We look forward to the Van Mueller newsletter every month. It's chock-full of sound bites, sales tips, and eye-opening statistics. Here are our favorite parts of the February 2023 edition. We're sharing the full introduction, and 2 of the 7 monthly sales ideas. If you like what you read, we encourage you to click here and become a subscriber.
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February 2023 – 7 Ideas and Views Newsletter by Van Mueller
Currently, our country and yes even the rest of the world find themselves in the “Eye of a Financial Hurricane.” You wouldn’t ascertain that danger, as presently the stock market is increasing, and we just had the government report that our economy grew by 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022. It is hard to explain to our customers and even to ourselves that there is tremendous danger ahead for the financial and retirement accounts of the American people.
It seems like our customers are being told one thing and then we show up and try to convince them that another dangerous circumstance could destroy everything they have worked for.
It Puts Us In An Adversarial Situation With Prospects And Clients! It is also important to point out that no matter how much we think it works, bad news does not inspire our prospects and clients to take action. It is and always will be that Access To Opportunity Is The Occurrence That Inspires Our Customers To Take Action. Essentially, “telling” is “selling.” Asking questions is advocating. Asking questions is helping our customers to buy. Asking for customers’ OPINIONS is non adversarial. There is so much evidence that this is the correct path and yet the industry continues to make selling be about products. Who has the lowest premium. Who has the highest interest rate. Who has the best cash value. Essentially, there is no way to quantify any of this information, and yet we continue to attempt to prove those very issues. This is done to the detriment of our agents and most of all our customers. In fact, currently we have people, wonderful people, like Ed Slott, Don Blanton, Bob Castiglione, Pamela Yellen, Joe Jordan, etc. sharing all their amazing ideas and information and in spite of access to all this incredible information, approximately 4 percent of America’s agents qualify for the Million Dollar Round Table. Why is this happening? It was no different in the past either. We had John Savage and Ben Feldman and Roger Zener and Tom Wolff and Sid Friedman, Norm LeVine and Charly “Tremendous” Jones, and yet, only 4 percent of the agents in our country wrote enough business to qualify for the Million Dollar Round Table.
There is so much evidence that this is the correct path and yet the industry continues to make selling be about products.
Shouldn’t we be asking why we are not achieving better results? Is the information all of us are sharing not as amazing as we think it is or, could there be another reason?
I continue to believe that the primary reason that we see so little success with the information we have is very simple and precise. Our agents do not have learning skills. They have not been taught how to learn this information and transform it into useable skills for inspiring our prospects and clients to take action. This will become an even more serious issue when our country departs the eye of the financial hurricane, we currently find ourselves in.
So, how can all of us, including me, make better use of all this wonderful information that is being shared with us and has been shared with us?
We have to stop studying and we must start practicing. All the analytical people are going crazy right now. You study so that you can increase your knowledge and be better equipped to answer any and all questions that our prospects and clients ask us. Actually, that is part of the problem. Think how hard you work to increase your knowledge about all kinds of insurance, mutual funds, long term care, critical Illness, taxes, inflation, volatility and longevity. These are only a few of the issues we must develop a working knowledge of to be successful in our business. What follows is where the misunderstanding or misconnection occurs. Do you use that vast increase in knowledge to show the prospect and client how smart you are, or do you use all this great information that you have acquired to develop questions that elicit opinions from your prospects and clients that verify to the client how smart they are. Do you use the information to take your prospect or client on a journey of discovery; a discovery that they ascertain by themselves, or do you tell them information? No one likes to be told what to do and it is becoming worse by the second. Our customers are inundated with enormous amounts of information every day and it is repetitious. There are many bits of information hundreds of times a week.
We have to stop studying and we must start practicing.
Have you ever heard the phrase that if you hear a lie hundreds of times that it eventually becomes the truth? I don’t believe that is what is happening. Americans are being let down more and more by the institutions and organizations they depend on. Think about this. Has the Internal Revenue Service served Americans well? What about Wall Street? Don’t we hear about more and more fraud every day? What about banks? Not only are we worried about the financial security of banks, but we are also finding more and more banks that are being fined for deceptive practices. Our leaders, we are finding out, are comfortable with taking home classified documents. We are learning that government is more concerned about setting up financial opportunities for themselves while actually limiting our access to the same opportunities. Even our major retailers are not providing the promised services, or they now want to charge for services that were originally free. What has been your experience lately with Amazon, UPS, Fed Ex, Wal-Mart, etc. Do they tell us one thing and deliver another lesser thing or not provide the promised services at all? Have you been in a grocery store lately? Some of them are stocked so low it almost looks like they are going out of business.
