Transcription
I'm just gonna wait for a few minutes till everyone is in, and then I'll let Evan do his thing. So, happy New Year! It's nice to see you all. I see some new faces and some really tenured clients here that I'm happy to see.
Um, so yeah, 2025 is going to be insane. It's going to be great. This year, we already started improving our numbers for 2025. Today, we have Evan How, who is basically our top client. He has been on top for the past few months. He has closed 100K each month, like in November and December, and in general, I think he has closed more than 400K with our leads.
So, I guess he's the right person to start the year off on the right foot and to kick off this sales training for 2025. So, Evan, I'll keep an eye on if people are coming in, and I'll let you handle the call. Thank you for doing it, by the way.
Yeah, no problem, no problem. We can, uh, jump in a little bit. The process for the call is mostly going to be in regards to maintaining a book of business versus just selling insurance. That's going to be the main basis of the call.
So, this is mostly going to be for individuals that are looking to retain business long-term. So, you're making it more of a career option versus just making commissions, because they're very, very different things. I can kind of explain why that is.
So, I'm gonna start on a couple of things here that have worked out very, very well for me. This is just my perspective; this is what I personally do. So, um, just take what you need out of it and kind of use it your own way.
But there are a couple of different ways you can sell 100 grand in a month, and you can make a lot of commission off of that. Because there's a big difference between making 100 grand and selling 100 grand. A lot of people wonder if you're selling 100 grand, how much of that are you actually making in deposits or commissions? You want that number to be as high as possible while still putting the client in the best possible position, right?
So, there are a couple of different ways you can do that. But to start, when it comes to getting a hold of the client, because that's where everything starts, I personally don't have a right or wrong way on how you can get that done. I don't have a specific pattern to get a hold of people as quickly as possible.
I also do have a VA that does a lot of the dialing for me as well, so I don't have to spend so much time on the phone, which I really like. I pay them a small salary, and then they basically just dial the phones from X time to X time. That does help me out a lot as far as getting people on the books.
When I'm getting new leads in, there are two separate categories. So, you'll have new leads that come in that you guys are all getting, and then you'll have leads that you've maybe called before or people that you're potentially following up with. Those are essentially the two segments of people you're trying to get a hold of.
When a new lead comes in, I'm usually the one that's calling them to get them on the books as quickly as possible. I basically call them twice, and then I always leave a voicemail, usually. Then I'll send a text message. If they don't call me back or respond to the text message or pick up the first two calls, then I'll do the same thing in the evening, except I'll call three times, no voicemail, no text message. That's typically just what I do.
You guys don't have to do that, but that's just what I do, and it works very well for me. So, typically, it's five calls a day if it's a new lead. If they haven't picked up any of the calls, one voicemail and one text from me personally if it's a new lead.
If it's a lead that I'm following up with or if it's a lead that I've called and I just can't get a hold of, or whatever the case may be, then that's somebody that I maybe will follow up with at some point if I have the time. Otherwise, I'm gonna have my ISA take care of that, or the VA that I work with, and they'll just try to get those people on the books over the next few days or the next couple of weeks or whatever the case may be.
That's typically my trajectory on getting people on the calendar as quickly as possible. If I'm going to get somebody on the books that's a new lead, I trust myself to call that person versus anybody else. But if it's somebody I can't get a hold of, then I'm not gonna waste time on that. I'm gonna have somebody else try to get a hold of that person for me, so I'm optimizing my time as much as I can.
That's essentially how I've gotten the most amount of people on the books, is by using that. But keep in mind, I do have a VA that books some of those people for me, so I don't have to spend so much time on the phone.
The last thing you want to do is completely rely on the ISAs to book your appointments. I know sometimes that's what people do. The ISAs are just a bonus, guys. It's not something you should rely on at all in any regard. It's something that if they're going to be in a conversation with someone and they're going to book the appointment, that's a bonus. That's great, okay, no problem.
But I'm still going to do my job and try to book as many people as possible and get people on the phone, right? So, you want to make sure you're putting this in your favor as much as possible, and you're leaving a lot of cards on the table if you're just having the ISAs book your appointments. So, try to mitigate that as much as you can.
But once leads are essentially booked and I got a calendar of people, the process is when you get somebody on the phone, you're going to run into typically three different people. You're going to run into the individual that has a high net worth. They know exactly what they want; they're very number-oriented. You got to break down a full illustration with them, and you really got to know what you're talking about in order to actually retain the business.
The second person is someone that maybe works a traditional job, whatever the case may be. They make anywhere between 40 and 50K a year, roughly. They pay their bills, have a ton left over, but they're doing all right. They have an idea of what they want, but they're not really sure. They kind of want the information; they're not 100% sold on anything just yet at this point.
Then there's a third person that's broke. So, we're only going to spend time with the first two people. If someone has less than $500 left over every month, I typically don't pursue the sale for a couple of different reasons. If they have less than $500 left over every month, the chances of them making a $100 to $200 payment for the rest of their life, or at least for a couple of years, is probably less than 10%.
So, that's just going to hurt my business. I'm probably going to get a chargeback, and my persistency is going to go down, even if I make a commission upfront. So, I typically don't necessarily entertain those as much as I used to. I try to slow that down as much as I can.
How you would essentially do that is when you're setting up the call, you want to break down their situation as much as possible. The way we do that is, number one, you have to have credibility. I think I talked about this in the last training I did. Credibility is massive. The client has to know who you are, and they have to trust you. They have to trust that this is a legit process.
Because if you look at it through the client's lens, I mean, think about it. You filled out a form, right, on social media, and you're talking to some stranger on the phone, and he's going to ask for all of your personal information from somebody you just met 20 minutes ago, virtually. It's very sketchy if you think about it, unless it's done the right way.
