Annuities

Top Tips for Selling Annuities

Presented by Richard Mangiameli   This is a great article I found in the NAIFA magazine Advisor Today; it covers these important steps in selling annuities:
  1. Determine the client’s needs – it is important that you listen, and then repeat it to them showing that you understand
  2. What does the client understand about retirement income
  3. Educate the client about how an annuity will remove the fear of out-living their money
  4. Understand the different types of annuities and how they will help determine the right option for your client
  5. Be prepared to address the client’s concerns and their fears
Read more here: http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/NAIS/NAIS0215/index.php?startid=38  
Life Insurance

SELL MORE INDEX UNIVERSAL LIFE BY ASKING FOR LESS…

Presented by Brian Leising   When presenting Index Universal Life (IUL), we usually position the product as an either/or decision.  You either place your retirement dollars in an IUL or continue placing them in your 401(k).  When it works, this all or nothing approach is great.  What happens when this approach fails? Do you think some people are afraid to place all their eggs in one basket?  Consider this: don’t ask for all their eggs, just a few.  Here are two ways you can position IUL as a retirement plan supplement. One way to position IUL as a retirement plan supplement requires knowledge of social security and tax planning.  The IUL becomes one of three components in a comprehensive retirement plan.  To make this work you need to understand two features of the social security program: 1) if a client receiving social security benefits also receives taxable income, their social security income may be taxable; 2) social security benefits increase if a person waits until age 70 to receive benefits.  If your client has sufficient resources, they can maximize their social security income and minimize taxes simultaneously.  Here are the steps to make this happen:
  • When the client retires, they should withdraw money from their qualified plan first. Reduce the fund as much as possible.
  • At age 70 the client begins social security payments.
  • If they still have money in their qualified plan after age 70, they will need to take required minimum distributions. For most people, RMD’s will be low enough to not affect the taxation of their social security benefits.   Of course, social security and RMD’s together may not provide enough funds for your client’s living expenses.
  • Now their IUL can help. The client can take tax-free loans from their policy with no effect on the taxation of their social security benefits.  If their qualified retirement plan was liquidated, they would pay no Federal income taxes for the rest of their life.
You do not have to fund the IUL as their sole retirement vehicle.  Use the IUL as a planning component along with their 401(k) and social security income.  By waiting, their IUL has more time to grow, their social security benefit has more time to grow, and your client enjoys greater net income due to lack of taxation. Look for part two next week.
Long Term Care and Disability Insurance

HELPING CHILDREN CARE FOR THEIR PARENTS

Presented by Tim Dreher   An often heard objection when talking to a prospect about Long Term Care insurance is, “I don’t need insurance because my kids will take care of me.” However, many people don’t realize that there are other unfortunate factors when children care for an elderly parent.  Those factors are not just financial, but can involve emotional and physical stresses as well. According to the American Association for Long Term Care Insurance (AALTCI), the average caregiver is a female in her mid to late forties.  She typically provides more than twenty hours of care per week.  More often than not, she is already juggling her own hectic schedule of working a full time career, raising a family of her own and taking care of her own household. Unfortunately, there can be a financial cost if a caregiver is forced to take time off from their job, reduce their hours to a part-time status or if they need to put their career on hold entirely in order to care for a parent.  Of course, this is not to mention the emotional and physical hardships that a caregiver faces on a daily basis. Caring for an elderly parent is not an easy task.  Many times caregivers are stretched so thin juggling their overwhelming responsibilities that they often neglect their own health and become sick and frail themselves, speeding up their own aging. Fortunately, one way to help alleviate many of the challenges involved with caring for a loved one is to have the Long Term Care discussion and talk about how a Long Term Care plan could help.  Plan benefits can provide for professional caregivers to help supplement the care that is being provided by family members.  When talking about Long Term Care insurance with a prospect, I explain it like this, “Of course your kids will help care for you if you should ever need it, and Long Term Care insurance will allow them to care for you better and longer.”  Isn’t that what all of us want? Contact your Financial Brokerage Sales Manager at 800-397-9999 for help in overcoming this and many more objections. It could turn that negative experience into a positive one and hopefully a sale for you.
Life Insurance

Asking for the Order: 13 Tips for Sales Closers

Presented by Jim Linn   In the tips below, Jeff Beals provides some helpful tips to close the deal or to know when to wrap it up. A few essentials to keep in mind when it comes time to call the question, wrap it up, ask for the order or close the deal:
  1. If you react angrily or defensively when a prospect says no, you could be slamming the door on future opportunities.
  2. “No” sometimes means “not yet.”  Sometimes it actually means “no.”  You have to feel it out.
  3. Don’t panic or overreact when you hear an objection.
  4. Bad objections are barriers or roadblocks used to get away from a salesperson or to stop the process.
  5. Good objections are actually so important to successful selling that you might want to be concerned if you don’t receive any.
  6. Good objections are usually questions dressed up like problem statements.
  7. Have answers and rationales ready to go for your ten most anticipated objections.
  8. Even when they are really interested, many clients will wait for you to initiate the close.
  9. If you truly believe you are peddling value, then there’s no need to be a reluctant closer.
  10. To close a highly competitive sale, it might help to bring in a dedicated closer, an experienced person of authority who has not worked with the prospect up to that point.
  11. Be wary of false closing signals. Clients can be very misleading.
  12. It is better to pounce on a false closing signal than to allow a true signal to go by unaddressed.
  13. In order to minimize buyer’s remorse, make sure you hit every step of the selling process and every position on the relationship-building ladder.