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Agency Acceleration Lab is the podcast for insurance agents and agency owners who want to scale smarter, not harder.
Hosted by Alex Branning, each episode breaks down real growth strategies, marketing systems, and client retention frameworks that help you attract better clients, increase lifetime value, and build a more predictable agency.
If you're serious about building a high-performance insurance business, you're in the right place.
Alex Branning
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to Agency Acceleration Lab. I have Roy Snarr with us today, a legend in the long-term care and annuity space. I'm going to talk to Roy about how he positions prospects for the annuity sale. Roy, talk to me about how you get in the door and then pivot the conversation to annuities.
Roy Snarr
That's a great question because it's very challenging to go out there and door knock or randomly call people and say hey, you want to buy an annuity? No you don't? Okay bye. You have to have a door opener. So if you're working with somebody in the senior marketplace — and those are the purchasers of annuities — if you're talking to a 30-year-old who just had a kid and has a mortgage, they're selling mortgage protection life insurance, it can be very challenging to sell them an annuity. Maybe their parents, but then that's a lot more extra work. So first of all you want to identify the marketplace that is most viable for an annuity, which is the boomers.
Medicare is a great door opener. Maybe you're helping somebody with Medicare questions and then you can explain what Medicare is and what it is not. There are gaps in Medicare and those can be filled with long-term care insurance and annuities. What we use, because we don't sell Medicare, is Social Security. I'll teach classes on Social Security. People have questions like how do I get the most out of my benefit, when should I take it, what if I can't take it while I'm still working, what happens if somebody passes away. We add value by educating them on Social Security itself and then say, by the way, is this enough income for you? Usually it's not. You're going to need another source of income and that's where an annuity can come into play.
So in summary, you always want to identify the market — which is boomers, people generally 55 and older — and then find a way to open the conversation with them. Not just what's in your 401k. Where can I add value? The two main things people need are Social Security and Medicare. The other great door opener is Roth Conversions but that takes a little bit more advanced knowledge to have a good conversation.
Alex Branning
Let's talk about Social Security because that was where you really got your foot in the door and started growing this. When you were positioning yourself for lead flow around Social Security, how are you generating leads to talk to people about that? It's a pretty sensitive topic and I don't hear a lot of people focusing on it.
Roy Snarr
It blows my mind. I've been doing this for sixteen years and I basically yell at agents — just learn Social Security. It takes this rare quality called effort and time, but if you can read you can read my book. It's free and downloadable online. Or go on YouTube and just learn the basics.
The reason I got so drawn into Social Security comes down to two main points. One is my mother became disabled when I was about fourteen. That's the only check we had coming in through Social Security disability. I was always curious about it but it took me a while to get super passionate about it. The more I learned about it the more interesting it became to me. Then I noticed nobody else was talking about it. Most financial advisors, insurance agents, CPAs, and estate planning attorneys are not really going into detail on what Social Security actually is.
I said, if I want to help people beyond just selling final expense and mortgage protection life, I want to be able to help them with Social Security. And that is a great way to get into the bigger planning space — annuities and asset-based long-term care. I became a Social Security expert and started teaching classes through seminars. I do non-dinner seminars at libraries and community colleges, add nothing but value, show people how to get the most out of it, and then I say hey, would you like to have a Social Security report run for you? I'll put your numbers and your wife's numbers in and we'll see what the different filing dates look like. And people say yes, I'd love that.
Then I sit down with them, show them how Social Security works, and ask the golden question: Is this enough money to retire on? Well, no it's not. What else do you have to retire on? Well, I have a 401k. Have you ever thought about taking a small portion of that and adding it to another income stream? No, I haven't. Let me show you how that works. That is very simplified but that is our annuity process in a nutshell. Talk about Social Security, add the value, and then go from there. For the majority of all of our business and the hundreds of millions of dollars in annuity premium that we have written as an agency, Social Security is our door opener.
Alex Branning
I love that. Do you get a lot of referral partners that send you leads for Social Security once you've positioned yourself as an expert? Because there's not a lot of people talking about it, it feels like there's a lot of opportunity to have people say Roy, please help my client with their Social Security questions. Did you see that happen for you?
Roy Snarr
Yes, and we actually leveraged our knowledge in Social Security to build those types of relationships. I don't sell Medicare, so I went to all these Medicare shops and said, look, you're already talking about what Medicare does. People are going to ask about Part A and B and how to enroll. They have to go to Social Security's website. I am your Social Security expert and here's the deal I'll make — you refer your clients to me, I'll help them with Social Security, and then most likely I will discover a life insurance policy, annuity, or long-term care need, and we'll do a revenue share model based on that.
They say yes, wonderful. Because a lot of people are so hyper-focused on selling Medicare or life insurance that they don't want to expand. They may not have the bandwidth or the willingness to, but they don't want to leave money on the table or underserve their clients. So a lot of agencies from all over the country — some of the biggest Medicare groups — refer us all the business, they don't do anything, and they get compensated for it while their clients end up in a better position.