I mean, I personally would never give somebody my personal information unless things were done a very specific way, right? So, number one, the person has to trust you. They have to trust that this is a very regulated process, which it is. So, I always show them my certification with the DOI, the Department of Insurance.
I basically go through the process. They have to pull up the file; they have to verify the license number on that file, and they have to save that to their phone before we can actually even start the call. They also have a credential card with all my information on it as well to make sure they have a copy of that.
So, that credibility has been established that I'm not a stranger; I'm a professional. Can you guys hear me well?
Yep, yep, we can hear you.
Okay, cool. So, that's essentially the credibility side, and that's how you're going to open the call. The second step you guys want to do is establish the why. You guys have probably heard this multiple times, but there's a difference between establishing the why and what was the pinnacle point of them wanting to get something like this done now, and that needs to be discovered.
So, you want to get them to open up about what their involvement was, of course. Like, what caused you to look into this? What exactly are you hoping to use this insurance for? What are you hoping to achieve by having something like this? What are you hoping to get out of it? And let him speak or let her speak, right?
A lot of times, you're going to get a lot of BS up front, which is very normal. That's understandable too. Like, why would you tell me the exact reason? You just met me. But you got to uncover that, so you got to dig a little bit deeper when you're asking the client these questions on what exactly is it you're hoping to achieve with this insurance.
You'll get a lot of responses. You'll get stuff like, "Well, you know, I saw it on Facebook. I filled it out, wanted to know a little bit more about it. Figured you guys could give me some information so I can kind of see if it makes sense for me."
Or you'll get something like, "I don't know. I thought I could use it for retirement. Looked pretty cool. Wanted to compare it to a 401k. My buddies got one. Figured I could use some life." You'll get a bunch of those little small kind of BS answers. Nothing's really dialed in at this point. No problem.
So, when they give you an answer like that, what you got to do is you got to dig. You got to be like, "It's understood. Okay, so you're hoping to use it for your retirement. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. What specifically are you hoping to use the policy for in regards to your retirement? Are you looking for some kind of tax-free income? Are you looking for, like, a basis where you can make withdrawals from? What exactly do you want to use this for?"
"Well, you know, I mean, I heard you could save some money on taxes, and I really just don't have a lot set in place, and I've been thinking about it for a while."
I'd be like, "Okay, so he said he's been thinking about it for a while. How long have you been thinking about getting something like this done?" Almost like you're confused in a way, right? And because you are, and you should be.
He could go like, "A lot of clients will say something like, 'You know, I don't know. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years,' or, 'You know, I've known about it for a few years,' or, 'I've known about it for five years,' right? And, you know, I've just been doing more research lately."
"Okay, interesting. So, you've been looking at this for, you know, four or five years at this point. I mean, why now though? Like, what caused you to look into this now? Like, why didn't you get this five years ago?"
Again, it's like you're confused. Like, you're trying to figure out, like, why are we on the call right now? Like, why weren't you and I on the call five years ago, right? What happened?
And ask him the question, "So, what's changed? Like, what's different now versus five years ago?" And they could say a multitude of things, but they'll probably say something like, "Well, you know, I mean, my finances have changed a little bit, and, you know, I just had Christmas with my family, and I want to make sure they're taken care of."
"Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Understood. But haven't you had Christmas with your family the last five years? Aren't you with your kids every day? So, like, what exactly has changed though?"
And you're just going to ask him the exact same question in a different way because you haven't gotten to the root of the problem yet. He could say something like, "You know, well, I had a conversation with my wife, and we were talking about insurance. I knew I had it through my job the last five or six years, so I thought I was covered. Then we kind of did a deep dive on what the long-term trajectory looks like for us, and we realized that that insurance coverage is not going to give us XYZ benefits."
So, you know, and that was just last week. So then I started really looking at this stuff, and I saw your guys' ad, and I was like, "Hey, this kind of is exactly what me and my wife actually just talked about. This makes a lot of sense. Why don't we hop on a call?"
"Okay, no problem. So, it sounds like you did a lot more. You did a much deeper dive into what you currently had over the last four or five years. You thought you were covered with these benefits, but then you realized that you were not. And you saw that, hey, you know, five years have passed at this point, and then you had probably a pretty emotional, intimate conversation with your spouse, and then that kind of unfolded into you filling out the form and us having the conversation now. Is that fair to say?"
And he'll say yes. "Okay, no problem. So now we've uncovered the exact reason why you filled out the form. You had a very serious conversation with your wife in regards to your personal insurance that does not cover the benefits you thought it did before."
Okay, so now I have the tools I need to do my job. Okay, what now? You're just gonna kind of unpack it even further. So, you're gonna say, "Okay, so you had some work insurance that didn't cover the benefits you wanted. What exact benefits were those? Break that down for me."
And let him tell you. He'll probably say some key points of the IUL, hypothetically. Like, he'll say, "Well, I heard it could help me out with taxes. I heard it could help me out with my retirement. I like the cash value component of it. I like how it's pretty low risk, and I like how it's also still going to provide my family with the death benefit outcome that I currently had with my work insurance."
"Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, understood. Well, you know, there's a lot of families that are looking to get something like that done. It makes a lot of sense why you'd want to get that done now."
So, the work insurance, is that something that you're keeping? And you just keep asking him questions. Whoever asks the most questions wins. So, you just constantly are curious about his situation.
One thing that I've learned over the years in this industry is sales is not necessarily a close; it's just a conversation. It's just having a conversation with someone that's personal. It's a personal conversation, and genuinely being interested in what they're looking for, their life, their interests. That's all sales is.
It's just having a conversation and you being extremely confident throughout the process because people want to work with people that they trust and they know have their stuff together and they know it's going to put them in the most optimal position.
The only way you're going to be able to do that and build that relationship is by asking as many questions as possible, right? So, that's the why. So, you will have then established the why with a person.
So now we know how involved they are; we know exactly what they're looking for, so there's no confusion. The credibility was established prior, so there's no distrust, there's no confusion there, right?
