The election’s over, and with it, so may be the sunset-driven life insurance marketing campaign. Agents need to be ready for what could lie ahead, namely an accelerated paradigm shift toward the“no-sunset” planning themes discussed in several articles, including “Helping Clients Plan Their Life Insurance Strategy for Possible Sunset.” One critical aspect of being ready in this no-sunset context is being prepared to involve advisors collaboratively to reach out to clients for meaningful conversations about now unneeded policies and the split dollar or other plans funding them. Of course, that will be especially true when the policies and plans are or will soon be under economic and tax duress.
What If Advisors Aren’t Interested?
As sensible as I hope that sounds, I often hear from agents that advisors have responded to their invitations for collaboration with “We don’t doubt that things need attention, but we very much doubt that the client will care enough to engage us, meaning pay for our time, to work through it. But thanks anyway.”
While not making any representations or warranties whatsoever that the following will bring about a more positive response from advisors, agents might consider these suggestions when reaching out with those “invitational” calls to them:
Broadcast your message on the advisors’ frequency. Don’t speak in generalities or insurance jargon, such as why increases in costs of insurance or investment underperformance put both policy and plan in jeopardy. And for goodness sake, avoid anecdotes about what advisors are doing in other cases. Advisors can’t relate to all that, let alone imagine how it could form the basis for their approach to the client about a project. Get down to business, their business, with structure, documents and numbers, especially numbers.
Illuminate in a multi-media fashion the clear and present danger confronting the policy and plan. That means reinforcing your prose with the actual numbers and dollars in play, the current economic and tax implications of the plan and how, when and how badly they will deteriorate if the plan isn’t attended to. Don’t leave anything to the imagination.
Have the applicable Tax Code and regulations at the ready.
Describe at a high level the client’s options for remediation of the policy and plan. Where applicable, note the advisors’ role in each option. “Helping Clients Plan Their Life Insurance Strategy for Possible Sunset” should be helpful here.
Don’t assume that advisors can articulate their role and value-added in the analysis and subsequent design of a solution. Be prepared with a recap that will help them with that.
Make it easy for the advisors to see the wisdom of joining you on the call. You want them to recognize how easy you’re making it for them to do so.
Warn clients about the potential fallout. Be prepared to point out as politely as possible how the advisors could one day hear from irate clients wondering why their advisors weren’t on top of a serious situation.
Involving Advanced Planning Attorneys
One more thing. I’ve recommended that agents consult advanced planning attorneys when preparing for these conversations with advisors. Some agents will take it a step further and have the attorneys on the calls. Some suggestions:
Prepare the attorneys for the call. Tell them about the advisors and your assessment of their familiarity with the subject.
Give the attorneys guidelines about how to deal with the advisors. Advise them on where to go in the conversation, where not to go and how technical to get. Most of all, be sure you’re clear about the desired outcome of the call, which isn’t just to educate the advisors but also to motivate them.
Prepare an agenda for the call. With so much to cover, an agenda will help keep the conversation on track and avoid anecdotal or technical digressions that will only confuse or frustrate advisors.
Rehearse! Yes, it’s an added step, but this is no time to wing it. Rehearsal can often be the difference between success and failure in these situations. Without rehearsal, agents can have no idea if they and the attorneys are on the same page, ready to strike the right tone on the call and on cue to tee things up for each other so the call can go smoothly.
A Clarion Call
I’ve written about all this before. I don’t say anyone’s actually read my stuff, but it’s there for the taking. This is a clarion call for action on the part of agents that might take them out of their comfort zones. That’s especially true for agents who sold based on relationships and not technical expertise. It’s also a clarion call for advanced sales attorneys to prepare sample, step-by-step scripts for the agents to use on the calls. Perhaps they could do webcasts on the topic for their agents. Either of these could also take those attorneys out of their comfort zones. But I’m confident that those who follow my advice will find the results comforting.
