The Annuity Lead

Best Time for Annuity Seminars

Retirees generally rise early in the morning and schedule golf, tennis, shopping, doctor appointments, dentist appointments, and meetings with the accountant or attorney on weekday mornings.  Therefore, never hold a seminar on a weekday morning because you would be competing with a lot of other activities in your prospect’s schedule.  Schedule your annuity seminar either for Saturday mornings (when retirees put their weekday activities on hold) or weekday afternoons at 2:30 p.m.  By a weekday afternoon, retirees have completed their morning schedule and your only competition is Oprah.

Try and avoid scheduling evening seminars because some retirees tell me that they are reluctant to drive at night as they notice their night vision is not as good.  Additionally, single females have a safety concern, making them reluctant to venture out at night.  If you were having seminars for younger people, all of these guidelines would be different as you would seek to fit their schedule and lifestyle.

Choose the right message

Retirees are concerned with security and are afraid of making irreversible financial mistakes.  This means that they are far less concerned with performance statistics, and favor capital preservation.  (Unlike a younger attendee that wants performance as they look to future financial security).

Thus your annuity seminar title should address their concerns and their fears rather than a product.   The seminar should star you – the problem solver and trustworthy advisor, not a money manager or wholesaler.  Seniors buy trust in a person.  If they trust you, they’ll hand over the money and tell you, “If you think this is good, then let’s do it.”  While younger investors spend more time analyzing details of products and doing comparison shopping, the retired investor is far more attuned to analyzing you.

The topics you choose should focus on you as a problem solver for emotionally compelling problems relevant to seniors.   Some examples of emotionally compelling topics for the senior market include:
a. Mistakes Retirees Make With Their Finances and How to Avoid Them
b. Six Ways Retirees Can Cut Income Taxes and Save More Money

Never have the word “annuity” on your seminar invitation or it will look like a sales pitch for annuities and people will not attend.  Additionally, don’t make your seminar a sales pitch about annuities but rather the benefits of annuities.

Doing it right

Keep in mind that eyesight fails with age.  For this reason, you may wish to avoid really large rooms for your annuity seminar and choose a setup that gives all clear view of you and your screen if you use slides.   Here are a few additional rules for your presentation:

a. Make slides high contrast—dark print on a light background or vice versa.
b. Keep words on each slide to a minimum.  Avoid small text (24 point minimum in PowerPoint)
c. Drop all jargon.  Use simple, easy to understand terminology.  For example, never use the phrase “fixed annuity,” but ask “do you have the type of annuity where the principal is guaranteed but the interest rate has been falling over the last 10 years?”
d. Never speak for more than 75 minutes—people get bored
e. Have a system for closing appointments right at the annuity seminar—do not wait until the next day
Follow Up

Confirm your appointments at 8 am the next business morning.  Retirees rise early and leave the house.  It’s best if you confirm in person.  Do not delegate this to an assistant or you will lose appointments.  This is an important additional contact in building the bridge between you and your soon-to-be new client.

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Annuity seminars are the most effective ways to tap into the lucrative retiree market.  Many other marketing methods that work well with younger investors, such as cold-calling are considerably less effective because mature investors are skeptical.  They want to get to know you first before meeting with your one-on-one trusting you with funds.  And what better way to “check you out” than by sitting in your annuity seminar and listening to you.

The reason that retirees are perfect for annuity seminar prospecting is that they meet the three criteria for the perfect seminar attendee:

1. They have money in their control.  Unlike younger people, their assets are not locked up in an employer 401k plan or in stock options.
2. They have the time to attend.  Unlike successful working people and business owners, they have the luxury of determining their own schedule and can attend your annuity seminar
3. They are the most motivated audience.  Living with the constant insecurity of no paycheck, retirees are motivated to alleviate the financial fear that haunts them.  They have interest in learning everything possible to avoid making an irreversible financial mistake.