So then the third step is you want to set the expectation of the call. We want to make sure I'm not wasting my time, and we want to make sure you're not wasting your time. So how do we do that?
I basically set the standard of what the next 10, 15, 20 minutes is going to look like. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to go through some personal questions, we're going to go through some medical questions, and we're going to go through some financial questions, right?
Then I'm going to kind of break down the fundamentals of the IUL, make sure it still aligns with what you're hoping to achieve long-term, and that all of your questions are answered. Then, once we find the best solution for you and your situation, then we're going to send a request to the insurance carriers, and they're going to ultimately determine our eligibility for the insurance.
Does that make sense? Do you have any questions on that? And let him respond. They'll say yes, or they'll say no, or they'll say, "Hey, how does this work? How does that work?" Whatever the case may be, and you'll go ahead and address it.
At that point, you want to make sure that you guys are 100% in alignment. There should be no confusion throughout the call. It doesn't matter if the client's spending 100 bucks a month or 3,000 a month; it doesn't matter. It's the same process no matter what.
When you set the standard on those three things, you will always close the deal if the client is actually interested. You'll know if they're interested in the first two or three minutes.
Do you guys have any questions on that process so far?
Do you ever get pushback on setting the agenda of the call, like right out the gate? I mean, I'm sure you do, but is there a way not to be like, "Hey, at the end, this outcome is gonna happen," unless you think that's better?
Um, do I get pushback when I'm kind of setting the expectation of the call, you mean?
Yeah, just the specific part where it's like, at the end, that information to an insurance carrier.
Can we mute?
Awesome. Yeah, so not necessarily. I mean, there are some situations, of course, where somebody's going to be like, "Hey, I actually don't have a lot of time. I'm not looking to get this done right now."
Like I said before, you'll know if that's the type of person in the first two or three minutes. You just will because they're going to give you a ton of flak; they're not going to want to answer your questions.
Once you've set the credibility and you've uncovered the why, at that point, because now you know how involved they are, the chances of you saying, "Hey," or them giving you some kind of objection that they're not okay with the rest of the way the call's going to go is very, very likely, especially if they've opened up the way that they have.
If you've uncovered the root cause of the problem, because you're not going to set the expectation until you've uncovered the root cause of the problem.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, yeah, if you have the why, I feel like you can ask whatever next.
Okay, yeah, because they got to be emotionally involved. And you guys have heard, I mean, everybody buys off of emotion, and then they'll back it up later with logic. It's not the reverse.
So, they have to be emotional about the process of why haven't they done this yet. And it's our job to be confused. You should be confused; you should act confused because it's confusing.
Like, these people are 55 years old, and they don't have life insurance. It's kind of odd, don't you think? What do you mean you've been alive for 55 years? Why suddenly is this the time to get it? Why haven't you done it 55 years ago? That's weird.
It's really odd, and we act like it's not odd all the time. It's really freaking odd. Like, what are you doing? Why haven't we talked before? Why don't you already have this?
Bro, if you got this when you were 25, you would have $700,000 in your cash value account. You're an idiot, literally. And now you're giving me objections on why it's not the right time to get it done.
You're not going to say this to the client, of course, but you're coming off extremely confused, guys, because it is very confusing. And you have to let them know how important this stuff is.
One thing I really like to do is set the tone on the emotionality of the insurance. So, even if someone's coming to me and they say, "Hey, you know, this is what I'm looking to do. I want to do this, this, this, and this. I want to put, um, you know, I want to put 36 grand a year into an insurance policy, and I want to make sure it does this, this, and this. I want to work with the right person."
No problem. I'm still going to break down the need for the death benefit, even if their whole interest is the cash value component and the tax-free retirement. No problem.
But I'm still going to drive home the need for the death benefit. I'm going to do it for two reasons. Number one, it is extremely important, right? Because if something happens, we want to make sure his family's okay.
But let's just say it's the person that doesn't have a wife; they're divorced. Let's just say they don't have any kids, which I'm sure a lot of younger guys, I'm sure that's actually pretty common. But even so, you're talking about people that have someone that is usually either a dependent or someone that they desperately care about, whether that's a niece, a nephew, a friend, a grandmother.
There's someone that they care about, and discovering that is really, really important. When you do, you would just ask the question.
So, let's just say the guy is in his mid-50s; he's divorced, no kids, and he's got a niece that he's very close with. This is a person; this is a natural experience I had with a client like two months ago.
He had a niece that was very, very important to him, but he was not concerned about the death benefit at all. He specifically wanted to put X amount of dollars into the insurance policy, and he wanted to set it up for retirement, basically.
No problem. So, the way we structured the insurance policy was, number one, I needed to cover his need and what he was looking for. That's what I wanted to cater to; that's his whole interest.
So, I want to cater to that. I don't want to disregard that at all. So, we set up the policy accordingly to make sure that he's going to be good when he retires.
Then I drove home the death benefit component by asking the questions of, "What does Bella do when something happens to you?"
"Well, she knows she does have her, you know, my brother, and he works a full-time job, so, you know, she would be okay, you know, but I do take care of her with a lot of stuff as well."
"Okay, and so what I want to know is if something happens to you, or when something happens to you, because it's gonna happen to all of us, right? Is she gonna still have the exact same lifestyle she has now if you're no longer here, if she's just with your brother?"
Well, the answer was no because her brother makes 30 grand a year, and the girl's in a private school. You know, she's 13 years old, and the guy wants to buy her a car for her 16th birthday.
Like, none of that's going to be able to happen if the gentleman's no longer here. So, it's uncovering how much does it cost at that point, right, to fund his niece's lifestyle?
Or, or not necessarily fund her lifestyle; that's not the appropriate term. Make sure that she's comfortable and that she's taken care of appropriately, right?
