As we head into autumn, it's helpful for agents and advisors to perform a broad assessment of their annual goals and modify their sales and marketing strategies accordingly.
Based on conversations with producers, agents, advisors, and clients, here are resolutions for increased sales, fees, and better client relationships in our current unpredictable market.
1. Cut costs and gain income.
What likely drove the need for some mid-year course corrections were the changes in the financial markets.
While we may have started the year with optimism, the economy has taken some major turns, and inflation and rising costs are hitting seniors hard.
We are getting a lot of calls from agents whose senior clients are telling them they are worried about rising prices.
Many seniors are trying to figure out how to continue to maintain their lifestyle as they age during retirement.
They desperately want to feel more financially secure.
Seniors are looking at their life insurance policies and wondering if they still need the coverage.
Children are grown, or perhaps the reason they bought the coverage has changed. Some clients have lost their spouses, gotten divorced, or decided they no longer need the coverage.
As living costs go up and portfolios shrink, they start to feel the pinch.
And because seniors have been through recessions before, they likely know it might be a few years before things turn around — so they start to question why they have their current coverage.
In situations like this, it's a missed opportunity, and potentially a disservice to the client, to fail to inform them about their options.
The secondary market for life insurance policies is strong right now, and no clients should let their policy lapse without first securing a policy appraisal.
It can be "found money" and an opportunity for agents to earn some extra cash.
Freeing up funds from an underperforming policy can create a windfall of new investment opportunities — putting money in motion.
2. Work smarter, not harder.
Each year, and frankly always, we need to strive for maximum productivity from our relationships and our plans with clients.
We need to maximize our sales capacity and our sales efforts with our clients and prospects.
One way to accomplish this is to always be on the lookout for ways to sell multiple products to clients and therefore earn more fees by, yes, working smarter and not harder.
My advice to agents and advisors is to add a life insurance policy appraisal into their overall toolkit.
A policy appraisal is a simple way to work smarter.
It's easy to get started as all that's needed is some basic client information and an in-force illustration which can be quickly analyzed to determine the value of an existing policy and if the case will qualify on the secondary market — without getting your clients involved with the traditional "life settlement storm" of paperwork.
A policy appraisal can help clients identify a new income stream to assist with retirement planning.
Wm. Scott Page is the CEO of 
