That Annuity Show: 210 - Using Behavioral Finance To Strengthen Your Practice With Marshall Heitzman (2024)

Feb 2, 2024

Paul Tyler (00:00.154)

Hi, this is Paul Tyler and welcome to another episode of ThatAnnuity Show. Tisa, how are you?

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (00:08.246)

Doing good, Paul. Good morning.

Paul Tyler (00:10.578)

It's good to see you and we've got another great guest todayon our show, Mr. Marshall Heitzman, okay, who is the, an advancedplanning consultant, vice president at TruStage. Marshall, did Iintroduce you correctly?

Marshall Heitzman (00:27.793)

That's it. Yeah, good morning.

Paul Tyler (00:29.486)

All right, well, for our listeners, I think we'll have someinteresting conversation that a lot of our listeners will finduseful. Do you wanna just sort of tell us, you know, who are youand, you know, what do you do at TruStage?

Marshall Heitzman (00:42.568)

Yeah, thanks. Marshall Heitzman, I am, as you said, VP ofAdvanced Planning Consulting at TruStage. I'm actually dedicated totheir annuity distribution channel. So I'm doing advanced planningjust on our annuity opportunities. And I think of it this way. Ibrought in as the strategy that leads to investment solutions. Andso I'm kind of building out that strategy, talking the talkfor.

those who are maybe leaning more towards the planning side ofthe business.

Paul Tyler (01:18.238)

Well, excellent. And just maybe by way of background, youknow, you've had a very interesting, you know, career, I think,working at a variety of different types of companies, right? Ithink you've worked at some fraternals. I know, I think you were ata large planning firm. Yeah, I guess, what, you know, skills do youbring to a role like this?

Marshall Heitzman (01:45.216)

Yeah, I would say that I've had kind of a diverse career alittle bit a lot of sales support But I have done some roles insupervision and compliance And now back into sales support again,and like I said directly Dedicated to annuities at this moment,even though in the past I've done investment advisory and been onThe the full investment planning comprehensive planning side of thebusiness in the past

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (02:15.586)

So Marshall, can you speak a little bit about, I guess, eitherthe case design or the solution design that you're working on as itrelates to annuities? It sounds like you've either been brought inor come in recently to rethink the tools, right, and the solutionsthat the agents are offering. So can you just speak a little bitabout, you know, what it is you're working on?

Marshall Heitzman (02:37.856)

Sure, as we've expanded our distribution primarily toindependent advisors, bank advisors, in addition to our longhistory working with credit union advisors, we've realized there'sapproaches that are diverse, they're different depending on how,especially in the independent space, how an advisor wants to createtheir business. And we know that many are

Doing more comprehensive planning, more what I would considerto be goals-based planning, and maybe it's taking just one stepback from that annuity or investment solution and analyzing whatare the objectives of the client, what are the goals, what are wereally trying to solve here, and making sure that our solutionsthat we would recommend actually fit and advance them towards thatgoal.

Paul Tyler (03:35.866)

Maybe talk to us a little bit about the types of advisorsyou're working with. We talked about this just before the showstarted, but maybe give us your segmentation of the people you'reworking with to help sell or help introduce and make successful inthe annuity space.

Marshall Heitzman (03:54.824)

Yeah, you know, you've seen it, our industry is changingbefore our very eyes, right? There used to be some cleardelineations between those who used insurance products and thosewho didn't. And now, maybe regulatory changes, maybe we're justbecoming a little bit more aware of everything else around us.There's many, many more advisors that maybe haven't used annuitiesso much in the past that are now.

They're recognizing especially if they're doing goals-basedplanning And I'm gonna say in this best interest regulatoryenvironment They're realizing well if the client says this is whatI want Honestly, the best solution is this product and maybe Ihaven't used that very much in the past But if this is what theclient is describing that they want and I know that this is thebest solution

I better be prepared to be able to offer that solution,right?

Paul Tyler (04:57.742)

Yeah, well you mentioned regulation and when the regulationgets more intense in a particular space, sometimes people don'twant to get in. How do you get advisors today who may notnecessarily consider annuities to be core to their business toeither consider them or start a conversation with a client thatleads to the sale of an annuity?

Marshall Heitzman (05:08.125)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (05:21.992)

Our firm, and I know there's a lot of firms out there, but ourfirm in particular is very interested in behavioral finance. We'veadopted and applied our behavioral finance techniques really acrossthe board. We have every one of our annuity distribution channelemployees earn a behavioral finance certification so that we canshow advisors what we're talking about, apply it to their...

to their practice, to their goals analysis, and help them digin to those client relationships. Really find what is mostimportant to the client and are we aligning our financial goalstowards those most important values.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (06:11.746)

Do you find you hit objections from, Paul was sort of talkingabout getting agents or advisors to start working with annuitieswith this goals-based planning that you're describing. Do you findobjections around the time? If they're sitting in a bank or justmore transactionally focused, it sounds like to me, obviously, toshare the level of detail you would need to, to understand goalsand motivations and all that. It takes some time. It might be two,three, four appointments building that relationship.

