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Life Health > Life Insurance

Providing Proactive Guidance for Life

By Sherry K. Barton, CLU

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A large part of being a trusted advisor is realizing your clients’ concerns over time will change. To address this, I conduct annual review calls. These “proactive marketing” calls keep me in touch with established clients who may need ongoing financial guidance.

I place annual review phone calls to my “A” clients personally, encouraging them to meet to discuss what has been happening in their lives: a career change, a new home or child, or inheriting wealth. We look at the type of life insurance they own, how long they want the policy to last, and if the plan is still relevant to their life today. Once we have done some exploring, I can make recommendations.

The ROI for proactivity

Being proactive by keeping in touch with your clients solidifies the relationship you are working so hard to maintain. I “sell money.”  My clients know I talk a lot about buckets of money: money so widows can support their families, money so kids can go to college, money for businesses to flourish, and money so families can eat hamburgers instead of peanut butter! 

Over time, the main objective for these buckets of dollars is to grow.  Most people today are spenders. It is my job to educate them to become a saver and fill their bucket! There is an old saying, “While we are making plans, life happens.” Annual reviews are the perfect place to discuss safeguarding your client’s family and investments from life just happening.

When you conduct an annual review, it builds credibility, trust, and confidence. We begin with simple items like address and beneficiary information. Next we’ll evaluate the purpose for obtaining the policy, and finally, as my client base has aged, we review the four things all baby boomers know: 

  1. We know we don’t want to work forever.
  2. We know we will need money for retirement and whatever we are saving is not enough.
  3. We have children either in or rapidly approaching college and we know the cost of higher education continues to increase.
  4. We have parents or grandparents who need care and we know Social Security is not enough.

Our population is aging. Advisors are needed more now than ever. The average length of a Boomer’s retirement is nineteen years. Our job, if people continue to retire at 65, is to ensure they do not run out of money before they reach the end of their life.

  

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