That's essentially the questions you want to ask. And then when you kind of understand the dollar amount on that, on like an annual basis, how much does your school cost a year? X amount of dollars, no problem.
Well, how much is a potential new car cost that you're going to be purchasing in the next couple of years? Okay, no problem. How much does the daily living cost to make sure that she's taken care of? School supplies, you know, transportation to and from, you know, that type of thing.
How much does that cost on an annual basis? You have to ask these questions, and when you ask these questions, you get a dollar amount.
And then what you can do is you can take that dollar amount times X amount of years. So, no matter what, even while we're solving this problem for your retirement, Tom, we need to make sure we have X amount of dollars for the death benefit as well to make sure that this person's going to be okay, right?
And I'll also double down on that, and I'll say, "On top of that, we want to have more death benefit that we can use as collateral if we do want to take out loans a little bit more prematurely than we originally thought. We want to have something that's going to be there to help us out."
Especially if people are also looking for, like, tax-free retirement, well, that's coming from the death benefit. So, we need to make sure the death benefit is a big enough number to sustain the tax-free retirement that the client is looking for, right?
So, I drive really big on the death benefit, and that obviously, for us brokers, helps us out too because we get paid on the cost of insurance; we don't get paid on the cash value component.
But it's about the perspective, right? How does the client see the value in this insurance? Well, it's our job to bring the value. There's value in a multitude of ways. There's value in the death benefit, the retirement, the taxes, the index.
There's a lot of reasons why this can be of value to the client, and it's our job to break that down, right?
The last thing you want to do if you're really trying to build a really successful business, like profitable while retaining a solid book of business with clients, is you can't just possibly be selling people overfunded IULs. You're not going to make anything.
You, as the broker, you're selling someone a policy for 12 grand annually AP; you're making 600 bucks. How are you going to build a business off of that? It's crazy. It absolutely blows my mind. How is that possible?
Well, there's two ways you can fix it. Number one, you build up the value of the death benefit in the ways I just explained. That's the first way, which is going to drive up your target premium.
Okay, so instead of, like, you know, 600 bucks to a thousand grand or a thousand dollars, um, commission, if they're paying a thousand bucks a month over the course of a year, it could be like, you know, eight grand commission, six grand commission, seven grand commission, five grand commission, whatever the case may be.
It doesn't matter, but the point is you're driving up the value of a certain component, which in turn is going to help you grow your business.
When you're breaking down those different components and the value of them and the different ways they can utilize the death benefit, you're building more trust with the client as well because they're using the policy for more things versus just one.
Because most people don't understand all the different ways they can utilize an index policy like this. The second way that you can make sure that you're taking care of yourself throughout the process as well as pointing the client in the best possible position is you can do a max-funded IUL, of course, right?
Where, let's just say, 85% of their monthly allocation is going towards the cash value, and only 15% is going towards the benefit. I also bring up the need and urge to potentially do something like a separate term policy.
I don't do that as much, but that is another thing that I will do. So, if you're selling a policy for, you know, a thousand bucks a month, and the target premium is 900 bucks or two grand, no problem.
Let's go ahead and do something like this where you have a cheap term policy, hypothetically, that's costing you 100 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month or 300 bucks a month, right? And it's for three or four half million dollars. That's going to solve the death benefit side of it so that we can max fund this IUL as much as possible while still covering the need for the insurance for X amount of people.
Does that make sense, guys?
Hey, Evan.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, so when I sell my IULs, that's about all I work on anymore for the last two years. Most people, when they say, "You know, I want to put $500 a month in," they'll all tell you the same thing. If you ask them, "Would you like to put in more later when you can afford it?" they all say yes.
So, obviously, you set it up with a much higher death benefit, and then you tell them, "So instead of being able to put in, you know, 12,000 a year, you'll be able to put up to $30,000 a year when you're ready."
And they're always excited about that versus they're excited about that when you tell them you can put up to this amount of money in. So when you're ready, you can go ahead and get caught up and put that extra 20 grand in all at once, like three years later. You could put in 60 grand all at once if someone left you some money straight into your IUL, which you can't do if it's set up, you know, with the low death benefit, right?
Right, yeah. It's, I love your point, Larry. It's basically just giving them the flexibility to do so. A lot of people that you guys have talked to, a lot of people I talk to as well, I mean, they're, you know, let's just say they work a job, and then they get a bonus every year, just hypothetically, right?
That bonus is 12 grand, and they have nowhere to put that money. They don't have any other investment accounts, and they're looking to essentially stash that somewhere that it's gonna start working for them.
So, to Larry's point, what you would do in that situation is you would be like, "Let's figure out a solution that makes sense, you know, monthly or annually first and foremost."
Right? Let's just say that monthly allocation is 400 bucks a month. Okay, no problem. So that's been established, right? Let's structure the policy accordingly. Let's make sure we have enough death benefit there to cover the need.
Let's make sure we're still growing a consistent amount of cash value throughout the process, but let's get the death benefit high enough so that we have enough flexibility where you can put in, let's just say, six out of that 12 grand of your bonus one time every year into your insurance policy.
And it gives them the flexibility to do so. So, it opens the door as well. I'm really glad Larry brought that up because I didn't think of that. That's something you can definitely do, and clients see a lot of value in that because a lot of people that want to put a lot of money into an IUL, they don't necessarily want to start out that way.
Or maybe they're going to get a raise in a couple of years, and they want to have more flexibility on their insurance, you know? So, that's a great point, and it's very, very common. A lot of the people that I talk to, they want to put at least a thousand bucks every month, but they want to start out with, you know, 200 or 300 or 500, whatever the case may be.
It doesn't really matter, but at that point, it just makes more sense. A lot of people too, they get really excited. They get really excited, and they want to start putting a lot of money into a policy like this, but the income doesn't necessarily make sense.
