Adding Employee Benefits offers a great way to strengthen relationships with Commercial Lines accounts, while demonstrating your value as an insurance professional.
Employee Benefits is becoming one of the fastest growing business segments for agents and brokers. It has become a huge area of emphasis in P/C agencies because the cost of health care has increased dramatically, and revenues from benefit programs have risen proportionately. Employers are looking for innovative ways to reduce the costs of benefits, which have become a major portion of their overhead. Also, many agents are finding a natural tie-in between Workers Comp and Benefits programs.
To solicit Benefits effectively, agencies must understand that carriers provide the same or similar quotes to several firms. In the Benefits market, it’s more important to be valued as a consultant. Buyers perceive consultants and insurance salespeople very differently. If you don’t understand the difference, you’ll get low hit ratios.
To be successful in cross selling Benefits, agents should adopt a cross-selling plan, which includes the principles of consultative brokerage. Here’s how to implement a successful Benefits cross-selling program:
Profile Your Top 25 Opportunities. Identify the top prospects in your book of business. Determine which ones have significant Workers Comp issues, are the fastest growing, have had significant changes in their balance sheets, have recently changed their CFO or human resources personnel, and have a lot of employees.
Analyze the opportunity. Some quality P/C accounts might be difficult benefits transactions. Your analysis should include these questions:
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Is the account a good Benefits account?
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Who is the client contact for Benefits coverage?
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What information do we need?
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Have we created a perception of Benefits expertise?
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How will we initiate the opportunity?
Demonstrate your value. Many cross-selling opportunities fail because agents expect them to be slam-dunks. Successful firms approach every cross-selling candidate as a new client, and they work to prove their value in the new transaction. This is particularly true in Benefits cross selling. Successful agencies tell buyers exactly how they’ll contain client costs and how they can offer unique value by representing P/C and Benefits.
Don’t surrender your leverage. You have a tremendous advantage if your agency already represents the buyer’s P/C program. Don’t surrender it easily. Discuss the buyer’s total cost of risk. Then you can demonstrate how completely your firm can advise them.
The increase in health care costs will translate into gigantic opportunities for agents who master cross-selling Employee Benefits.
Go for it!