Six Things We Check Before an Annuity Appointment Reaches Your Calendar

Ask three appointment companies what qualified means and you will get three answers, all of them vague, all of them delivered with confidence. One means the person answered two questions on a form. One means a setter spoke to them. One means nothing at all beyond the fact that they picked a time.

You are paying per appointment. You should know precisely which filters stand between your calendar and a retiree who was just curious. Here are ours, and the reasoning behind each one, so you can hold us to it and hold everyone else to it too.

One. Fixed indexed annuities only

We generate for one product category. Not life insurance, not Medicare, not wealth management, not a general retirement enquiry that might turn into something.

This matters more than it sounds. A vendor running multiple product lines is allocating leads across them, and the annuity conversation ends up assembled from whoever did not fit somewhere else. Narrow is not a limitation here. It is the point.

Two. $250K or more in investable assets

The number has to be a real floor, not a hopeful one.

We ask it as a banded question rather than an open one, because people answer bands honestly and freeze on blanks. Nobody types their actual savings into a form. Everyone will pick a range.

Below $250K the math stops working for both of you. The case is too small to be worth a producer's week, and the person usually needs liquidity more than they need a contract.

Three. Retired, or retiring within five years

Age on its own is a weak filter. Proximity to retirement is the useful one.

Someone forty five and building is a fine future client and a poor annuity appointment. Someone who has stopped working, or can see the date from where they are standing, is having an entirely different conversation with themselves about risk. That is the conversation your product is for.

Four. Open to repositioning money in the next ninety days

This is the filter most vendors skip, and it is the one that separates an appointment from a chat.

Having $400K and being willing to move some of it this quarter are two different states. A certificate of deposit maturing, a rollover sitting in cash since they left an employer, a surrender period ending. Something has to be in motion, or you are the person who gets called back next year.

Five. Both spouses committed to attending

If there is a spouse, they are on the call.

Every producer who has sold to retirees has lost a case to the four words "I need to talk to my wife." It is not a stalling tactic. It is a real second decision maker who was not in the room and now has to be sold secondhand by someone who is not a salesperson. We would rather lose the booking than hand you half a decision.

Six. In a state you are licensed in

Obvious, routinely missed, and completely wasteful when it goes wrong. We check it before anything else is confirmed.

What nobody can honestly promise you

Here is the part the brochures leave out.

No appointment vendor in this industry verifies assets. Not us, not the company charging you twice as much, not the one charging a fifth. Nobody is pulling statements. Nobody is running a credit check on a 68 year old to find out whether the $400K is real.

What actually happens is that someone asks, and the retiree answers. Anyone telling you their appointments are "verified" is describing a phone call and calling it an audit.

So the honest standard is not verification. It is how carefully someone asks, how often they ask, and whether they are willing to disqualify the answer they get. Every one of our prospects is asked on the form and then asked again on a phone call, by a person, who can hear hesitation and ask a follow up question. That is what confirmation means. We are not going to dress it up as anything more.

What happens to the ones who fail

They do not reach you, and you do not get billed for them.

If someone comes through the funnel with $90K, or a spouse who will not attend, or no timeline, we do not book them and hope. The appointment economics only work if the filter has teeth, and a filter that never rejects anyone is not a filter.

Three questions for any vendor, including us

Most buying guides give you a list of ten. Three is enough, and these three are the ones that get uncomfortable answers.

Is that number booked or shown? A company promising twenty five appointments is making a very different promise depending on the answer, and the price difference between those two products is enormous.

What is your asset minimum, and what do you do with the people who fail it? If the answer is that they get booked anyway and you can dispute them later, you are the quality control department.

Is the appointment exclusive to me, in writing? An appointment sent to three producers is not an appointment. It is an audition you paid for.

A company that filters properly will answer these in specifics. A company that does not will answer in adjectives.

The bottom line

Qualified is a checklist, not a feeling. Product, assets, stage of life, timing, decision makers, state. Six things, checked twice, once on the form and once by a person on the phone.

Our checklist is on this page because we would rather you judge us against it than take the word on faith. Ask everyone else the same three questions.