In order to achieve good results from annuity seminars with retirees, understand how they think and make buying decisions, and design your annuity seminar to address their special needs.   The formula for successful annuity seminars includes these considerations:

Location, location, location

Just like in real estate, your choice of location can make or break the success of your annuity seminar.  Keep in mind that most retirees living in a metropolitan area will not drive more than 20 minutes from home.  In addition, you should select a seminar location that is well known, convenient and in neutral territory.  Some annuity agents attempt to hold seminars in their office buildings.  Bad idea.  This is not neutral territory and some prospective attendees will not come for fear of being trapped in a high-pressure sales situation.  Think about buying a car.  Are you comfortable when you’re on the salesman’s turf?

Therefore, never use your office as a seminar location.  Rather, use a local restaurant that has existed for 20+ years — a place which everyone in town knows and likes.  It’s familiar, neutral and well located.  .  Many restaurants are happy to rent an extra room or even open for your annuity seminar at a time when they are normally closed.

You do not need to feed your audience just because you use a restaurant for your location. There is nothing wrong with feeding attendees, but it increases your cost and is unnecessary.  In fact, in my experience, serving food lowers the percentage of serious buyers you will have in the audience.  When you feed attendees, half of your audience will be “eaters”—people that came for the food.  Expect to get appointments with 30% of attendees. When you do not use a meal as bait, those investors who are serious about hearing what you have to say will come with or without a meal. You will get appointments with 50% to 80% of these serious attendees. (The exception to this rule is Florida, where the meal is necessary to attract attendance).

What about hotels?  Some prospects perceive hotels as a place for transients and may associate you with the salesman who is here today, gone tomorrow.  Additionally, some hotels place their conference rooms in a location requiring your prospect to negotiate a maze of hallways.  Do you want your prospect to enter your annuity seminar frustrated?  Only use hotels when a restaurant is absolutely not available.

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Annuity selling has come a long way from the times when all it involved was cold calling, appointments and mailers. New concepts in annuity lead generation and follow up are turning around the fortunes of hundreds of annuity selling personnel around the world and you can also utilize the same concepts for generating annuity leads that have an extremely high rate of conversion.

Using lead generators is one of the best ideas ever to hit the annuity sales industry. And we are talking about actual lead generators that get valuable and interested leads and not the ones that force people to provide personal information and contact details at fairs and exhibitions without their being interested. The best way of getting high end leads is to first target an audience that has the inclination and the will to buy annuity. And you can locate and identify these groups by providing lead generators like informational booklets and seminars.

Annuity seminars are one of the best places for not just getting high quality annuity leads, but also for closing sales. The trick to getting great annuity leads at seminars is to market yourself as a financial advisor or consultant instead of being an annuity salesperson. By doing this you will address people’s concerns—which are not buying financial products or annuities—but rather saving on taxes, investing wisely, getting good returns and securing their future financially. When you act as a consultant and provide them with solutions (which may include buying annuities), then you help them make an informed and wise decision (all by themselves) instead of forcing your sales pitch or products on them!

You can get a large audience at your annuity seminar if you offer them valuable, fresh and required information without putting them through your annuity sales pitch. If you have already given them a hint of your breadth of knowledge through educational mailers, booklets or articles, then your chances of getting an interested audience increases even further because you will have already established yourself as an expert and people will flock to get free advice from an expert.

Please do keep in mind that a lot of such “experts” lose all their credibility in these annuity seminars because the salesman in them starts showing through. If you feel that you also will not be able to hold the salesman in you back, then please do not waste your time and effort in conducting the annuity seminar.

A good trick to identify people who are the best annuity sales leads is to ask your audience about the kind of investments that they have already made. People with CDs are prime prospects for selling annuities to and by providing them detailed and unbiased comparison between annuities and CDs, you might end up having a number of converts who will invest their CD money to buy annuities.

Letting your annuity leads know that annuities provide much better rates of return due to tax deferred compounding of interest and allow for withdrawals without penalties might gain you a few customers then and there. To cash in more on CD owners, make sure that you organize your annuity seminars near the end of the financial year, since this is when CDs come up for renewal.
Get annuity sales leads in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

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