Imagine if you were a car and life was a race.

I live in Indianapolis, IN and in Indianapolis we love our Indianapolis 500. In fact, 80,000 people showed up to witness the first ever 500 in 1911. The average speed of the contestants that year was 74 MPH. Fast forward to 2017 and the average lap speed had increased to 155 MPH and the winner finished the race in less than half the time than did Ray Harroun in 1911.

While I know this is a drastic example considering more than 100 years passed between the two, it points out how performance technology has changed over time. Racing teams spend the entire year between races working to tweak and improve their race cars to gain any advantage they can. The tire crew practices continuously and adheres to a difficult work out regime in attempt to shave even a fraction of a second off the time to complete a tire change.

The annuity and independent marketing organization industry (IMO) is very much similar to automobile racing in the aspect that technology is constantly improving, and the competition is working tirelessly to gain an advantage. The core competencies that allowed you to compete successfully in the past will not be the same ones required to thrive in the future. Competitive advantages relied on by many IMO's for years are quickly becoming antiquated and insufficient differentiators to win moving forward. The competition is on your tail and you need to give them some space, put the pedal to the medal by embracing the change.

The DOL Fiduciary rule will be, and already is, disruptive to the annuity marketspace. While this will certainly not favor everyone, it is a great opportunity to those firms who are willing and able to invest in technology and align and integrate their sales and marketing efforts. While automation will play a critical role in productivity and compliance, the talent level and approach of the sales force will play an equally important role.

Sales teams have long fixated on process discipline. If I see 15 advisors per week, I will be successful… A longer sales cycle, less reliable forecasts and compressed margins could stall this machine so many of us used in the past. I suggest the annuity wholesalers who will see the greatest level of success in this new environment we find ourselves in will be those that master insight selling.

Our beloved annuity industry finds itself in a state of flux do to external factors, regulatory reform, and a dissatisfaction with products of the past. The advisors we call on are in a state of uncertainty and are likely to be more receptive to disruptive ideas than they would be otherwise. Those wholesalers that are star performers will take advantage of this unestablished, emerging market through insightful selling. A provocative viewpoint and a willingness to push advisers out of their comfort zone might just be the biggest driver of customer loyalty.

In the Challenger Sale (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011) data was drawn from more than 6000 salespeople around the world to show that all reps fall into one of five profiles - the Relationship Builder, Reactive Problem Solver, the Hard Worker, the Lone Wolf and the Challenger. The challenger was by far more likely to be a star performer than any other profile. In fact, in complex, insight driven environments the study data showed that 54% of top performers were Challengers.

For IMO's to get the challenger approach right they'll need to have the organizational capabilities as well as individual skill. Their sales and marketing leaders must create teachable insights for the sales force to use to guide conversations. A star wholesaler will be one that utilizes these provocative ideas to disrupt an advisers current ideas and help guide them through the process of integrating annuities into their practice.

In a world where our clients learn primarily from suppliers, becoming the trusted thought leader advisers learn from first will likely pay huge dividends. While an emerging market can be unsettling to many, it affords a unique opportunity for select firms who create a fast enough machine to become the favored resource. The need for speed doesn't just apply to automobile's, becoming the favored resource faster than the competitors is key to a place in the winners circle. This will require superior teaching skills and a talent for revealing novel and important information about our business that advisers may have overlooked.

The race is on! Which IMO's will be first to identify customers early during this time of learning and put solutions in front of them before the competition does. An IMO that is best positioned to impact advisers ability to learn will have a significant competitive advantage. Our industry is most certainly in a race. If you are committed to the annuity business long-term, are you taking the necessary steps to tune your engine or will you be left in the dust?

#PCN #PRODUCERSCHOICE