Where am I going with this information? I no longer believe that lies become truth. I don’t believe Americans believe anything they are TOLD. If that is the case, aren’t you making a terrible mistake telling your prospects and clients anything? If you tell your customer that life insurance is good, can’t they find as much or even more social media that says it’s not good? If you tell them that an annuity is good, aren’t there multitudes of financial professionals that will declare annuities to be a waste of money? Sixty percent of Americans pay no federal income tax and yet they are told by the personalities to contribute to IRAs and 401(k)s even though they will not get a tax deduction for their contribution. Even worse, when their families inherit, they could pay an exorbitant amount of taxes to inherit these tax deferred programs.
I don’t believe Americans believe anything they are TOLD. If that is the case, aren’t you making a terrible mistake telling your prospects and clients anything?
Because they don’t sell product directly and therefore are NOT licensed, we have financial personalities who give inadequate or even completely inaccurate advice, without any contradiction from the regulators that oversee our advice.
We are about to experiences a global economic disaster that will include inflation and recession. Most of the people currently in our business have never experienced an economic disaster like 2007 and 2008 or the dot-com bubble of 2000 to 2002. This will probably be worse than both of those. How will these advisors deal with unruly and afraid customers who they told to do something, and it is now not going according to plan? Are all of these agents intentionally giving wrong advise? Are these agents being intentionally deceived by all the insurance and financial companies? Of course, they aren’t. However, that is exactly where the problem lies. It is obviously the responsibility of mutual fund companies and insurance companies to show and hype the amazing features and benefits of their products. Because agents have not been shown how to learn amazing questions and sales techniques, they assume, incorrectly, that they should sell to prospects and clients the same way these financial and insurance companies have sold to them. Our customers are inundated with many, many options while having very little access to factual information.
Agents will sell products and tell their customers why they should own them because that is how they learned about the product from their companies. This is important. Even if you are selling the best product in America, if it does not benefit the customers circumstance, it will fail. Even if you provide a product that doesn’t lose money, if it doesn’t keep up with inflation the customers money will be losing purchasing power and they will have a lower standard of living.
Agents will sell products and tell their customers why they should own them because that is how they learned about the product from their companies.
What is it that I am trying to say? Study does not work unless you use it to develop questions that create amazing conversations. These conversations are then used to help the prospect or client use their own common sense to reason out for themselves what is the best course of action for them to take to build a successful financial, protection and retirement future. Please really give this serious consideration. If the customer arrives at their solution using their own reasoning power and common sense, because they had a wonderful conversation with your guidance about all the issues they should give consideration to, such as taxes, loss of benefits, inflation, volatility and longevity, won’t you have many more successful outcomes than you do now?
First of all, won’t it be one of the most thorough conversations they have ever had about insurance and finance and retirement? It will seem amazing to them compared to a discussion about a product. Also, doesn’t it become pretty difficult to question their decision to go forward if they are the ones who reasoned out the decision? And you should even consider this. Won’t they be less likely to check out their decision on social media once they have made their decision?
In this polarized society that we now live in, isn’t it true that once our customers have made their mind up, is it easily changed by the opinion of others? So, shouldn’t our objective ALWAYS be to help our customers discover exactly what they want to do and then by having a wonderful conversation that the customer feels in control of, determine what steps are necessary to achieve those goals.
In this polarized society that we now live in, isn’t it true that once our customers have made their mind up, is it easily changed by the opinion of others?
Everything we have discussed so far to this point could be considered an overview of how to build more success and create more appointments and finally how to have more success in those appointments.
Starting now and for the rest of the year, I would like to get down to specific ways that you can dramatically increase your appointments. I want to share how you can use current news events to create questions that all your customers will need to answer. We will work on specific conversations that you can have about every issue so that you can select five or six of your favorites and have several in reserve if someone surprises you. This is completely achievable in a short amount of time. When you arrive at the understanding that you must learn and share simplicity rather than complexity this will be exciting and worthwhile to learn. Everything we will share are LEARNED SKILLS. Everyone can learn them.
One thing! You cannot try to do this. You either do this or you don’t do this. As you make a decision to learn more and more of this information, your results will increase exponentially. If you decide to only learn a little, your results will still increase. Those who decide to learn more and more will see their production increase dramatically. You are the one who will decide the results of these ideas by how much time you invest in learning the skills. One thing is sure; you will get better. Again, and I am being redundant, it will be up to you to decide how much better you want to get.
As you make a decision to learn more and more of this information, your results will increase exponentially.
So, what must be the number one priority if you are going to get better? Practice, practice and more practice. It must be real practice. It cannot be silent in front of a mirror or watching yourself on your computer or a previously recorded Zoom.
