Be a Better Broker
by Donovan L. Cooper
President, TriFlex Corporation
San Diego, CA
Don@TriFlexCorp.com
The Benefit Strategies
Proposal—Changing the
Paradigm
If you had a chance to read my April and May articles,
you have a good feel for the educational foundation you
need and what you must do to maintain it. You also have
a good grasp on the information that you need about an
employer and their current benefits to use that knowledge to prepare the initial proposal for the employer’s
evaluation. We call our initial proposal the “Benefit
Strategies Proposal.”
In order to start dealing with the root causes of health
care inflation and other delivery system problems, group
brokers must change their focus from a “
premium/prod-uct focus” to needs-based, long-range planning solutions.
The purpose of a benefit strategies proposal is to change
the employer’s benefits paradigm. To do this effectively,
brokers must begin to work with their clients before the
medical renewal is received. It takes time to thoroughly
assess the appropriate strategies. In many cases, it even
makes good sense to implement plan enhancements in
the middle of the plan year to minimize communication
and education problems caused by taking on too much
change all at once.
There are several basic things to understand at this
stage of the consultative sales process. First, this proposal should contain no product information. General
information on the strategies that you present in the
proposal should be included, of course. This is necessary to support the recommendation of the strategies to
be evaluated with the employees. Information on HSAs,
HRAs, Section 125, etc., can be included in separate sections of the proposal to support your recommendations. But it will not include any specific product or
carrier information.
The most critical aspect of a well-crafted benefit
strategies proposal (and the subsequent strategic benefit
plan proposal) is to condense the crux of your presentation into an executive summary that is no more than
two pages long with plenty of “white space.” This can be
a difficult task, but allows presentation of the proposal
to the decision maker in 30 minutes or less. If the presentation exceeds 30 minutes, it should be with the decision maker’s permission to discuss specific questions
that arise from the executive summary. This is a dramatic change from the one- to two-hour review of spreadsheets commonly seen in a traditional product-driven
sales process.
There are two objectives to be achieved in the presentation of the benefit strategies proposal:
1. Get the employer’s agreement that development of an
employer-employee benefits partnership is essential.
2. Get employer approval to conduct an employee benefits survey to evaluate employees’ needs and attitudes about benefits.
Objective 1: The foundation to a consultative benefits
selling strategy is employer acceptance of the need for a
working employer-employee partnership in benefits. This
is probably the easiest sale you will ever make. Employers
are being crushed by the paternalistic approach to benefits and are looking for relief.
To develop a partnership, you must identify the shared
responsibilities of the partners. These responsibilities
must be laid out clearly in this proposal because it sets
the stage for the necessary change in paradigm. The
shared responsibilities we include in the proposal are:
Employer Responsibilities
1. Offer a competitive benefits package.
2. Make an adequate contribution.
3. Provide good support services.
4. Educate the employees.
Employee Responsibilities
1. Learn to make wise benefit decisions.
2. Become a prudent consumer.
3. Adopt a healthy lifestyle.
4. Pay their fair share.
