesn’t have his affairs in order. Oh, I did my will. And I ran into this recently…

I did my will up in the last state that I lived in and it’s still there. The fellow that I’m talking about, we wrote a small annuity we have to go back on. I left my money with the guy I like back in the state that I used to live in.

And I said, “how are you going to handle the transition?” so I get them thinking about legacy, passing it on to their kids, avoiding probate taxes, all those kind of features that are available to somebody that really understands seniors and how money gets passed from the senior to his family correctly and how to do that correctly. The that’s the purpose of the will and trust.

“But if you’ve got substantial life insurance in place, particularly if you’ve got an IUL, do you have a prospectus on this? Have you looked at it?”

There’s a lot of information that’s tied up in IULs. Generally speaking…

Quick example, I’ve got a fellow that just came out of the hospital.

He’s got $148,000 in an IUL with a death benefit of 250. And he was wondering how to get ahold of 25,000 quick. And he was going to pull it out of the annuity.

He didn’t have to. He has other resources. And I explained where those resources are. If you have an old life insurance policy, these are my favorite, the old life insurance policies that have been paid on for 30 years, these guys are… They’re like clocks and they’ve been paying on it where your death benefit is 15,000.

Your cash value is 14,000. I can put them in an annuity with a bonus. And the day that they move the money, they’ll have more death benefit than they would if they left it in the policy and it will continue to grow without any premium. “Does that make sense to you? Can we take a look at that?”

That is where you get into question 16. Many of my clients have not reviewed their life insurance policies in many years.

“When was the last time you did it?” It’s called the assumptive close and introduce that topic.

Discussing Retirement And Savings

Now here’s the bread and butter for annuity. How do you introduce this topic?

You got to go slow. “Regarding your retirement income and are you just on social security or is there a pension?”

Now if you notice the way the question is structured, it looks like I’m just finding this information out now. That’s what I didn’t like about this setup.

I don’t like finding this information now. I like finding this information when I’m talking to the people about their family, their wife, their wife history, their work history. I’m dabbling in the subject right now.

“Mr. Client, so you have social security, correct?” And I said, and “when you worked for NASA, you had retirement there. Generally engineers have a double dip. Do you have any other retirement savings?” 

“Where’s that money sitting today?” Great question. Simple question. “Where is that money sitting today?” If it’s still here, it’s still here. They moved it. Most people with retirement accounts move it once and forget about it.

And that’s the advantage of working my system, which is to go in on a person who is just now becoming aware that their affairs may not be in order. And we have some good options for them.

We have options on insurance. We have options on long-term care, we have options on their retirement plans that we can assist them in making sure that we have growth on that account and that it has legacy to it.

It has legs that it goes to their kids correctly and without probate taxes, eight to 12% probate taxes if these monies are left in the wrong position. “Have you started taking mandate required minimum distributions out of a 401k or IRA account?”

If I could say one thing to an agent that I would really like them to hear is use the fancy language, required minimum distribution.

I’ve never known a client to go have you pulled your RMDs out yet? Well, what’s an RMD? Well, they know they got to take money out so use the right language because the right language is have you started taking your mandatory required minimum distributions out of the account?

If they have, and they’re mad about it, that’s a great client.

A client who’s upset with the fact that they have to pull money out of their account is a person I want to talk to because that’s money that’s just sitting there.

They don’t need it. They haven’t looked at it in a while. And the fact that they even have to touch it and draw their attention to it bothers them.

What do I want to do? I want to bother them a little bit. I want them to pay attention to that. And what I want to do is find out where it is, does it have legs?

Is it going to fall into the probate taxes? Is it out of state? Is it with a financial planner? Those are the things that you need to snatch out.

Now at this point, there’s a couple of questions in here that don’t make sense. That one about saving money every month, that kind of gives you the financials on the guy. “Are you putting money away or are you drawing it out of your RMDs?”

That’s an important question. But it’s a little too nosy for me.

Some of these are optional and the one that’s probably most optional, but I think is put in here for a reason and it actually is a good one, is this one just changes subject. “Are you expecting any inheritance?” 

