America's Benefit Specialist January-February 2023

VOLUNTARY DISRUPTION

I was not only receiving the fan cy gifts, lavish trips and huge bonus checks based on my team’s sales per formance, but I was also enabling the trend to continue, as I was personally incentivized to do so. I would design and implement my own sales contests to aid in the perpetual and never-end ing product-dumping policy sales cycle to achieve the glory and carrier fame that came along with it. I get it—we’re in sales and salespeo ple are motivated by shiny objects and bonus checks. I understand that many carriers are publically traded compa nies that have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to increase sales at all costs. I realize that finishing each month, quarter and year stronger than the year before is of the utmost impor tance. Carriers have a way of putting a fancy name on what any other sales industry simply calls a “quota.” The challenge lays within the “sell, sell, sell” mantra that runs rampant in sales offic es across the country, where managers are pushing their sales reps by dangling large carrots in their path. The inher ent problem isn’t so much in the sales contests themselves, but that there is very little to no care in the world about the irreparable damage this “Always Be Selling” methodology is causing the soon-to-be-enrolled employee policy holders, and even the sales reps. These enrolled employees are very often meeting green and hungry com mission-driven sales reps who don’t always have the employees’ best inter est in mind when they’re being pushed to dump product after product so that their sales manager and the carrier they represent can achieve their numbers. No one ever wants to talk about the incredibly large amount of policyholder dissatisfaction and buyer’s remorse that often occurs after every huge contest qualification period is over. No one ever wants to talk about the ridiculous amount of wasteful employee over spend on products that have zero align ment to the health insurance strategy that the employer and health insurance

can only hope that some of the things I’m doing in the enhanced benefits space are worthy of others looking to me as an expert in the same vein that I most certainly look up to them. FINAL THOUGHT I’m not telling you that you should be ashamed to go on a carrier-paid trip, accept a gift or collect a bonus check after having a rockstar-worthy sales period. After all, we’re still in sales. I just know there are better, more trans parent ways to get to the desired end results we all crave. I’ve been achieving grand success for my broker partners and our mutual clients ever since changing to a completely transparent business model many years ago—and you can to! Curious how? Please share this article on LinkedIn and don’t forget to leave your feedback and tag me. As a thank-you, I’mmore than glad to share my next practices with you on these topics, and many more. Happy New Year and, if you must, let the judging begin!

advisor have spent countless hours designing. Nor does anyone ever want to be reminded about the sensational amount of commission chargebacks that the sales reps are now responsible for repaying the carrier who advanced them. Sadly, more times than not, those advances pile so high that reps can’t even afford to settle their carrier balance before ultimately failing out of the business and seeking a new career. Dare I say, “sell the dream” and “service the nightmare” later? There is such a thing as carrier rep overselling and employees being over-insured. There is a better way—a more strategic approach that can and should occur. It entails strategy, disci pline and restraint on the part of the benefits counselor. Great news: These good counselors do exist—they’re more the exception though, and not usually the rule. With all of this said, those ringing casino bells and thunderous sounds of racecars jetting by at breakneck speeds that I relished for so long actually sound even sweeter on the outside. Here I am, many years later and many years wiser. Having successfully transformed my business into an actual “independent” and carrier-agnostic practice, I’ve prov en that it can be done. You can break the addictive carrier rep lifestyle. BOTTOM LINE I’m on a mission to disrupt the “vol untary” industry in the same way that multiple health insurance thought leaders across the country are disrupt ing and breaking the health insur ance status quo that employers have become accustom to for far too long. Disruption doesn’t have to mean you have the latest and greatest technology, nor does it have to mean that you know everything or are the end all be all to all things health insurance and benefits. I know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know. I do, however, know enough to surround myself with nation al experts who are doing revolutionary things in their given industries, and I

Eric Silverman, founder and owner of Voluntary Disruption, a division of

Silverman Benefits Group (SBG), is an

Amazon “Best Selling” author featured in the book Breaking Through

The Status Quo , and he’s EBA maga zine’s Voluntary Adviser of the Year. Voluntary Disruption works as the “adviser’s adviser” for clients small to large all across the country, and is nationally recognized as a disruptive carrier-agonistic enhanced benefits boutique with in-house distribution and enrollment services. Reach Eric directly by voice and text at (443) 676-0340, by email at eric@voluntarydisruption.com, at his website, voluntarydisruption.com, on LinkedIn, on Twitter @SilvermanSBG, or through his business Facebook page, facebook.com/SilvermanBenefits.

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