Do you find any objection on that side or is the kind of toolwell received, value understood right away? Just curious what youmight be hearing from agents or advisors when you're rolling thisout.

Marshall Heitzman (06:55.052)

No, it's a great question and the answer is yes. We do getthat objection a lot. You know, I don't have time for this. I'vegot a lot of clients. And let's face it, a lot of clients aretransactional. That's what they want to be. They don't really wantto dig into all the planning. But I guess part of the lesson thatwe've learned hearing back from advisors who have tried some of theconcepts and applied it to their business is that playing that longgame

can really pay off. Longer, deeper relationships, not evenwith those clients, but also with their family. It's a greatreferral source. And to be honest, it connects with those clientswho really would rather go to the dentist than sit down with theirfinancial advisor and talk about their financial plan.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (07:34.134)

Right, the referrals.

Paul Tyler (07:49.498)

So listen, Marshall, I'm an agent who, actually I'm afinancial advisor. Yeah, I'm one of those time-pressed agents thatTisa just talked about. I want to drop a ticket and sort of moveon. How do you coach me through the process of slowing down enoughto have that conversation? And also tell me how you help me startto use some of these great behavioral finance techniques you have.Well, I want to learn a few tricks.

Marshall Heitzman (08:04.085)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (08:18.524)

You know, we've got, not tricks, not tricks. You know, this isa relationship business and I know that even our transactionalclients, we have some relationship with many of them, right? Weknow what's going on and at least we're engaging in some small talkwith what's going on in their lives and certainly we wanna earnmore of their business beyond the one transaction that they walk inwith.

Paul Tyler (08:19.798)

Not Shrex.

Marshall Heitzman (08:46.768)

It's all part about cultivating that relationship, asking themquestions. And ultimately, the conversation we wanna get to is thatvalues question. What is most important to you? And if they don'tknow, we've got exercises that we can introduce that helps themdiscover what their most important values are. And I'm going to addthat a lot of advisors listening right now are probably saying,well, I already do that, I just ask them.

A lot of times what we're hearing from advisors is that theygo through these exercises and their clients kind of self-discoverfor themselves one or two most important values that they didn'treally think about or working with their spouse. They realizesomething new about their spouse and how they're working togetherand what's their top values collectively that maybe they weren'tfeeding into or designing their financial plan.

to deliver on.

Paul Tyler (09:47.862)

Well, so just pushing a little bit more on the plan. You know,sometimes you don't really... People don't really think ofannuities as estate planning, but they can be. And we see thatwith, you know, some of our customers. And Marshall, I think of ourproducts in buckets, and I'd say we've worked hard to try to get aproduct in a lot of these categories. My category... When I thinkabout annuities from an estate planning perspective, I think, firstof all, you're going in...

You're starting, you're almost approaching those retirementyears. You don't really know what's going to happen. You know, weneed more money. I think the, uh, some of these growth annuitieshave played a very good role to sort of accelerate the buildingthat nest egg. Um, uh, some products I see have, I would almostdescribe them as the Swiss army knives of early estate planning.Oh, you didn't have insurance or you didn't, you'd like a littlemore death.

coverage. Okay, we've got enhanced death benefits. You don'thave long-term care insurance like most people. We've got along-term care rider. Oh, and there's some liquidity in case someemergencies come up and you need an emergency fund. And then youkind of get all the way out at the end. And I've seen these bonusannuities really take off as people said, you know, I boughtannuity 10 years ago, but I'd really like some of the features. Ilike some of the withdrawal benefits, some of the lifetime incomebenefits. Let's sort of...

move over to something and take advantage of these new classof products. Where do you see... did I miss a category? And wheredo you see some of the evolution taking place on the product sidehere to help for those conversations?