If you’ve worked a fact finder with people and you ask that question, it throws them back. You’ll generally get a chuckle.

You’ll generally get “I’ve never inherited anything. Nobody’s left me a dime.” But if you’ll notice where it’s placed, it’s placed just before we start going into monies that are exposed to probate taxes and monies that would quickly bypass probate and go directly to their heirs.

Inheritance And Heirs

We’ve now introduced the topic by asking a question, “are you expecting any inheritance?”

It gives you an idea. It’s a good question. The question is not to find out and you don’t need to know and how much it is and I’m going to come back.

The purpose of the question is to introduce the topic where so we now have them thinking about it.

“Now, Mr. Client, as you mentioned before, at the beginning of this, this is a confidential needs analysis.I don’t need to know the precise amount, but I just need to know a snapshot picture.” 

And at this point, and if you’ll notice I earned the right by giving the client good information in order to start asking confidential, financial questions…

You’ve developed rapport with the client further, but not just that. You’ve created value. You’ve gotten them thinking. They’re probably enjoying this process.

If they’re the kind that never has really done this and this is an opportunity to think and where this is positioned is purposeful in the sense that you need to have done all that before you start getting to the nitty gritty.

We don’t want to be off putting, but we do have to ask these questions to move the ball down the field eventually.

Care About The Client, It Shows

I had two agents up in Tampa. I love these guys. These guys had all the enthusiasm, they were working the system, they were going out, they weren’t working the fact finder.

They were working the system that I use and I probably should have put them on the fact finder because when I sat down using the system I used the greatest compliment I had because we were trying to put our finger on why was I able to work the…

I went out there and in five appointments, we did two pieces of business. And when we had lunch afterwards and I said, “Okay, so what’s your problem?” He said, “Well, you’re good.” He said, “But the thing that came through in your presentation is you actually care about these people.” And yeah, actually I do.

What you’re going to find if you’re working with seniors, if you are there to make sure that their affairs are in order, because often they aren’t or at least they’re aware of the areas that their affairs are not in order, that’s the whole purpose of the fact finder.

And I gained that empathy by doing fact finders over and over and over again and introducing topics that actually go into some of the things that I present in my catalog when I go for the visit.

Prime example of that is free legal services for anybody over the age of 65. “You don’t have to go down to a lawyer in the state of Florida to get a will done. 

You can actually call, there’s a program called free senior legal services paid for by the federal government, which means if it’s paid for by the federal government, this program is in Georgia and Tennessee and other areas for anybody over the age of 65 to assist them in getting their affairs in order.

It’s probably available in your state as well.”

I’ve now gotten to the point where I’ve laid the foundation. There are some things that I’m not interested in. I’m not really interested in what their personal savings are.

What Investments, Assets, And Accounts To Discuss

Most people don’t have CDs because the interest rates are so small. “Do you have any money sitting in CDs?” CDs is a very safe starting point.

I would not start with personal savings. Personal savings is none my of business. What I do is an assumptive amount of money on personal savings.

“I’ll assume in your personal savings account that if the car broke down or the roof blew off, you’ve got four or $5,000 in there that you can touch right away to pay that guy off. “

Realistate

Now I would go over to real estate at this point. “Do you have any real estate outside?” “No, I’ve just got this house.” “Do you have still have a mortgage on the house or do you sit in a good equity position on the house?” I’m asking financial questions that show that I care about their situation.

You can own a house and you can also be sitting on your biggest asset. I own a house that’s worth $600,000.  If there’s no money over here, why are they sitting on this large asset? I’m going to get a picture by asking that, “do you have a substantial mortgage on the property?”

Well, substantial mortgage is over half. “When you were working, you had an individual retirement account, right? When you were working at NASA for SpaceX, did they set up a 401K retirement plan?”

Soon as they say yes, “I did have a 401k retirement plan.”  “While you were working for them, a good company had a vesting schedule. Did they vest? Did they match any matching savings?”

“I would put in 6%, they’d match 6%.” You’re going to find out information by how that thing works. And what I tell people and I tell new agents, and if you’re working with me, you’re going to hear me say this over and over and over again.

