Summary
Great sales conversations don’t come from perfect pitches—they come from clarity, curiosity, and alignment. When benefits producers understand their intent, know their audience, and focus on solving problems instead of selling products, they earn trust and create meaningful client relationships that last.
This article was inspired by a discussion I had with Lesley Brown Albright, Senior Director of Business Development at Nonstop Administration & Insurance Services. We discussed what it really takes for employee benefit salespeople to elevate their sales conversations, particularly when introducing alternative funding models.
You can check out the conversation here: NABIP + Nonstop Virtual Broker Forum, starting at 41:30.
Regardless of what health plan designs you’re selling to employers, you need to start with the right foundation. And if you’re introducing alternative funding models into your conversations, you need to be exceptionally clear with your intentions and your approach.
If the agency and producer haven’t clarified their message, what they share with the employer will be a mess, and it will be reflected in sales closing ratios.
Lesley sets up the talk, explaining that we, at Q4i, help benefits professionals elevate their business success by teaching sales and marketing skills to grow their businesses. She goes on to ask me a series of questions, and I’m sharing a version of my answers below.
Where do we start positioning and marketing an alternative funding model?
All business success is born out of messaging. When we talk about marketing and messaging, what we’re really talking about is helping people understand your business model. At the agency level or the producer level, you have to know the intent of your company:
- Are you selling products and a transaction?
- Or a strategy and ongoing advisory relationship?
- If it’s strategy and advisory, what is your process for engaging the buyer in sales conversations, and how will you manage the relationship after they become a client?
Knowing your intent and being prepared to discuss it confidently is non-negotiable. Every person representing your company (marketing, sales, service, or leadership) needs to be aligned on it.
Your marketing should set expectations for what prospects will experience during the sales process and as clients. Then, your sales conversations should focus on understanding the buyer’s business.
If you walk into a conversation with a preconceived idea of what you want to sell, buyers will spot it instantly and shut you down. They have too much access to information and too many options to waste time on a pitch that isn’t about them.
To make your messaging and marketing effective, think of yourself as an educator. Both you and the buyer need to understand the landscape before making recommendations or decisions.
Shifting a group from a fully insured plan to a captive, level-funded, or self-funded plan takes time and education. You want your clients to feel confident, informed, and ready to move forward when the timing is right.
How important is knowing and understanding your audience?
Knowing your audience is the heart of the business model and message. The better you know your audience going into a sales conversation, the better questions you can ask, and the richer the discussion will be. If you don’t know much about the employer, you need to spend your limited time together getting to know the basics, and that is such a waste! There’s too much information available not to do your homework.
The more you focus on a particular type of audience, the more insight you have to bring. For example, if you focus on a niche audience, you can learn from each client in that niche and apply the principles across clients.
A niche can be widely defined. You may choose an industry or two, a specific client size, or a geographical location. Another way to look at a niche is based on internal criteria – for example, you may like small, family-owned businesses, groups that have a CFO, or do/don’t have an HR manager.
When you can clearly articulate what you like and why they’re a good fit for your business model, it makes selling so much easier to identify a good target opportunity and know if you should pursue them or walk away.
At Q4i, we work with employee benefits producers and agency leaders who:
- Know they need to make a change
- Are ready to make decisions
- Are willing to do the work
If someone doesn’t exhibit these tendencies, we know they won’t thrive under our guidance.
Agencies should apply similar thinking when assessing employers for alternative funding readiness. Look for things like:
- How recently they’ve made changes to HR or benefits programs
- Whether the CEO and CFO view benefits as a critical part of business operations
- Willingness to engage in education around total cost of care instead of chasing “savings” with premium shell games
If leadership is disengaged or resistant to change, stop trying to convince them. Stick with a fully insured model or move on. Your business model will help guide that decision.
What role do team selling and engaging partners play in the sales process?
I love a team selling approach. Account executives/managers, agency leaders, and partners have valuable roles to play. To successfully team-sell, bring in the right people at the right stage.
In early-stage meetings, it may be appropriate to bring in a peer and have two salespeople or a member of your leadership team.
As you move into discovery conversations, I really like having a strategic account manager/executive to help run those conversations and gather insights from the prospective client.
At plan presentation or vetting and planning conversations, bringing in partners is the perfect time to dive into details. With this timing of introducing partners, you’ve done a neutral discovery with the employer, and you’re coming to them with a recommendation.
Bring in your partners and let them lead the technical part of the conversation. This is a respectful way to use everyone’s time. If you bring partners in too early, you risk turning it into a product pitch.
How do you set yourself apart with new products and solutions while still having a meaningful conversation?
Make your sales process about discovering the client’s needs and not selling a product.
The employee benefits advisors in our Goose community use our MORE Selling System, and employers regularly comment about the process itself and how much they appreciate it. It’s common to hear things like:
- “I’ve never had a conversation with a broker like this before.”
- “I learn something new every time I talk with you.”
- “This is the most different and refreshing conversation I’ve ever had with a broker.”
Employers like it so much because the conversation is about them, not the broker, the agency capabilities, or the product they want to pitch.
Don’t go into a conversation with a preconceived idea of what you want to sell—go in with the curiosity of a 5-year-old, see what their circumstances are. Learn about them, understand their needs, and what their risk/change tolerance is. And then it’s time to organize your ideas and recommendations.
When your sales process is set up with discovery followed by specific recommendations tailored to the client’s situation and tolerance/appetite, you’re offering them something based on a genuine belief that it’s a good fit for them.
How does a benefits professional best position themselves to talk strategy around alternative funding with clients and prospects?
Back to the beginning – start with messaging and education.
With alternative funding, it’s essential to acknowledge that not all employers are ready for it or want it today. However, that shouldn’t stop you from talking about it.
You need to bring the ideas forward and educate your clients and prospects because they will learn about it somewhere, and you want it to be from you.
If they find out about things from someone other than you as their advisor, the employer can easily think you’re trying to hide something. Even if they’re not interested in making the switch, small bites of education dripped regularly will lay the groundwork for any future changes. Or, just as important, it will arm your clients with information and talking points they can use when others come knocking and talking up “new plan options that your current broker isn’t telling you about.”
Be sure that education is coming from you first.
What’s one thing you want people to walk away with and put into action tomorrow?
Stop selling products and start asking questions that lead to meaningful, problem-solving conversations. The most successful brokers aren’t out there pushing products the hardest; they’re the ones who understand the client the best.
Sponsored ad by our Friendor, Nonstop. Click above to visit their site.
Content originally published by Q4intelligence
Photo by peopleimages12