Marshall Heitzman (11:31.476)

Exactly what you've described, you know, there's that varietyof products. There's been a lot of evolution in product design,especially recently, I would say, in the annuity space. So thechallenge, I think, is for firms to keep it simple. And we've gotproducts that have a lot of those features that you described, andhow do you offer something that's sophisticated and advanced.

but also keeping it simple enough for not only advisors tounderstand, but also to be able to explain to their clients. Ithink that's the real challenge. We are in that RILA space. Andeven though we've seen a lot of movement towards fixed annuitieswith interest rates rising so quickly, long-term, like I said, weplay the long game. We think the...

the advantage of having the RILA space, a little bit moregrowth potential, is what we're hearing most clients need. Theywant the protection, of course, but many of them, in order to reachthose goals, need more growth than what our fairly flat interestrates have been delivering over, let's say, probably twodecades.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (12:56.778)

Marshall, kind of going back to the behavioral financeconcept, you talked about discovering new values or new goals. I'mjust curious if you could share a couple of like, it's a two-partquestion. One is, is that a fully guided conversation by theadvisor? Is there any sort of pre or individual kind ofself-assessment work leading into the conversation that the clientwould do? And then just an example of a question or two

to sort of tap into or discover those new values. I'm justcurious what that talk track might sound like.

Marshall Heitzman (13:37.364)

Yeah, we've created some scripting, or at least like anoutline. And those familiar with planning, they're going torecognize that a lot of the scripting and the leading questions andso forth, are gonna kind of follow that financial planning model.In our pre-conversations, you guys invited me to share stories. Soif you want me to share a very personal story about what reallyconvinced me this works, I will.

Paul Tyler (14:02.847)

Absolutely.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (14:03.746)

Sure.

Marshall Heitzman (14:08.101)

It's my wife, so I'll say up front, I have full permission toshare this story. I do often, she's pretty proud of it. Butconnecting with those clients who really don't like to handle theirfinances and just kind of want to get it over with in the meeting,do what they have to do, and move on with their lives. I would saythat's my wife. I'm in this space, I understand what we're talkingabout. I'm the technician.

mathematics degree, this is how I think, right? Numbers,goals, progress. My wife is the opposite. She's a creative, she'san artistic. And so the numbers are kind of meaningless to her. Theway she thinks about our future retirement is the dreams, theconcepts. Tell me what I can do. That's what...

behavioral finance opened up. I was preparing our ownbehavioral finance presentations. I practice on her. She's a greattest audience. And I presented a behavioral finance presentationjust to her. And it really connected. More than just evaluating myperformance. She's digging into, in fact, she stole my laptop. Sheturned it around. She's...

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (15:31.059)

Yes.

Marshall Heitzman (15:31.884)

paging through the slides and the notes, and she's saying,this is really good. And what really convinced me that this waseffective was she said, if we had an advisor who talked to me thisway, I would become more involved. Well, that was the moment,literally, that sold me on this concept as a way to connect withthose clients who'd...

really don't wanna do this, right? They're doing what theyhave to do. But it connected with her. And I don't think she's verydifferent than probably half the population out there. And if itconnects with her, if it pulls her into the planning process,obviously she's gonna be more invested, she's going to be morecommitted to keeping that plan and following through with that planif we just put it in terms that she can relate to. She doesn't careabout the numbers or returns.

or budgets, she doesn't care to see that zero-based budget.What she wants to know is, what does my retirement look like? Whatam I gonna be able to do? Put it in those terms for me, and she'sengaged.

Paul Tyler (16:47.722)

So I'm really curious, thank you for sharing that story. Whatwas it that really hooked her in? My wife, sorry, I'm not very,she, she's just, she kind of dials, she turns, she has a volumeknob that kind of turns off, so Marshall, I should take a lessonfrom you here. So what was it that really was the hook? Was it aquestion, was it a picture, was it a story?

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (16:57.634)

Do you have permission, Paul? That's the first question.

Paul Tyler (17:15.758)

that pulled her into the presentation you're making.

Marshall Heitzman (17:20.956)

It was the description of the approach and the style. The factthat we were getting away from hard facts, hard numbers appealed toher. The conversation around having, and no sales in that entirefirst meeting. We're talking about engaging with somebody, peelingthe onion, what is most important to you? How do we design yourfinances to

help you live those most important values. What is mostimportant to you? How do you see yourself living it? And then wedesign your plan to deliver on that. That connected with her. Sheunderstood the.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (18:07.218)

Yeah, I like the story too because I think it's a pretty knownfact that who decision makers tend to be in households are oftenignored in the meeting with the couple.

Paul Tyler (18:22.978)

You can say it. Go ahead, Tisa. You can say it.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (18:29.638)

We hold the decision power in many households, meaning womenin a traditional household of a marriage between a man and a woman.And often that style, the thinking, and just purely engaging andconnecting with that woman in that setting, it just doesn't happen,right? So I mean, I hear success for men and women thinking,dreaming, values, but I do think it appeals.

generally speaking, a little more to whether it's the creativemind or just a profile of person who thinks that way, which I thinkgenerally maybe women more often. I'm generalizing here, so I'mgiving lots of caveats. So I could see the success not only that asa connect and get the couple to dream and think differently andspeak differently about retirement, but there's success for theadvisor.

because ultimately once they leave that meeting, who's makingthe decision in the car ride home, right, is, has been sparked, hasbeen activated. So I just.