So, when you break down their process, it's like, "Okay, so you have two grand left over every month on average based on what you've told me and based on your finances. You want to put a thousand of that two grand into an insurance policy like this every month. You know, long-term, realistically, is that really going to keep up?"
I mean, probably about 10, maybe 5% of the time. It's just not worth it. So, what you would do is you want to put them in a position to where they're a little bit more flexible.
So, I would say, "Hey, I understand you want to put a thousand bucks into the insurance. I get it. I mean, it makes sense; the numbers make sense. It's awesome. It's great. But my professional opinion is going to be this: I'm gonna recommend you actually do something more like 400 instead of a thousand.
And then let's put the policy in a, let's structure it accordingly so that you have the flexibility to put an additional 600 into the policy if and so it makes sense at that point in time, right? But at least this way, you're getting what you want out of it. You're getting the growth, the cash value makes sense, and then you can go in and increase it at your leisure at that point in time, right?
Does that make sense? Most people will feel that, you know, the 400 bucks that they can afford now is minuscule compared to, you know, a few years from now. I could probably put in 700.
Well, if we set it up this way, you won't be able to do that. But if we set it up this way, you can put up to maybe a thousand bucks a month in or 500 bucks a month in.
Yeah, yeah, and you're getting the full target. Full target, yep. You're still putting, there's ways to do it, guys. You're still putting the client in the best possible position by unpacking these different components while at the same time you're taking care of yourself in the process.
I see so many brokers that they don't necessarily know how to maximize how to sell these IULs and make a lot of money in the process. If you're selling 100 bucks a month in insurance and you're not making at least 75, we're doing something extremely wrong here.
There's ways to do this. If you're selling 30 grand a month in IULs and AP and you're making 15, 12, 10, 18, even, like, we're doing something wrong here.
There's ways to sell this business, guys. There's ways to build value with these products. There's ways to cultivate these relationships the right way while still taking care of yourself in the process. You just have to unpack it a little bit.
Alexander said, "Is it ever uncomfortable where they don't want to answer your questions?"
Yeah, I mean, there always is, but you just have to have the balls to answer them, or ask them, I'm sorry. You have to ask the questions.
The client's extremely gonna probably be pretty uncomfortable with some of the personal questions; that's very normal, very, very normal. Or sometimes they're not going to want to fully answer them, and they're going to give you like a one-word response.
What you have to do in order to maintain the relationship there on the phone is not change your tonality. It's to just be very cool, calm, and collected. You guys have heard that all the time, I'm sure.
If someone's not really fully answering your question, or maybe they're kind of sidetracking it, or maybe they don't just want to answer your questions, you would just ask them the same thing, acknowledge what they said or what their response was, and then dismiss what they said.
Then from there, you'll go ahead and you'll ask the same question in a different way without changing your tonality at all. But you do just have to ask the question, right? And it does take some balls to do that because sometimes it is pretty intimidating on the phone, especially with people that are usually, you know, maybe you're talking to a client that's really always used to getting their way.
They're very much like, "Got to be in control" type people. Those A-type individuals, you just got to match their pace, and you got to ask the questions regardless. If you don't ask the questions, you'll lose the sale.
Again, it's not so much a sale. I have never been in an industry that's that, that's so less like sales as this is, if that even makes sense. I mean, it's literally just a conversation, and you're essentially just pinpointing their needs and then you're just kind of ushering them through the process of how they can get something like this done and having a little bit of structure along the way.
There's really no ultimate close; there's definitely no hard closes. There's a couple of soft closes, you know, getting them to acknowledge what you're saying. But more times than not, it's just a conversation and just ushering them through the process.
That's how you'll retain business, and that's how you'll really set yourself up for the rest of the year financially, depending on what carriers you're writing and, you know, the size of the policies. You'll definitely get paid what you're worth, and you'll do it the right way while putting the client in the most optimal position, whereas they have a full understanding of exactly what you're putting in place for them.
There's no confusion, and they know that you're their guy. Because again, I said at the beginning of the call, there's a difference between people that are trying to make sales and make a little bit of money and there's people that are trying to make an actual business out of this, right?
Because if you retain the business and you do things the right way, and you ultimately build the value with the client based on what we just talked about, 5, 10, 15 years from now, you're going to have so many renewals coming in that's going to take care of all of your income automatically, plus all the backend business, the referral business.
It just builds up, and it snowballs over time when you just do things this way. When I started in the industry, financially, it was very tough, as I'm sure it is for just about anybody starting in the business. That's very, very common; it's normal, right?
You just got to make a little bit of money. I completely understand that, right? You want to still try to do it the right way, but it's not necessarily the priority, which is very understandable. I was the same way.
But when you start to understand the business a little bit and you start to build some relationships, you get to figure out why what we do is actually so important, especially the death benefit.
When you get a call from a client that their wife passed away, it does change you. It really does because this is a person you spoke to a couple of months ago, and they seemed totally normal on the phone. But then they were in a car accident two months after our conversation, and their husband is calling you crying on the phone trying to figure out how we can fix this.
The business doesn't really come into perspective until you get those calls. But when you get those calls, you realize why it was so important that you did the right thing in the first place.
This is the topic that nobody wants to talk about because nobody thinks they're going to die. Everybody thinks they're going to die, but they don't know they're going to die, if that makes any sense. Nobody wants to talk about the uncomfortable topic.
It's my job to talk about it. You hop on the phone with me; we're gonna talk about it. If it's uncomfortable, we're gonna talk about it. I'm gonna uncover your need, and we're gonna figure this out together because now we're in this.
Coming up in a week, getting him everything he needs, and they found out that some tweet.
Thank you, bro.
You guys do, um, you don't do max, uh, minimum death benefit of a max cash value, right? That's not what you're focused on at all?
That's the, that's what your whole conversation was this whole time. You don't want us to be doing that, right?