The practice must be in front of real people. That way you can get feedback. You can see how the customer reacts to the questions you ask. Which questions spark the best interest. Which questions seem confusing to your customer? What conversations are you most comfortable having? Professionals practice! The really tremendous professionals practice until they become instinctive. That means they don’t have to think about anything. The conversations flow naturally as if you were discussing your favorite team or movie or food. It becomes fun because there is give and take. The answers to your questions require more questions for clarification because you are truly interested in their opinions. If you really want to show real interest, take notes or to save time start completing suitability or best interest forms. Ask follow-up questions. Allow them to enjoy one of the things your customers love to do. Isn’t that sharing their opinions?
The practice must be in front of real people. That way you can get feedback.
Here is the caveat. Please do not ask personal questions until they say that they desire to go forward. At that point you will be completing a fact finder. You will find this surprising. Without asking personal questions you will discover enormous amounts of personal information. Why? Because when they share their personal opinions, it will be based on THEIR personal information and understanding of financial and retirement information. The conversation will not be adversarial because they won’t feel like you are getting too personal. I promise you. Your conversation with the customer will be a conversation they have never had with an agent or financial professional ever.
What are these conversations about? Taxes would be a great place to start. Losing Social Security, Medicare and health care benefits or their increased costs. Inflation: It’s in all the news. Volatility: Do you want to lose money or not lose money? And, what if you live longer than your money does? Would that be a problem? You could develop your own 100 questions about the above issues, however, please feel free to use my questions if you want. These questions should be used in your everyday life with friends and relatives and neighbors and the people you do business with. You should ask these questions of your current customers and ask for you company’s orphaned customers and build interesting conversations to you can converse with anyone at any time.
Finally, who should you practice on? Wouldn’t friends and relatives be a good place to start? Here is how you can set it up. Tell them there’s this man, Van Mueller, who is requiring you to learn a presentation to help Americans understand the serious economic circumstance America is in currently and he won’t continue to help if I don’t practice. They can Google me and find out that I am a real person. Then explain to the person or persons you are practicing on that you will ask them 5 questions and you would really appreciate their opinions.
1. What was interesting?
2. What was boring?
3. What did you understand?
4. What didn’t you understand?
5. If you knew I was coming to sell you something, what is there about this presentation that would inspire you to take action?
I would bet you will sell two out of 10 of these practice sessions and after you have done 20 or 25 of these you will be one of the most rehearsed agents in the insurance and financial services business.
Let’s get started with this month's sales ideas.
Idea #2: Longevity Will Become a Real Problem for Retirees
New studies disclose that very few Americans know or understand their life expectancy. Because of that, many Americans will run out of money before they run out of life.
According to the George Washington University Global Literacy Excellence Center and the TIAA Institute, a man who makes it to age 60 can, on average, expect to live another 22 years. A woman can expect to live another 25 years. When you read these articles, you will see that very few are prepared for how long they will live.
It is our responsibility to have a conversation with them about this information.
Title: Ric Edelman Says Advisors Don’t Properly Plan For Extended Life Spans
https://www.fa-mag.com/ (Financial Advisor, January 12, 2023)
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/ric-edelman--fas-do-not-plan-properly-for-rapidly-extended-life-span-71486.html
Title: Do Your Clients Know How Long They Could Live in Retirement?
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/ (Think Advisor, January 17, 2023)
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2023/01/17/do-your-clients-know-how-long-they-could-live-in-retirement/
Title: Most Americans don’t know their life expectancy; that’s a problem in retirement planning
https://www.foxbusiness.com/ (Fox, January 18, 2023)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/most-americans-life-expectancy-problem-retirement-planning
Idea #7: Life Insurance Advantages Over Retirement Accounts
It is not often in mainstream media that we find an article so favorable to cash value life insurance written by a well-known columnist, Elliot Raphaelson, that identifies specific reasons for the benefit. Here is a brief list of examples you should incorporate into your conversations. Did you know that:
1. Life insurance protects against uncertain future tax rates.
2. Life insurance is an investment, not an expense.
3. Life insurance gives individuals more control over the funds.
4. Life insurance incorporates leverage.
5. Life Insurance mitigates market risk.
Cash value life insurance is a solution. Cash value life insurance is not a cost.
Title: Advantages of life insurance over retirement accounts
https://buffalonews.com/ (The Buffalo News, January 4, 2023)
https://buffalonews.com/ap/lifestyles/the-savings-game-the-advantages-of-life-insurance-over-retirement-accounts/article_e1e06c33-7aa8-5ab9-b6ec-10a12842f6b5.html
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