America's Benefit Specialist August-September 2022

VOLUNTARY DISRUPTION

cally brought up when presenting a bespoke enhanced benefits strategy. You know where this story is going. He went on his own and he couldn’t answer any of the employer’s questions or overcome their objections, leading to confusion and, as the old saying goes, “Confusion causes paralysis.” His employer client was stay ing with the incumbent even though they weren’t happy with that carrier at all. For us, it’s not the end of the world. Sure, we put time into it, but neither of our firms are going to go out of business. The reality is that he missed a platinum opportunity handed up on a silver platter where he could help his client, help the employees, help himself and help us. But he didn’t let us do what we’re experts at—what he originally hired us to do. In our follow-up discussions, he apolo gized and said, “I should have listened to you and followed your lead.” BEING COACHABLE The moral of the story is: No one hires and pays a CPA a ton of money to do their taxes and then turns around and tells them how to do their taxes. Nor does anyone bring their car to the mechanic then stand there and micromanage the expert on how to fix it. Remember, there’s a method to the madness. Be coachable. People who are not coachable take advice, nod their head, tell you what you want to hear then, sadly, do the exact opposite. They’ll then come back and try to blame you for the failure: “You said it was going to go well, but it didn’t.” That will never be a setup to a successful partnership. Over the years, I’ve worked to get myself to the point where I’m now able to say “no” to business that will never be a good working partnership. Brokers who are completely stuck in their status-quo ways of doing things block us from any contact with a group, or refuse to even suggest any new processes or products that could be a great

GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY The first step of starting any new client rela tionship is coming together and establishing the “ground rules” of the working relation ship. Sharing what I expect from them as a partner, what they can expect from me as a partner, what works or doesn’t work, and generally level setting expectations is a basic building block to any successful relation ship. The point of this exercise is to establish that I know my field of expertise and to let you know you can and should trust me to know the processes that work best to get the results you partnered with me for. A while back, I was referred to a broker who was looking to bring in more “volun tary” revenue and, over an hour-long confer ence call, we discussed the ground rules. The broker was excited. I was excited. It seemed like a perfect match, so we got moving. Then came the first test: a case that was primed to be a home run. It was a takeover where the company owner and HR said they and their employees were unhappy with their current voluntary carrier and were looking for a change. We brought them a dual-carrier, best-in-class strategy. Most of the products had increased benefits and were half the price of the incumbent, and since we were moving them to other brand name, A-rated carriers, it was a no-brainer. Our initial strategy and set-up are done completely virtually. The way we work is the adviser sets up a conference call with the employer then we do a screenshare and then present our strategy to the client. The broker agreed to the setup but, at the last minute, he decided to go at it on his own. We reminded him of our conversation when we first met and reviewed again what works and what doesn’t work. In our experience, 99.9% of the time, if we ask a traditional health broker to try to learn the enhanced-benefits business inside and out, they’re not going to be able to overcome the very common sales objections that are typi

By Eric Silverman Silverman Benefits Group Towson, Maryland eric@voluntarydisruption.com

36 ABS | benefitspecialistmagazine.com