Money is like a lost child at the mall. He walks up to you. I got a problem here. I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how I got here. And then you start asking that little child questions.

Well, did you come with mom and dad? Did you get that money come while you were working? Yeah. Did they match the funds? Yeah. When you left that job, did you get in a car and go someplace else to get to the mall? No, I left it exactly where it’s at or yes, somebody came in.

I’m going to find out some information about his IRA or 401k if he has any. “Did you ever look into the opportunity… Any options for annuities?” I generally don’t introduce that there. This is a fact finder.

Again, if I’m doing it off the top of my head and I’m working off a Medicare spend down, I don’t ask annuities there because in Medicare spend down, annuities are listed as money that’s protected and this is exposed money. “401ks, stocks, bonds, you have anything outside?”

If you’ve got an IRA, 401k, the proper question is, don’t ask him if he’s got stocks and bonds. Ask him do you have anything outside of your retirement plans that you also… “Do you have an investment portfolio and where’s that money sitting today? Bonds, everything else…” “Do you have any collections?” 

Gun collections, boats, that kind of thing. Don’t get heavily into that. Just hit the numbers where they need to be.

You can miss a few. You’re fine there, but if you’re going to take this fact finder and you’ve gotten all excited, and you’ve got 401k money, and you’ve worked it correctly, and you’re about ready to spend it over.

Close The Client

You’re about ready to close this puppy and show them where you need to come back to do an illustration and a perspective, and you think you got something, do not miss the next four questions because these are the ones that’ll blow you out of the water if you don’t ask them and you don’t know what’s going on.

Again, we’re pivoting back to before we turn over to give a guy a recommendation, we’re going to gain their trust and we’ve got a lot of information. We’ve been pulling teeth.

Take a breath, put it down, do some acting. Before I make any suggestions, we’ve gone over a lot of information. “What are your biggest concerns about your healthcare and your personal finances?”

Stop. Let them talk. They may not have any. They may be fine. At this point, you’re going to find out if you’ve been a little too nosy.

“Why are you asking me all these questions?” You’re going to get something there, but take a pause. Put your pen down. Put your pen down. 

Take your pen, put it down. Stop. When you’re doing this every now and then you’ve got to put the pen down and stop. This is where you catch your breath.

And here’s the question that I want you to ask. “Besides yourself, does anyone else assist you with your insurance for financial decisions?”

If you don’t ask that question, you could do a whole bunch of things, come back on a presentation and get this:  “I don’t do anything unless I run it by my son first. I don’t do anything. I’ve got a financial planner. I got this.”

I want to know who’s going to be between me and the money? Who’s going to be between me and the decision?

And I need to know that right now. You need to ask and have that question answered for your own purposes.

Now, if they’ve already mentioned it, mention it. You don’t have to ask the question. “Now you mentioned before that you had a financial planner, where’s he out of?”

You want to make sure that the kids aren’t going to get in the way. “Regarding your retirement, your legacy, what are your goals?”

“And outside of the questions that we addressed, do you have any questions or concerns?”

“I’ve got a few recommendations. You’ve done a good job in a few areas.”

“You’ve got a great Medicare Advantage plan. You’ve done well here. Your supplement, this is what’s going on. In case you have surgeries, you’re going to have some…”

Generally, I give them an okay. If they’ve got health coverage, if they’ve got veterans benefit, if they’ve got the VA, I mention it here. Preserving your freedom of choice.

“When it was available to you, you did not take out any long-term care insurance against spousal impoverishment.”

Now we can fix that, but then it’s too expensive now. We can’t even go into it. It’s not available to you, but… Or if they have VA benefits, I go over one of the things in my catalog is the VA benefits for long-term care.

But here, again, it’s not an area of emphasis to me. I’m going to kind of say, this is where you’re at and you may have some exposure to long-term care expenses and spousal impoverishment, which I can address in another area.

But I’m not going to do that right now. “But let’s go to your estate planning. Yeah, I’m a little concerned. Now if Joan dies, John, you’re going to be fine because you’ve got the pension and the 401k and everything else. But if you die first, John, we don’t know if she’s getting 60% or a hundred percent of the pension.”

