How To Start Selling Annuities

“I’m intimidated by annuity sales, but I want to get started. Tips?”

Congrats on making the plunge into the wonderful world of annuity sales. This is truly one of the most rewarding fields you could ever decide to jump into and if you apply these basic principles to your business, this field has the potential to provide a life of abundance, adventure, and generosity!

Don’t neglect the basics.

It’s easy when jumping into this field to get overwhelmed by the complexity of some of these products. Is that you? Are you feeling the pressure of needing to know every little detail and every nuance within your products before opening your mouth about annuities to your prospects? You’re not alone. So many agents fail before they ever sell a single annuity because they are so fearful that they’ll say something wrong. Don’t fail because of inaction! Take every step necessary to build and expand your knowledge of what you do BUT do this as you go. Don’t spend your time getting ready to get ready. If you’re a licensed insurance professional, then you’re qualified but are you actually ready?

“When you ditch your fears and embrace the challenges ahead of you, your income growth potential is literally unlimited!”

If you’ve been stuck in this cycle, it stops now! Step into a freedom from your fears and recognize that information is literally at the tip of your fingertips. You can learn anything about anything on the web, and there are many great teachers that train on these topics if you know where to look.

Establish your lead flow.

Are you currently in life insurance? Medicare supplement? Healthcare? Retirement planning? Regardless of where you’re starting, know that you don’t have to go out and drop THOUSANDS of dollars on new leads like many people suggest. I actually think this is a huge waste of money on your end. Why would you invest your hard earned money on leads when you may or may not actually know how to sell them an annuity yet? It just doesn’t make sense. When getting started, the best way to establish a good lead flow is to keep your current lead flow going and learn how to begin cross selling into the annuity space. At this point you’re essentially creating new leads through fact finding. Let me explain. When you have a prospect who you’re selling life insurance to, dig deep during the fact finding process and if it makes sense for you to mention an annuity to them make note of it. Continue focusing on the primary reason you’re at the appointment, providing a solution to the problem they asked for help solving – in this example life insurance. Build trust. Build rapport. If you do a thorough fact finder and know that an annuity would be beneficial, now you’ve created a new lead essentially. They were a life lead, and they become an annuity lead once you take care of their life policy. Once you protect their family’s life insurance needs, they’ll be much more likely to trust you enough to help them with their retirement needs.

It only takes one sale to build momentum.

“One annuity sale has the potential to drastically increase your annual income! Shift your perspective from quantity of sales to quality of sales when in the annuity space.”

When in medicare supplement or life sales, quantity is everything. You have to close “x” amount of sales per week to pay the bills and make ends meet. With annuities this is true to an extent if you’re selling them exclusively, but in many ways your perspective needs to shift. One sale could pull in commissions in the tens of thousands and that kind of income is a game-changer for most agents. The reason I say this is so that you can set realistic expectations when adding these products into your client protection arsenal. Quantity is not your goal! Become an expert at cross selling when appropriate and over time you can transition into purchasing leads directly for annuities. This will take the pressure of and allow you to celebrate every small success you have. I wrote $18.7M in personal annuity production in 2018 and there were still weeks when I didn’t close a sale. It’s normal. Stay positive, keep learning, keep your client’s best interests first, and the results will follow over time!

Stay the course.

If success seems to be eluding you, don’t worry. REFINE. We constantly need to be refining our methods, or scripts, our solutions, and our skills. If you’re just getting started, the area I suggest focusing on the most is fact finding. This is HUGE. Be able to uncover the gold in your prospect’s retirement accounts. Dig deep! You might face resistance from some clients, but in order for us to best protect their interests we need to ask the hard questions. Don’t think of it as prying or awkward. If you do, they will feel this awkwardness. Stay positive, assertive, and upbeat, while maintaining your authority as the expert. Success is within reach and I believe that if you put in the effort, you can be successful in this industry! If you want more in depth training, enroll in Retirement Realized Agents Academy where I unpack my entire process from call to close!