Increasing your annuity business can be difficult without knowing the winning formula. Lucky for you, we want to share it with you!
If you write health or life insurance, selling annuities is your next step for growth. How can you best set yourself up for success? Take a page from agents already excelling in this market and do these three things right!
Listen to this article:
1. Master the Basics
Today, more than ever, people want to grow their savings without risking losses in stock market slumps.
Sure, they can buy CDs and bonds… if they want little to no gains on their principle. For higher growth potential and tax benefits in a safe investment vehicle, they’d be better off purchasing an annuity. Highly successful annuity agents recognize this notion and are familiar with annuities, their features, and their popularity in the market and among shoppers.
Highly successful annuity agents are familiar with annuities, their features, and their popularity.
New to annuities? Good news! They’re not as complicated as they may seem.
Clients give insurers a premium (the money they want to invest), and in exchange, insurers give clients a policy with a fixed or indexed interest rate for the specified time mentioned in their contract. Once the policy matures, it either begins paying out immediately or sometime in the future. Policyholders can also designate their spouse or another individual as a beneficiary. They’re that simple!
Pro Tip: If you’re interested in selling annuities, start with learning fixed annuities (immediate or deferred) first. Once comfortable with this product type, then move on to the indexed annuity.
2. Fact-Find to Pinpoint Prospects
With annuities, you don’t have to search around for the perfect prospect — if you’re selling health and/or life insurance, you most likely already have a client base full of them! You just need to identify the ones sitting on retirement funds who aren’t sure how to invest their money.
Highly successful annuity agents use a short-but-thorough fact finder to uncover good candidates for annuities.
A good fact finder helps you expose your clients’ insurance wants and needs and find out where their money lies. It also allows you to start a discussion about what you can help your clients accomplish, as well as gain their attention, trust, and even friendship.
Highly successful annuity agents use a fact finder to uncover good candidates for annuities.
Looking for the perfect fact finder to help you dig in? Download the one-page Ritter Fact Finder here.
3. Ask the Right Questions and Listen
And finally, in order to close annuity sales, your clients must believe in both the benefits of having an annuity and that you’re the one to help them. The only way they’ll do that is if you explain to them how an annuity can help their personal financial situation and if they feel they can trust you to help them invest.
Highly successful annuity agents accomplish all this by asking open-ended questions and listening to what their clients say.
Inquiring about your clients’ unique situations and listening helps you get to know them, their level of contentment with the current allocation of their funds, and whether they’re looking for a better investment. It also lets you hear why your clients have their money in certain places, learn their concerns, and start a conversation about annuities and their benefits.
Highly successful annuity agents ask open-ended questions and listen to what clients say.
Here are a few questions that can open the door for you to offer annuities and help you determine which one is the right fit for a client.
- How much money do you have in your CD?
- Why did you decide to put your money in a CD?
- What would you like to see happen with the growth of your money?
- Are you getting a good rate of return?
Pro Tip: Don’t jump in with solutions before you’ve covered all of a client’s concerns. Take notes so you can go back and address concerns individually once you have the complete picture.
Making It to the Top
If these three things seem easy, it’s because they are. In the words of famous American businessman and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.” Take Mr. Rockefeller’s words, along with these three best practices, and apply them every time you market annuities. The results you see should speak for themselves.
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