You want to ask that. “As far as the transference of that wealth, what will her situation be?”

How are we doing these kind of numbers at the time that we need that information, which is when she passed, you don’t want to wait until she passes to get this information, because if his retirement goes away completely, now we’ve got the opportunity for a life insurance policy to cover that gap.

Tell the client: “The formula that I generally use is we want to cover the husband’s income, the husband’s contribution after retirement for at least two years till the wife gets on her feet. That’s to handle the funeral expenses, the added mortgage, and there’s going to be a time they’re going to need to heal. That’s my recommendation so where I’m going to be here is we’ve got a few things… 

We’ve got some exposure to some taxes. We don’t have your will put in place, couple of things, anything that I talked about in that section.

Now financial security… This is where I’ve got a few ideas here. Now I can’t do it today. You’ve given me a lot of good information, but the 401k, the IRA plan that you currently have, I’ve got some options on putting it into safety, without risk of market loss. And I can also bypass the need for any final expense insurance, because you’ve got enough money here to be self-insured.”

And I compliment them. I refer to it as self-insured.

“You have enough money here to be self-insured as long as your heirs, particularly your kids, have access to those funds in as timely a fashion as a final expense policy would issue. At this point, an annuity would be very attractive because it would disperse quickly, allow your kids to be able to handle… But I can’t do it today. Does that make sense to you?”

“I’ve got a few ideas I’d like to throw together and then I check my schedule and then I schedule an appointment.”

Everything I do is on the go back, because if you’ve done a good quality fact find, and I have this information, you’re going to have a great go back.

And that’s the whole purpose of teaching new agents how to work with the fact finder in order to communicate with a mentor.

The first one or two, maybe three, you’re going to need some ideas on how to get through this and I’ll have the information available. You’ll have it at your fingertips. And if you don’t, I’m going to say, why didn’t you ask these questions?

David Duford’s Comments

I think anybody who’s curious about how you arrive at the opportunity to uncover and find and really build urgency and interest in annuities, this is the methodology. It works wonderful.

A couple of things I want to clarify here.

Number one, to be clear here, this training is for agents who are part of Duford Insurance Group. Those who aren’t, especially those who aren’t who would like to sell annuities and don’t even know where to turn.

Thats part of the reason why we’re releasing this is so that you can take this information, you can go out there to your existing leads or your network and uncover these opportunities because the next step is once you’ve completed this fact finder as Stephen has addressed, is to get back in contact with us at Duford Insurance Group. You’ve completed a fact finder.

We can get you contracted with very good annuity companies that can help out with solving the particular problems that you’ve uncovered on your prospects.

Stephen himself is going to mentor you one-on-one to help you put those cases together. And like Stephen said, the first couple of them are the ones you’re going to need the most help with, but eventually you just don’t need to help nearly as much because you’ve developed a skillset in fact finding, but also in design of the case.

Stephen said, “And I changed my mind because working with David, I’ve noticed that David puts all of these skillsets out all the time, over and over again. And if you take advantage of it, great. If you want to work with us, great.

 If not, be a better agent. I really want that for you. But I also want you to work with us.”

The idea of working with a fact finder, this is experience that the fellow that I work with on a regular basis has been working for 30 years in this industry, primarily in annuity, long-term care expenses.

There’s a lot of experiences that we’ve had by working with managers that I’ve dealt with over the years that I’ve play plumed.

I’ve redirected my thinking on this. We’re going to aggressively try to educate as many agents as we can to be good quality annuity agents and whatever I can do to help along those lines, I’m in.

My secret, if anything I’ve discovered is the more you give, the more you receive. You got to give first just like you with your clients, Stephen, and you give them a lot of advice and help and clarity and thought and what do they give you back? Their business, right?

It’s a perennial rule or principle to live by and it certainly works in our field too.

A couple other things here to be clear on. Some agents may be wondering, well, I’m selling final expense or Medicare. How do I implement this fact finder in a regular presentation? Do I have to upend the entire presentation?

Stephen, you can jump in with your thoughts after I give you some perspective here.