No, no, I disagree with that. I think you should definitely do that. It just has to make sense. The whole purpose of the conversation is to make sure that you're putting the client in the most optimal position as well as yourself.
So, if the client says, "Hey, you know, I'm looking to do this, this, and this," no problem. Let's go ahead and structure the policy accordingly. You can still do max accumulation, right? And minimum death. There's nothing wrong with that at all.
But if your target premium, you know, is less than 25% of what the AP is, then you're probably not bringing as much value to the other components of the policy.
Even if you're not able to do that and you're not focused so much on that purpose with the IUL, then we still need to build the need for the death benefit.
If we're going to do max accumulation, minimum death, then let's go ahead and figure out another solution so we can put something in place like a term policy for, you know, a super cheap monthly premium to make sure we're still getting a decent amount of death benefit there.
And it's just asking the question, if that makes sense, Alexander?
Yeah, that makes sense. I just wanted to clarify. So, because normally I don't do a ton of IULs. I mean, I do more like mutual IULs and then NLG. The ones I've done with them have been more the max death benefit, minimum cash value.
But, um, excuse me, um, reverse that. Maximum cash value, minimum death benefit. But yours basically saying, "Well, actually, it makes sense as a business owner to not just do that. Make sure you're also doing a term policy," which I've done that before.
Or just do, you know, structure it the right way where the target premium is not less than 25%, you know, maybe 50% or 70% is more means you're actually doing your job.
And that's what we're getting paid to do, so that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, I'll give you guys a perfect example. A couple of months ago, I was speaking to this gentleman that, um, he's a business owner; he has a construction company, and he's looking to retire in 10 years.
I think he was 55 or 56. He was looking to retire in 10 years, so he wanted to retire in his mid-60s. The retirement side of things was very, very important to him. He had one daughter, and he was divorced, so he had one dependent that was relying on him for income.
She was 16, I think, so she still got a few years before she's, you know, legal or anything like that. But based on what he told me on the phone, it sounded like she's always going to be a dependent of his, so he wants to make sure she's going to be okay.
But my point is, the way we structured the insurance policy was to maximize, number one, his daughter, but also, number two, retirement. So, we structured it in a way to where he's only making monthly allocations to the insurance for 10 years.
So, when he reaches the age of 65, his allocations are going to stop, so he's no longer paying into the insurance policy. Okay, which allowed him to put more into the policy up front because he's not paying on it for very long.
Okay, so we solved that problem. So, he wanted to pay, I think it was like 3,000 a month. So, if he's paying 3,000 a month for 10 years, that's 36 grand a year.
I think that's what, like a little over 300 grand? I'm not very good at math, like 360 grand or something like that. So, that's a lot of money that you're putting into an insurance policy. That's a lot of money, and that's no small thing.
So, you want to make sure you're really catering to this guy's needs. So, he was looking for age 65 to retire. So, what we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure he could save as much money on taxes and getting him as much tax-free retirement as possible.
So, he's paid on the policy for 10 years. At age 65, he stops paying. At age 66, he starts to receive an annual tax-free retirement check from his death benefit every year for the rest of his life.
And that tax-free check was 30 grand. So, he's paying 36 a year for 10 years, and then he gets 30 grand back every year tax-free for the rest of his life.
Okay, on top of that, he can make a withdrawal, not a loan, a withdrawal from his cash value, right? If it's a withdrawal and it does not exceed what he paid into the insurance policy, it's not taxed.
So, if he's paying 36 grand a year, we have flexibility up to 36 grand a year for withdrawals where we're not going to be taxed.
Okay, so now he's going to get 30 grand from his tax-free retirement. He's going to get 36 grand from a withdrawal that's tax-free because his cash value is growing at such a rapid rate he has the flexibility to do so.
And he had enough death benefit; I think the death benefit was like 725,000 or something like that. He had enough benefit that even if he passes away, it was kind of established that he wanted at least a couple hundred grand to take care of his daughter if something happens.
Even when he's at age 90, I think it was 93 or 94, and he was pretty confident he wasn't going to live past 85. That's just the kind of guy he was.
So, but even at age 93 or 94, he was still going to have about 200 to $250,000 in his death benefit when he's receiving 30 grand a year from his tax-free retirement.
Right? The target premium on that was a little over 31 grand, and his annual AP was 36 grand. My point is, his daughter's gonna be okay; his retirement is gonna be okay.
He's saving as much money as possible with taxes. He's getting almost 70 grand a year in tax-free income from his IUL alone, not to mention he had a 401k, not to mention he's going to get Social Security, not to mention he's going to get a severance when he stops his business.
This is just a supplement retirement option, and it's almost 70 grand a year in income. And by spending as much time as I did with the client, I was compensated about 31 grand.
That's how you build a business profitably, and you build a solid relationship with a client that's going to last for a lifetime.
Now, keep in mind, there was a lot that went into this. There were multiple calls. We went over probably three or four different illustrations together. He had a financial adviser that I did a Zoom call with, and we broke down everything piece by piece to make sure there was no confusion at all.
It was an absolute pain in the ass, but we did it, and it made sense. When you do that with these clients, guys, I'm telling you, there's ways where you can structure these IULs accordingly and put them in the best possible position to cover their needs while still taking care of you and your business throughout the process.
Because if you're only getting paid 25% target, you're never going to be able to build a successful business off of that. It's not enough, not for all the work you're doing. You might as well sell like mortgage protection or final expense.
Hey, Evan.
Yeah.
Hey, quick question for you. I see this in the chat too. What's your go-to IUL carrier?
There are a few that I like. I really like FNGG. I really like FNGG. I love their illustration tool. I just seem to see the best results with them, just in my personal experience.
I love how their commissions pay out. I love their support. Their customer support is second to none in my personal experience. So, FNGG is probably my favorite.
