How To Manage Negative Annuity PR
By Steve Lewit
AnnuityNews
As published in InsuranceNewsNet Magazine, April 2011
She marched into my office, reached exasperatedly into her handbag, pulled out a magazine and said, “Steve, I was going to buy that annuity but I just read this nasty article in Money magazine that scared the daylights out of me. Why on earth would you recommend something like this for me? I thought I could really trust you!” At which point she planted the article, which ripped indexed annuities (IAs), squarely in front of me.
I was momentarily stunned while a stream of images, a veritable history of negative articles about indexed annuities, went through my head — Forbes magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, FINRA, the SEC and now Money magazine. “What on earth was going on here,” I said to myself. “And, what on earth should I say?”
My brain started to sift through my options. I decided that my best option was to take a moment to regroup. “Cindy,” I said, “Just let me glance through this article for a moment to see what it says.”
Now, it doesn’t matter the veracity of any article and it doesn’t matter the product in question. When clients receive negative input from seemingly “reliable” sources, it becomes a huge issue in the selling process. Cindy’s article was no different. I knew, of course, what Cindy’s article was going to say. And I also knew, because of that article, that my sale was in great jeopardy; that my status as a reliable financial professional, in Cindy’s eyes, was tenuous at best and failing fast.
For better or worse, the written word is very powerful; sometimes it is much more powerful than we recognize or are willing to admit, especially when it’s negative. Once something is in writing, most people unconsciously will endow it with the absoluteness of truth. Even though an article might be misleading or biased, the fact that it is written lends it great credence and authenticity. And if the article is written cleverly, peppered with threads of truth (as many in our industry are), dealing with it is far more difficult.
OK, back to Cindy. I can feel my reaction, immediate and powerful, a defense bubbling and boiling up and wanting to erupt from my lips (see if this looks familiar): “Cindy, this just isn’t true. They’re not telling the whole story; they really don’t understand how indexed annuities work. Look at this here, that’s just a lot of you-know-what. That statement there is an exaggeration. And over here, it’s just not going to happen that way. And, this paragraph here is totally insignificant. Cindy, an indexed annuity is a great product. Look what it can do for you. See how it fits your goals and how it delivers what you are looking for? And here are a whole bunch of articles that say just the opposite: how good these annuities really are. Let’s review it again, OK? I think you’ll be fine after that.” It takes all of my willpower to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.
We’ve all been there and done that — tried to defend our products. And what are the results? When I’ve fallen into a defensive mode, my clients have always dug their heels in deeper. The more I’ve defended, the more they seemed to doubt me and the more they believed the article. I’ve seen trust erode quickly, replaced by a battle between me and the article. Defending is a strategy that has never worked for me, which is why my first rule is never to defend.
My First Rule: Never, Ever, Defend
Now, there’s a little voice going through your head saying, “Whoa! You don’t want me to set all that nonsense straight? No way! The best defense is a good offense! Somebody has to set the record straight! Chances are that I’m going to lose the sale anyway, so I might as well go down fighting!” And so on and so on.
The fact is, the little voice in your head, which sounds so logical and sincere, and so reasonable, is just your old caveman instinct to survive showing its fighting face — a fight-or-flight reaction deeply embedded in your DNA that worked well in the days of hunting and gathering, but is totally out of place in this modern era. When you see it rear its ugly head, screaming at you to go into defensive mode in a sales meeting with a client, you need to immediately cut its energy off and just stop defending. You will soon see that your best defense is no defense. Just the opposite of what your little voice is telling you.
OK, you stopped. Now what? If you’re not going to defend, then the only other choice is to agree. And that’s my second rule: to always agree.
My Second Rule: Always Agree, No Matter What
Now, just sit there and say to Cindy something like this, “Yup, that’s true; yup, that could happen; yup, that’s certainly possible; yup, yup, yup.”
After all your “yups” are done, sit back, look at your client and as sincerely as you can (because you are about to say the truth), say, “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff. After hearing all that, I don’t think I would buy one of these myself.” Then, pause and let that sink in. It’s absolutely not what your client expected to hear from you.
When clients give you negative articles (or any negative message for that matter), they expect you to defend and try to convince them otherwise. Because we know that’s their strategy, it would be in our (and their) best interest to do something extraordinary, something that short-circuits their negative thinking. So, we agree! But, that’s still not enough. We then need to take it further than that. And that’s my third rule: to always go negative.