My advice would be to do your regular presentation, but then to also add somewhere in the pre qualifying section, the elements of this particular presentation, to begin to fact find for other things too, as well.

It may take some work to kind of seamlessly work it in. I still think you should be going after your main source of business. But I think it’s also helpful too, to add the elements of this fact finder in too, in order to uncover other opportunities, specifically the annuity.

Stephen, some thoughts on that?

Stephen, “Well, and the other thing, if you’re going to do it, I would sit down with a spouse, wife, friend, coworker, agent, and do this five, six, 10 times because what that skillset will give you is these questions off the top of your head.

I don’t use a fact finder anymore, but I remembered when I did and I leaned on it as a crutch and it was a very good crutch.

And so what you’ll find is that once it becomes very natural, you’re going to ask somebody their names, addresses, questions, and then you’re going to remember back to, oh yeah, the wife, kids, grandkids, where’d you used to work, 401ks, retirement plans.

You start introducing that. You’re just filling out a form when you work that of situation. Practice, practice, practice. There’s only one way to get good at something is fear is a motivation to get you out there, practice it before you get there.

Five Ps of success; Prior preparation prevents poor performance.

But if I could share just briefly, there’s three agents. Just recently we did with new agents, about a half a million dollars worth of business.

All three agents never wrote anything before. And it’s a change in philosophy that I’ve done recently since I’ve gotten the new news is I’ve been paying very close attention to the downlines production, taking a look at what they do.

And I contacted every single agent that sent that business in. And I said justify what you did. And then I’ll justify what I think you should have done.

Every one of them, one fellow had his own money… His own money, $110,000. He wanted to try it out. He wanted to make a good decision. I looked at what he did. I said, “If it was my money, I wouldn’t do that.”

And I called him up and I said, “hey…” And I was very hesitant to do it because sometimes it’s a new agent. That’s my baby. He listened to me. He agreed with my presentation. He agreed that he was in the wrong product.

He got it issued yesterday. He got a nice check on his own money. And that’s fun money. You’re playing with the house money right now. That’s your money and you got paid to move it.

The second one was a very experienced agent that David worked with. She does thousands of dollars every month in vital expense, found one, wrote it, had most of it already done.

A little bit of tweaking here and there, but mainly on suitability on how to get it through quickly. We got that issued. Third one was a different person, a little younger, about 45 years old.

I thought it was in the wrong product. I called her up and I said, “Hey, look, you’ve got him on an income rider. I’m not a big fan of them. If you could explain your thinking on that, I’ll explain my thinking on this.”

We compared it. She took both to the client and said, “this is what I’ve got you written on.” And I was very hesitant to do this because this was done. The only thing I could do is blow it. Right?

But it wasn’t the right thing for him, wasn’t in his best interest. He’s enthusiastic about it. And what I finally realized is by going through and salting the deals, making sure these deals stay stark, making sure that the client’s in the best interest, that’s my job.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. I really know how these products work and I know what’s in the best interest of the client.

I am actively taking an interest in the paperwork that you put through to make sure that you go through it quickly.

It’s best to send it to me so I can scrub it to make sure that the numbers look good. I hate to say this, but the paperwork that I scrub goes through faster than the ones I write because I can spot other people’s mistakes faster and I can spot my own.”

Concluding Comments

We are helping agents out there and to be completely clear here, if you’re interested in working with us on annuities, you can work with us already of course. Or if you work with another organization and you just want to do annuities, that’s a hundred percent fine.

There’s no obligation to do anything else, but that. It doesn’t matter what kind of lead systems you’re working on.

If you’re doing final expense, Medicare, mortgage protection, you’re cold calling, you’re doing network marketing, as long as you’re in front of people and you can do these fact finders, you’re going to find and uncover opportunities.

You want to have a system of some sort to put this in place and if you can do that, you’re going to find them and we’re going to help you. And the last but not least, just like Stephen said, a lot of you out there are probably sitting on some money too.

If you are interested in this,  we can help you on and get you paid at the same time.

If you’re interested in looking at this to move forward visit our website. If you’re already on our training site, I’ll put Stephen’s information at the bottom if you’d like to contact him or contact me with any questions and thank you so much y’all!