When it comes to pretty advanced IULs, if it's something really basic and it's someone that's just looking for something, you know, they want to grow a little bit of value, maybe they want to have a couple hundred grand in death benefit, not super specific on anything at all, then sometimes with those clients, if they're spending less than 200 grand a month, it just makes sense to do like an IUL with Mutual of Omaha.
Keep it really easy. They're not looking for anything specific; they don't have any real goals for the insurance. They basically just want to have something to protect their family and build a little value.
So, at that point, it doesn't make sense to do an FNG. Like, why would we do that? You might as well just have something a little bit easier. So, we'll go ahead and do an IUL with Mutual.
There's, uh, NLG is decent. I don't use them too much anymore. Their compensation is pretty low, so I try to avoid them. FNG has pretty much the exact same illustration tools, so I like to use them a little bit more.
But I would say FNGG is my favorite, and then Mutual is probably a good second.
Okay, thank you for that.
How does that withdrawal work? You said you can withdraw 30 grand and take the loan?
Yeah, so there's, yeah, so there's two components. You can do a withdrawal or you can do a loan from your insurance. A lot of clients, especially people that are putting a lot of money into the policy, they want to make sure they're saving as much money on taxes as they can, which makes sense.
So, we want to mitigate that. So, what you would do is if they're putting in six grand a year, hypothetically, they essentially have the flexibility to take six grand out of the cash value without being taxed because you can't exceed what you've paid into it without getting, you know, penalties, fees, and tax.
But if it's a lot different, so FNGG allows that. You can just withdraw whatever you've paid into it.
Okay, and then since he's already built up cash outside of that, then he can just keep doing that. And he can only do that for the next 10 years after he turns 65?
Or he would be able, he can do it as long as it doesn't exceed what he paid into it. So, it's by annual basis. So again, if he's paid six grand, he can only take out six grand a year without paying any fees or being taxed.
And this, the example I was giving earlier, it was obviously a large example because he was putting a lot into it. But more times than not, it's going to be a lot less than that. So, you just want to make sure it's not exceeding whatever they're paying into the insurance.
All right, that makes a lot of sense, man. I really appreciate it.
Yep, no problem.
Unless, wait, just backtrack. Unless it's an advance on the death benefit, right? Unless it's in advance?
Yep, right. Then they could take out whatever they, up to, not probably up to 90%, right, if they wanted to?
Well, well, there's, yeah, exactly, exactly. There's a difference though between taking out a loan and taking out a withdrawal, right? A withdrawal, not paying back the loan. They are or they're not paying the loan back, but they're using that death benefit as collateral. I'm assuming that's what you're referring to?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, yep, that makes sense.
Felipe and Dale, I think that's all I got. If you guys want to do like a Q&A, if anybody wants to ask any questions.
Yeah, last question I have for you, Evan. You mentioned at the start you have a virtual assistant. Any recommendations on, you know, a company or, you know, where you can find a good virtual assistant to help with your calls?
Personal company? I don't. The virtual assistant I have is actually, um, I have a couple different admins that work in the company, and they kind of help me out.
I actually have two admins: one to handle, like, you know, agent side of things, contracts, all that kind of stuff. And then I have another one that specifically does the dialing and the calling and, you know, follow-up and that kind of stuff.
So, I just pay them a small salary, and that works out pretty well. I think I pay them like 500 bucks a week, and then that's enough for them to kind of dial from like 9:00 AM to, I think they dial from like 9:00 to like 1:00 every day.
Okay, got it, thank you.
I've got a question. Thanks for your time today, Evan. But, um, I know how to illustrate a minimum death benefit, max cash value, but I'm wondering how to illustrate best something like what you and Larry were talking about, where you're like, "Hey, like, maybe you should pay $400 a month into this thing."
And, you know, maybe in the future, you could put in like up to a thousand. How do you best illustrate that?
You're asking me if you want to focus more so on not necessarily the cash value component, is that what you're referring to, where they can put more into the policy later on?
Yeah, exactly. How do you illustrate that they can put more into the policy later on, and how do you know, like, how much they can?
Yeah, so it'll vary, obviously, with whatever it is that you're constructing. It's also different with every company, of course.
But basically, what I typically would do in that scenario is you would do like a no solve, and then you would do specified options where you're putting in a specified premium. So, if their premium was 400, you would illustrate it at 400, of course.
And then you'd probably put, like, you also kind of gotta play around with it if you're doing no solve. But then you would do like, you know, a death benefit. So, let's just say you did like half a million dollars death benefit.
And then you would essentially illustrate it in a way where the MECH premium makes sense. So, if their premium is 400 on a monthly basis, let's just say it was 20 grand hypothetically.
And it's at that point because the death benefit is at half a million. But if the death benefit was at like 200,000 or 150,000 or 250,000, obviously that MECH's going to be a lot lower.
Let's just say it's eight grand, right? So, it limits his flexibility on what he can distribute into the insurance policy without exceeding the MECH or maximum that he can put into the policy on an annual basis.
So, to answer your question, you'd probably want to structure it as a no solve option, and then you just put the specified options in there to where it would make sense when you pull up the illustration or like a quick view on the illustration.
Okay, thank you. I'll play around on FNG. You can just put it for face value, and it's going to ask you how much they want to put in per month or annually.
Uh-huh.
And set it for no MECH, and it's going to be the highest death benefit. So, sometimes it'll actually be a higher target than they're actually paying. You're only going to get paid on the target, but it's also going to show them their seven pay of how much extra money they can put in, which is usually a huge amount because they've got so much of their money going towards insurance.
So, I just set, I'll either set that up as face value or even if you do it max accumulation, it's still going to, you know, it's going to knock a few bucks off your target, but still not too bad.
But going back to that, I always give them an option because I want to feel good about, you know, I want to make sure the guy doesn't go back and look later and say, "He set me up with a really bad program here. I could have gotten, you know, faster money growth if I'd have done it this way."