My Third Rule: Always Go Negative
We agree with our clients, but we need to go further than they expect — to the point where we say to them that if all that negativity is true, we wouldn’t buy either. Instead of creating a battle, we go negative with our clients and align ourselves with their thinking. Both of us are now sitting at the table looking at the article, agreeing that, based on the article, we both wouldn’t buy it. Clients don’t know what to do with that.
Then, I go one step further and actually get more negative than my clients do. If they’re upset, I get more upset than they are; I get more negative than they are. What happens next is remarkable. Seeing me so upset actually motivates my clients to bail me out, to rescue me. They actually begin to minimize that negativity of the article, all by themselves. They will say something like, “Steve, it’s not that bad. I think you’re overreacting. You know, lots of these articles are just written to sell magazines.”
Now I can say to Cindy, “Gee, maybe I did overreact. Where do you think we should go from here?” And this leads to my fourth rule, which is to reverse roles.
My Fourth Rule: Always Reverse Roles
Cindy will answer my question of where to go next with something like, “Well, I don’t know. Like I said, they can’t be all that bad. When you showed them to me there were things that I did like: the guarantees, the income in the future, doing better than my CDs, the fact that I couldn’t lose. I guess I’m still interested but I just don’t know who to believe.”
Now, look what’s happened. Our roles have reversed. Cindy is now selling me on the benefits of indexed annuities, instead of me selling her. She is disqualifying elements of the article herself. All I did was be honest with Cindy, align myself with her thinking, open a different door by going more negative and let her walk through it. Once the roles have been reversed, you will regain control of the meeting. Negative articles about your product rip control of the meeting process out of your hands. Having your clients sell you (and themselves) puts that control back.
Now you can really open up and say more of what you wanted to say in the first place. Why? Because your client feels heard, understood and respected. “Cindy, I don’t know what to tell you. The problem is that there is a grain of truth in everything that’s being written here. There are surrender charges. There are caps. They can be confusing. There are some poorly designed products and, I might add, poorly trained salespeople.”
After taking another breath, you add, “How can I possibly defend this product other than to say that it has worked well for millions of people and the author of this article doesn’t say that anywhere. He would make it sound like all those folks were duped and that the division of insurance in every state in the union would permit their constituents to be ripped off. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t register for me. Based on all that, what makes sense to you?”
If said genuinely, your clients, invariably, will agree with you. But that still won’t allay their fears or supplant the power of the written word. There will continue to be a part of them that is still very wary. You address this by bringing it right to the table, “Folks, if I’m sitting in your shoes I would be totally confused and very wary, as well you should be, right? And, if I were you, I would have two choices. The first is to toss the potential of using this product out the window and go in a different direction. The second would be to remain open-minded and learn more, especially how significant, or insignificant, all these threads of truth really are. I’m good either way. So, what will it be?”
More than 90 percent of time, my clients ask me to review the product again, and eventually buy.
Conclusion
By getting out of a knee-jerk, defensive mode (which clients expect), the power of the written word is diffused. Without a defense, there cannot be an offense, and vice versa. Columnists thrive on controversy, and it is that controversy that empowers their words. When you take controversy off the table and substitute it with a healthy dose of collaboration, then power and control will align with you, taking you from the back to the head of the class.
Remember, the more popular you, your preferred product, your service and what you stand for become, the more negative PR will rise to try and tear it down. No person, product or service is exempt. Mutual funds, variable annuities, gold, ETFs, options, bonds, REITs, stocks, banks, insurance companies, indexed annuities, Wall Street and even CDs have all had, and will continue to have, their share of negative PR.
Negative PR is directly correlated to popularity. So, instead of moaning and groaning, fighting and defending, and getting into a battle of your articles versus theirs, learn to harness and reprogram yourself. Follow the four rules I’ve given here and your clients will turn themselves around by themselves. When that happens, they win, you win and life is really good.
Steve Lewit is founder and CEO of Wealth Financial Group, Buffalo Grove, Ill. Steve designs, tests and scripts all the public educational seminars for Wealth Financial Group and has developed a reputation as the leading innovator of educational seminars in the industry. Steve can be reached at [email protected].
(Please Note: Article appears as published in InsuranceNewsNet Magazine, April 2011.)
©Entire contents copyright 2011 by InsuranceNewsNet.com Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted without the expressed written consent from InsuranceNewsNet.com.
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