Alex Branning
I love that. With the revenue share model — that is so interesting to me because I don't see a lot of people doing that. For the agency owner listening right now who's hearing you say over and over again to work on Social Security — let's talk about that referral relationship. What does that conversation look like for an agent who is a Medicare agent? How do you build the trust that you're going to pay them their fair share of the commission? What are the objections you hear and how do you overcome them?
Roy Snarr
Most of it is literally just an honor system. The people in this industry are good people. They mean well. But the way we help protect that further is we agree upfront on what's a fair commission revenue split. Maybe it's fifty-fifty, maybe it's sixty-forty, maybe it's seventy-thirty. Depends on the workload. Everyone's a little different. So you refer over a client, I work through the whole process, I keep you informed on the email thread with everything. And then once a deal is made, I add you right on the application to get compensated directly from the company. I'm not going to write you a check — I'm going to have you get paid directly from the company. That way you can see everything and there's complete transparency. And they're still your clients. I can make you agent of record if you like. It doesn't matter to me.
For most people, if you're very knowledgeable in Social Security and you're already a good person, me going up to any Medicare person and saying hey, you have this agency, all these agents, all your Social Security questions — refer them to me, I'm probably going to get some sales out of it and I'll throw you in on the app. I'm not going to bite the hand that feeds me. And that's how we built the majority of all of our relationships.
Alex Branning
I love that. I love how you say I'll just add you to the emails — you'll see the entire conversation. Because now they're like okay cool, I don't have to wonder what's going on. Brilliant. And if you have a great CRM like Agent CRM, you can share the client data, see everything in complete transparency. It's very simple and straightforward.
Roy Snarr
Exactly. And a lot of agents overcomplicate this industry. The hard part in my opinion is not getting in front of people or closing the business — it's getting it processed. That's a whole other world. We have ten people that work for us that do nothing but babysit insurance companies.
But as long as you know something intricately — like Social Security or Medicare — it's going to give you confidence. A lot of agents lack the confidence to approach somebody who is 65 and talk about doing a half million or a million dollar rollover. That's a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. But if you're confident in that knowledge, that confidence will show itself and help you get huge deals and great partnerships.
Some of the partnerships I have, the wealth advisory firms have literally interviewed me — asking me questions, trying to stump me on Social Security or long-term care. And I was able to answer everything. They said okay, we have confidence that you know what you're talking about. What can also help agents is earning a professional designation like the RSSA or RNSSA — something that shows proof that you've gone through a course or certification. That will help you build huge partnerships. The reason I have all these designations is to be able to walk into any CPA, any attorney, any advisor and say, here's me, this is how I can help, do you want to work together yes or no? And the majority of the time the answer is yes.
Alex Branning
I love that. Let's close on one other thing. Going back to seminars and referral partners — did you do seminars in conjunction with some of your referral partners? Like hey, I'm doing a Medicare seminar and during that time we're going to have Roy come and talk about Social Security. Was that part of how you worked with them?
Roy Snarr
Great point. I've done probably over three hundred seminars. But it never works well if you do it jointly with somebody because you have an hour appointment, then there's a break, it messes up the flow. There's a new person who has to build rapport and relationship and you just don't know — maybe half the audience doesn't connect with that person. There's a lot of inherent risk there.
The better way is to do the workshop yourself and then reference your partner. So if I'm doing a Social Security workshop I'll say, look, with Medicare it doesn't make sense that you have to sign up for your Part A and B through the Social Security website and not the Medicare website. But that's how it is. And we have an in-house specialist — he's a complete nerd on Medicare, it's all he does, lives and breathes Medicare. So I'm going to help you master Social Security and get the most out of that benefit, and he's going to help you with all the Medicare questions. We work together as a team of specialists. That's better. It creates leverage, better positioning, and keeps the flow of the seminar working.
We do that now. We have a Medicare specialist named Jason here in the office. He comes to every one of my workshops. When I'm talking about Social Security filing and IRMAA and all of that, I bring up hey, we have an in-house specialist named Jason who can help you with all the Medicare questions. People go up to him afterwards. That way there's a separation of knowledge too because you can't know everything and we lean into that. There are places out there where one guy is your mechanic, your primary care doctor, your financial advisor, and your attorney. You can't do that. You can't be good at everything. We are hyper-specialized and that is our edge.
Alex Branning
I love it. Roy, thank you so much for the time today. How can they get that free book?
Roy Snarr
Just go to annuityproducers.com and download the free Social Security book and the long-term care book. Here's my promise — if you read those two books you will know more than 99.9% of all financial advisors out there. They're only about 80 pages each, completely jam-packed. Spend two hours, or maybe four if you're a slow reader like me, going through each book and bettering your career.
Alex Branning
I love it. Thank you Roy.