So, I'll always give him an option. "Do you want to be stuck with that amount every month, or do you want the option of being able to put a lot more money in? Here's two examples: one, you can only put in, you know, you can put up to 12,000 a year. This one, you could put up to 30,000 a year."
"Well, I want the one that I could put up to 30,000 a year if I want to." They're always going to choose that one, so I can feel good about giving them the option.
And I tell them, "Here's what that money is going to look like if you were able to put in 30,000 a year later. This is how much more money you're going to have."
So, anyway, I give them an option, and I feel good about it either way, either one they pick.
Yeah, I like that. Thanks, Larry.
Of course.
Any other questions, guys?
Evan, uh, Brian Kane here. I've got one. So, kind of going off of what they were just talking about, if I was to show somebody on FNGG a policy that says, "Okay, you know, I've got the death benefit. They're starting it from the kids' birth, and they're starting doing $150 a month," right?
It shows a $500,000 policy for the face value. How would I, I guess, show in the cash value, you know, if they say, "Okay, this person is going to then at the age of 30, then put $500 a month in."
They're not exceeding the MECH, but they want, I want to show them how their cash value is going to change when they do put in that additional money. Is there a way to do so?
I believe there is. It's very carrier depicted though. FNG has a component where you can kind of structure it accordingly.
You have a solve option, I believe it's, I want to say it's, there's a couple different ways you can do it. I think you can do it under no solve, but you can also do it under the income option.
And you can basically distribute how many years they're going to be paying X amount of dollars and then when they want those premiums to change.
So, sometimes you'll have a client where I think this is what you're referring to. They want to put like 100 bucks in for the first 30 years or the first five years, whatever the case may be.
And then when they hit that threshold, they want their premiums to increase, you know, to maybe 500 bucks or 600 bucks or something like that.
I believe it's the no solve option, and then it's also the income option with FNG. And I want to say it's pretty similar for Mutual of Omaha as well.
And that's where you can kind of distribute the amount of years their premiums would change, if that makes sense, Brian?
Yep.
All right, thank you.
Derek, you got a question? Last one?
Yeah, I did have a question. So, I kind of caught the back end of what you guys were talking about, and it's funny enough, I just got off a call and was discussing that as far as profitability for my business's sake.
You know, I feel like I have struggled with trying to quote-unquote do right by the client as well as making sure that I'm fine. Like, one of the first policies that I wrote with Infinity Box, a $122,000 AP, but I wrote a minimum face max fund policy and got paid like $1,700 for it.
So, it really cuts into the profitability, and I kind of wanted to just kind of see if there is a rule of thumb, Evan, or anybody in the chat, like how you guys are going about structuring it to where you are making sure that the client is taken care of, but also making sure that you're not like running your profitability down for the business.
Because I really do like the aspect of like being able to show them MECH premium for a max fund policy, but also for maybe a no solve where they have more clearance.
And just kind of what you guys are doing to, I guess, meet both parameters of taking care of the client and yourself.
Sure, Hunter, is this call recorded?
Yeah.
Yep, everyone. Awesome.
I'll piggyback on that just a little bit, Derek, but rewatch the recording if you have some time because that's actually exactly what most of this call has been about, is kind of maximizing your profitability on these sales while still doing the right thing for the client.
Because I understand that's a question that some of you guys have had: how do I still do the right thing with the client while making a lot of money in the process?
It's really just building out the different components of what an IUL is and, you know, keeping it easy. The face amount of the insurance is what you get paid on, right?
So, how do we bring as much value to that as possible to where it actually makes sense? Because most people that are looking for some kind of, like, again, tax retirement or cash value component, right?
They still have a large need for the death benefit; they're just not necessarily using IUL for that. They're going to use something else for that.
So, a lot of people have a separate insurance policy, or they'll have a separate, you know, source of insurance of some way, shape, or form that's going to cover, you know, their kids while they want to use this for something completely different.
Whereas the way I typically approach that with the client is instead of having three different eggs, let's make sure we have everything under the same umbrella.
And you would kind of approach it in a way where you're breaking down essentially the cost of how much coverage they would need for their dependents or the people that they care about to make sure that they don't lose the way of living that they currently have under your protection, right?
And let whatever that dollar amount is, so, and however long that is. So, let's just say we wanted to make sure that your two kids recover for five years if something happened to you, and it cost you 103 grand every year to take care of the kids.
So, that means we would need a little bit over $500,000 in coverage on top of making sure that we're setting up the cash value and the tax-free income accordingly to your needs.
So, there's a fine line there, and the way you would typically structure that is going to be with a no solve option.
That's a really customizable option to where you can kind of critique things in this way, and you gotta kind of play around with it to where it makes financial sense.
But at least that way, you're covering the need for the death benefit, and you're building out the emotionality of the insurance while you're still getting the client the cash value component and the tax-free income that they're looking for.
Almost exactly as it otherwise would be if you were doing max fund.
Okay, the difference between the two is very minimal, very, very minimal. If you do it this way, so you're still putting the client in the best possible position, but instead of getting paid 1,700 bucks with a $12,000 sale, you'll be getting paid 11,000.
Right?
Okay, I like that.
Yep, and again, we went through that in a lot of detail, so if you rewatch the recording, you'll see the exact way and how you would go ahead and approach that. But that should answer your question.
Yes, my apologies, and Caitlyn, thank you for the reminder. Nice to meet you all too.
Yeah, I got you. I'll send you that replay for sure.
Thank you, guys. I appreciate everyone. Evan, thanks for running the meeting. This is the first one of the year. Remember, every Wednesday, this same Zoom.
Anyone, next week, I think is going to be Jeff C. Leag, the one that is going to be running it. So, I appreciate you all, and let's just start the year winning. You know, 2025 is going to be insane.
Let's do it. Appreciate it, guys. Have a good one.
See you.
Good stuff. I appreciate you.