Paul Tyler (19:37.55)

So Marshall, does this open up better communications with thewomen in the household? I don't want to, again, don't want tosuggest that this is, you know, primarily for women.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (19:49.666)

That was a much more direct way of asking Paul thanks. Ha haha.

Paul Tyler (19:52.598)

Yeah. Yeah, does it give me a better chance of retaining aclient after, you know, if I've had a relationship with a man inthe house, does it give me a better chance to retain thatrelationship when he dies and his spouse now controls all themoney?

Marshall Heitzman (19:54.216)

Yeah.

Marshall Heitzman (20:07.892)

We think absolutely, yeah. And I'll clear the air and justmake sure that everybody understands this is not a gender thing.But Tisa, you're right. We know that the person who's actually thedecision maker is probably not the one doing all the talking in themeeting, right? It's in the car ride home. So we get that. And tobe honest, it's a way of connecting with both, getting themto...

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (20:17.111)

Right.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (20:26.89)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (20:37.104)

at the start, make sure that they're in alignment with oneanother. We hear from advisors a lot of times that start down thispath and they're working with a couple, the spouses kind of haveone or two eye-opening moments just between themselves about what'smost important to them collectively. But it is about engaging bothbecause Paul, you're right. We know at some point one of them isgoing to pass away.

And are you connected with the surviving spouse well enough tocontinue that relationship? And are you connected with them wellenough where they wanna bring the kids in and make sure that theyunderstand what mom and dad's plan is and what's most important tothem? We think that it's absolutely great for connecting with thenext generation and what happens when these clients are not aroundanymore.

I also think it's great for referrals because my wife walksout of one of those meetings and guess what she's saying? That'sthe best financial planning meeting I've ever had. And who's shetelling? She's telling all of her creative friends, look, itdoesn't have to be that bad. I've got an advisor who relates to meand values what I value and designs our plan around what I want tohear. You got to meet.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (21:46.882)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (22:05.052)

him or her, right? We think there's tremendous value inthat.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (22:07.53)

Yeah.

The generational comment is interesting to me, Marshall,because often, for whatever reason, parents might be reluctant toshare the hard numbers with their children, but including adultchildren in the conversations about values and dreams, softer,easier, and so I'll share a personal story, which is, I think itwas a little bit, maybe it wasn't fully intentional, but ithappened a little bit more.

organically, my dad's advisor built a relationship with mybrother and I. We didn't necessarily go to financial meetings withmy dad, but we certainly socialized. He made some points ofreaching out for some community events and unfortunately when mydad did pass a few years ago, he was well poised, right, to explainto us what was going to happen with our dad's assets, but both mybrother and I now work with him.

And it's because we already knew him. We did not meet him whenmy dad passed. We met him several years ahead of time and had somerapport. So it's kind of just connecting for me, thinking, hmm,that's a conversation you could include adult children versus themath side of things. It might be a little bit more private forwhatever reason. So another use case there.

Marshall Heitzman (23:07.392)

Yeah.

Marshall Heitzman (23:30.732)

I love hearing stories like that. And we get them every sooften as well from our advisors who maybe didn't even know thekids, but they had organized their clients so well, even withsimple little worksheets about where everything is, all of the keydocuments, the key contact information, keeping that all in oneplace. We've got some resources that we provide to our advisors ifthey wanna use them. And then we get stories back about

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (23:46.86)

Hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (24:00.044)

the next generation finding that single sheet of paper thathad the treasure map, if you will, to all of the documents, all thelegal documents, all the insurance documents, who to call, forwhat, and they win clients that way. We've had beneficiaries say,look, any advisor who works with their clients the way you workedwith my dad.

That's an advisor that I want to work with. I know whereeverything is when dad passed away. Thanks to you. Love hearingthose stories.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (24:34.443)

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Big moment of truth, for sure.

Marshall Heitzman (24:39.039)

Yeah.

Paul Tyler (24:39.994)

Right. I think Marshall, a lot of us in this business tend tobe right-brain thinkers, and we want to start with the spreadsheet,not the conversation when it really should be the reverse. Solisten, I'm a spreadsheet addict. I love this. Excel is me. Breakme, Marshall. And what's the 12-step process or whatever it is toget me to rethink and have those type of conversations that Tisamentioned? That your wife...

Marshall Heitzman (24:46.303)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Tyler (25:08.77)

said she loved.

