Margie Barrie, a veteran long-term care insurance (LTCI) agent, marketer and educator, has been writing articles about long-term care (LTC) planning and related issues for decades.

Here she addresses the nuts and bolts of LTC planning communication.

Q. I want to improve my client presentation by adding some new key phrases. What can you suggest?

A. Here’s the lingo I heard recently, while attending a workshop hosted by OneAmerica. During the two days there, I compiled a list of phrases that I plan to use myself. Plus, I have added some other phrases based on suggestions from several agents.

This list is divided into three categories: phrases for use during a client presentation, phrases for use when you’re talking about an asset-based longterm care planning product, and phrases for use in other situations.

1. Phrases to Use During Any Long-Term Care Planning Client

Presentation

1. What’s your plan for when you get a little older and a little sicker and you need help to put on your shoes and pants and get breakfast?
2. One day you are not going to be as healthy and good looking as you are today. (Suggested by Gene Cutler).
3. 70-70-70: 70 million people are turning 70, and 70% will need long-term care.
4. What have you allocated in your retirement portfolio for long-term care? The answer: Unless you have planned for long-term care expenses, you have allocated everything for long-term care expenses.
5. If one of you has an extended health care need, which of your assets would you liquidate first?
6. It’s good to have a plan other than impoverishment.
7. This plan is not designed to make you rich. It is designed to keep you from being poor.
8. Put a wall of protection around your portfolio.
9. Is your portfolio sustainable?
10. Wealth protection tool.
11. Portfolio insurance.
12. Having a plan in place gives you a map to follow.
13. How are you going to fund this?
14. When do you purchase a long-term care policy? Answer: You do it when you can comfortably afford it.
15. Say when your health changes, instead of (Suggested by Linda Jobin).
16. Recognize the devastating consequences of facing long-term care expenses without planning on the people you love. (Suggested by Harley Gordon).

2. Phrases to Use When Talking About the Asset-Based Product

1. You are repositioning your assets by moving money from the left pocket to the right pocket.
2. Stable, predictable and guaranteed.
3. Live, die or quit.
4. Provides greater leverage.
5. Wash the taxation out of otherwise taxable investments.
6. Harvest the gain in a more tax efficient way.

3. Phrases for Other Uses

1. Reframe your thinking.
2. Profitable new revenue stream for you (for working with referral sources).
3. Growth is always on your mind.
4. Long-term focus.
5. Mission-focused.
6. Long-term view.
7. Are you a business owner? (Suggested by Janine Tate)
8. Any condition or disease that is named after a person is a bad condition to have.
9. The Aunt Milly rule: If you would not sell this to your Aunt Milly, then don’t do it.

Here’s a final suggestion from Gabriele Gelo: Review this list. Each month, select one or two key phrases to start using.

Highlight the list and put it in a place where you can easily view the terms. Make working new terms into your presentations a new habit.

---

— Read Long-Distance Caregiving, Up Close: LTCI Insider, on ThinkAdvisor.

Margie Barrie, an agent with ACSIA, has been writing the LTC Insider column since 2000. She is also the author of Selling LTCI Today: 46 ways to find more clients and close more sales, the national marketing coordinator for the LTCP Designation provided by the Washington-based America’s Health Insurance Plans, and national vice president of the 3in4 Need More Association.