Be service-oriented, emphasize the value of enhanced products before open enrollment begins, and treat each client like a new, warm prospect. Despite our best efforts, we’ve all had open enrollments go awry. Last month, I emphasized how the words you use to speak about enhanced benefits will impact employees’ perception of their value. Word choice is just one factor that …
Voluntary Disruption: Part 2
Eliminating redundancies, avoiding over-spends and heading off commission-grabs Last time, I discussed how the most influential disrupter to the enhanced benefits industry must be the willingness of the broker community at large, to adjust, adapt, and embrace our ever-changing market. How brokers must position themselves as either an innovator who drives the change or an adopter who follows those innovators …
Word Choice Proves Paramount
Referring to employee-funded benefits as ‘voluntary,’ ‘ancillary,’ ‘supplemental’ and ‘worksite’ are hurting your sales. Last month, I shared how I’m on a mission to disrupt the “voluntary” industry by breaking through the health insurance status-quo that employers have been accustomed to for far too long. For me, that started with leaving the voluntary benefits carrier rep lifestyle behind, and it …
My Moment of Clarity: From Voluntary Carrier Rep to Enhanced Benefits Strategist
There is such a thing as overselling and employees being over-insured. As a voluntary benefits carrier rep – I prefer the term “enhanced benefits strategist” – I lived the sweet life for more than a decade. Year after year, I slayed the sales contests. Lavish all-expense-paid trips? I took them. Quarterly and annual bonus checks so large they looked like …
The voluntary status-quo isn’t acceptable, either
Group health brokers who sell themselves as being innovative and non-status quo continue to ignore enhanced voluntary benefits, thus serving only half their clients and arguably snubbing those who need their cost-saving strategies the most: the employees. The buzzwords of the year have all circled around the idea of not being “status quo.” Brokers everywhere are focusing on being innovative, cutting edge …
Direct employers to consider voluntary benefits
Succeeding with enhanced benefits — formerly known as voluntary benefits — involves a super simple strategy. It’s all about setting up a dedicated time with your prospect or client to discuss how enhanced benefits fit directly into their total benefits strategy. Those benefit brokers who get it, get it. But sadly, up to 95% take the wrong approach. As a …
Voluntary Disruption
Bringing the benefits portfolio out to the cutting-edge “Disruptor” is such a loaded word, isn’t it? But it is a precise description of healthcare industry thought leaders like David Contorno of Lake Norman Benefits in Mooresville, NC; Mark Gaunya of Borislow Insurance in Boston, MA; and Andy Neary of The Olson Group in Omaha, NE. These healthcare rock-stars, among many …
Disrupting the voluntary benefits market
BenefitsPRO published this article in June about my BenefitsPRO Broker Expo. In his BenefitsPRO Broker Expo presentation, voluntary expert Eric Silverman outlines what advisers need to do to move beyond a status-quo enhanced benefits strategy. When it comes to creating a new vision of voluntary benefits where the products play a central role in the lives of employees and the …
Defined contribution = benefits shopping spree
The concept of defined contribution (DC) is not widely used in the enhanced, or voluntary, benefit space. But communicated properly, approaching enhanced benefits from the DC perspective is a powerful and innovative tool that brokers can bring to their clients. I start the conversation by asking employers, “Why do you pay for benefits such as life, dental, vision and disability?” …
For Benefits, Word Choice Can Prove Paramount
How “Ancillary” and “Voluntary” may be hurting your enhanced benefit sales I just closed my first 50-life case and couldn’t wait for the employee group meeting. Visions of 80% employee participation were letting my mind cash checks that inevitably my mouth hadn’t yet written. While presenting, I proceeded to, innocently enough, refer to the majority of their employees as “tow …