Marshall Heitzman (25:11.728)

Yeah, we try not to make it too complicated. And a lot ofadvisors who hear this process say, yeah, I kind of do somethinglike that. And it's worked for me. So I don't really want to pivottoo hard into doing that much differently. But we do get plenty ofadvisors who say, OK, there's some great ideas in here that arereally easy to implement. Taking one step back and just having thatvalues conversation.

It might take the whole first meeting. We might not talk aboutany business that first meeting, and that's a tough hurdle for alot of advisors to get over. But play the long game, right? Investthat time with those clients. Those clients are going to bestickier. They're going to want to bring their other business needsto you as well. And they're going to want to bring their otherrelations in to talk to you as well.

just because you take the time to understand who they are aspeople and what kind of values driven relationship can we havetogether? To me that's the way you just kick the whole thing off.You know after that we've got we've got a lot of scripting andideas and leading questions that we can provide but it plays reallywell into that planning process that the planning model that existsand is out there right now.

but it makes it simple. Simple questions, simple answers tocommon questions that your clients are gonna ask you. Ways to putthose clients' mind at ease because everybody's nervous aboutsomething, right? There's always something that they're nervousabout. And the whole process is about delivering to your clientsthe idea that, look, no matter what happens, we've got itcovered.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (26:57.634)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (27:11.444)

Right, we've got the plan. Somebody passes away earlier thanwe expect, we've got a plan for that. Somebody becomes disabled,we've got a plan for that. The markets don't cooperate the way wethink, we've got a plan for that. Right, no matter what happens, weknow where you're gonna get income, we're in the retirementplanning business. We know where we can get income for you nomatter what happens. We've got a plan built around that.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (27:37.166)

I would also think too it's like a little bit of like Paulthinking like growth mindset for the advisors because it's notfully this or that, right? It's sort of like you likely have theanalytical spreadsheet type of conversation down, but everyclient's different, everyone you know, process differently. So whynot sort of expand? It's a versatility call to me. You can stillwork that way if it's working for the client, but if you wanna growor track new

different markets, maybe try this approach and see how itgoes, right? It's an additive skill, being able to walk throughthis more values-driven conversation. You can always flip back tohow you do it or how you've done it. So to me, it's more of agrowth opportunity than it is like a full, you know, 180 of how youwork. So that's how I would think of it if I was in the advisorseat of new skills not changing fully my skills.

Marshall Heitzman (28:34.432)

For sure, I can geek out on financial planning software andspreadsheets with the best of them. And I've talked with manyadvisors in my past who claim this is the way all of my clientswant me to work with them. They do the same thing. And I've comearound to believe that, well, you are finding the clients who wantto work that way with you, but what about all those clients whodon't?

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (28:39.975)

Hehehehehe

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (28:57.023)

Mm-hmm.

Marshall Heitzman (29:01.148)

you're missing out on them. If you're saying all of yourclients want this type of approach, all the other prospects are notcoming to you, right? Because not everybody wants to work this way.So who are you missing out on, was my question for them. And Ithink this process, the behavioral finance approach helps touncover that. Who am I missing? Who's being left out? Certainly, mypersonal example, my wife definitely felt that way.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (29:01.215)

Right.

Marshall Heitzman (29:29.408)

kind of wrote off the entire industry and just hoped that Iwould take care of everything because that's what I do. But nowshe's engaged, she wants to be involved, just because we're simplyputting it in terms that she understands and can relate to.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (29:35.118)

Mm-hmm.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (29:46.83)

Great.

Paul Tyler (29:47.794)

Interesting. Yeah. Well, we're kind of at the top of the hourhere. Marshall, any recommendations for good books to read, goodpodcasts to listen to, as Tisa says, grow a little bit more as anadvisor? And then how could people reach out to you forassistance?

Marshall Heitzman (30:09.876)

Yeah, you can reach out to any true stage wholesaler you cancall our annuity solutions team And they'll get you in touch withme or you can connect with us through true stage comm And connectwith our team that way You know, we've done a lot of work I'llrecommend Morgan Housel He has written a couple of books in thisspace. And in fact, we have him on we have like a quarterly webinarthat

We'll invite him every so often and give a one hourpresentation on what's new. But it relates really well to the wholebehavioral financial advisor concept and looking at the values inorder to create the goals. That would be my recommendation.

Paul Tyler (31:00.186)

Okay, great. Well, Tisa, thank you. Marshall, thanks so much.It was great to meet you, great to have you on here. And if you'relistening to the show, tell your friends, give us feedback and joinus again next week for another great episode of That Annuity Show.Thanks.

Marshall Heitzman (31:04.712)

My pleasure, thank you.