If you are an agent or advisor, then you know that retirees typically don't go looking for an insurance product for the spend-down phase of their lives. Many retirees might tend to avoid annuities because they have heard so much misleading or false information about the product or have been subjected to highly aggressive marketing campaigns or over-zealous agents.
While it's true you won't be able to address every falsehood your financial services competitors spread about insurance products, you can increase the people you serve by making a few simple tweaks to your process.
The "old-school" fact-finder is back in style, and nearly all successful advisors and agents use it.
A short but thorough fact-finder helps determine your prospect's suitability for an insurance product and a lot more. A well-executed fact-finder exposes your prospect's attitudes toward protecting their wealth, legacy planning, mitigating longevity risk, long-term care needs, and the desire for predictable income streams when they retire.
Ask lots of questions, then stop talking and listen.
Deciphering your prospects' relationship with money and risk and why they may be hesitant to purchase an insurance product takes many questions and a degree of patience. Too often, however, agents seem to have responses for every concern and objection voiced by a prospect. Quick answers memorized from a sales training video are not ideal for initiating relationships with prospects.
While you don't want too much "woo" in your interactions, there are some open-ended questions that will give you invaluable insights into a prospects' money mindset.
Kip Mendenhall is the co-founder of 
