As the competitive landscape for benefits brokers gets tougher, effectively communicating benefits strategies with clients—and helping them better communicate those strategies with their employees— becomes even more critical. The ultimate goal of communicating benefits strategies is to increase employee retention—and a broker's business is on the line if communication is weak, says Elizabeth Halkos, chief marketing officer of Purchasing Power, an Atlanta firm that offers employee purchasing programs through payroll deductions.

“If communication to employees is not strong, there is a potential for brokers to get feedback from their clients that their benefits are not as effective as the broker pitched them [to be],” Halkos says. “But the reality is that it could have to do less with the products themselves and more about whether they are being communicated in the right way.

The broker needs to be getting the client on board.” First on the agenda should be finding out how each employee likes to receive information – via a website, an email or a text message, through social media, on paper or in person. Studies show that a third of employees still prefer to have their benefits explained in person. “It takes a lot of listening and learning, and brokers need to educate their clients about this issue,” Halkos says. Just as critical for the broker is learning how employers like to be contacted, as many clients still prefer to spend quality face time with their brokers, she says.

Even so, brokers would do well to produce collateral materials—such as monthly newsletters—that introduce clients to new products or ancillary services, such as onsite enrollment, ahead of time. “The broker landscape is competitive, and clients need to know that the broker is staying ahead of the curve with the latest trends in the industry,” Halkos says.

One particularly powerful way to sell clients on new products or services, she says, is for the broker to present case studies on past client experiences that demonstrate how well employees understood being offered and how that, in turn, increased retention for those particular clients. “The broker could bring those proof points in a case study, which comes across as more legitimate information,” Halkos says.

Chris Bartnik, a senior vice president in the Washington, D.C. office of Wells Fargo Insurance Services, says his firm's goal is to be strategic advisers to middle-market clients. “For so long it was about how insurance brokers can get their clients the cheapest rate, but the real differentiator now is intellectual capital,” Bartnik says. “Having uniquely skilled professionals in specialty practices, such as population health care compliance, helps clients develop an actionable benefit plan strategy.”

Wells' internal compliance team regularly produces legislative updates in which Bartnik and his team communicate through monthly newsletters, webinars and seminars to clients and prospective clients. Topics discussed include benchmarking tools so clients can better compare their benefits strategies against those of peers and population health management.

“There are only a couple of levers that employers have to manage costs: cost-shifting through plan design and payroll distributions, going into the marketplace and finding cheaper vendor partners and trying to attack what really is the underlying cost determine – managing claims,” Bartnik says. “The best way to do that is through employee education on preventive care, encouraging greater participation in wellness strategies.

We put it upon ourselves to help educate employers on how to get these programs started, and what resources there are in the marketplace.” For most Wells Fargo clients, Bartnik and his team also are in charge of communicating benefits strategies to their employees, and that typically is accomplished through webinars and onsite meetings. Bartnik also encourages his clients to develop private-label employee communication portals on websites such as Benefitfocus.com, a benefits exchange and administration site.

“The portal helps employers develop a year-round communication strategy, providing educational tools about such things as breast cancer or diabetes awareness,” Bartnik says. “It helps us provide more value.” As the provisions of the new federal health care reform law are rolled out, brokers can get ahead of their competitors if they position themselves as facilitators of information, Bartnik says. “Health care reform is a game changer,” he says.

“Some employers may not want to pay for benefits anymore, so brokers can help communicate to employees how to shop for health insurance on their own.” Jay Marchant, founder and principal of About Your Benefits Inc., also looks at reform as a game changer. His firm is quick to communicate how employees might be personally affected by hot button issues, like reform. “Because employees are seeing so much in the news about this issue, there is a little bit of apprehension about what is happening,” Marchant says.

“As these provisions roll out, we can quantify how they would affect employees personally, and they'll find that the provisions are a lot less onerous on an individualized basis.” As the recession hit, Marchant saw a drop in contracts by employers who paid for this type of communication themselves because their HR budgets were squeezed.

“Brokers have the technical knowledge of the nuances of the markets and the ability to find the best markets for particular plans that an employee would want, and they know how to look out for the financial interests of their employer clients, but oftentimes they just want to outsource the communication piece,” Marchant says. But outsourcing crucial communication can be a problem. “Employers can have the greatest benefits plan, but if it's poorly communicated, then their people feel they have a poor plan,” Bartnik says.

“The greater you consider communication as part of your strategy, the better the employee satisfaction.” Marchant says his firm's niche is delivering personalized messages to employees about their specific benefit packages, including the cost of each benefit they receive and how much their employer is contributing. “It's all about communicating total compensation and total rewards, so employees will be more aware of what they're getting and therefore more appreciative of the company,” Marchant says.

“The employer is paying the carrier and the broker a lot of money to provide this information, and if they don't help the employer in the recruitment and retention of employees, what's the value of having them?”  “On the other hand, when a broker provides them, it's paid for out of their commissions,” he says. “It's one additional service they provide rather than just being the marketers of the benefits and insurance, and their clients really appreciate the value-added service.”

Brokers who manage a suite of products for employers would be better suited to handle such communications, versus a broker who only handles a small piece, such as workers compensation or long-term disability, Marchant says. Warren Rosaluk produces marketing brochures for benefits brokers and other professionals under the name, The Brochure Guy. “Our brochures are a statement about the person or their business, that they are professionals, which it helps build credibility and trust,” Rosaluk says.

“Research into human behavior and decision-making has found that most customers — both retail and wholesale — base their decisions in large part on the person. Information on their firm, their products and the price, are important, but in 70 percent of the cases, it's the person with whom they are dealing that is the most critical factor.” Rosaluk gives brokers two questionnaires – one for them to personally complete about themselves and their business, and one for them to distribute to their clients, to gather opinions about them.

In cases where permitted by regulators, Resoluk includes client testimonials in the brochures; in other cases, he incorporates their thoughts in his overall description of the broker. He also includes black-and-white sketches of the brokers, similar to the style of The Wall Street Journal, because while not everyone photographs well, “everyone sketches well” and it distinguishes brokers' marketing materials, he says.

Finally, Rosaluk asks brokers' clients to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 on professional knowledge, product selection, service, amount of money that the broker has saved or earned for the client, affordability of their fees and/or commissions, and overall satisfaction. Rosaluk then measures the clients' responses against those of his firm's other clients across the country. If the broker is rated strongly, say in the top 15 percent of their industry, then Rosaluk will include that point in the brochure. 

No matter the rating, Rosaluk will review the ratings with the broker after the brochure is completed. He suggests that brokers first send the brochures to each of their current clients, placing them in an envelope with a cover letter that states something like, “This is my new brochure, if you participated in putting it together, please accept my thanks. If you're pleased with my service, then please send this brochure to a colleague, friend or coworker.”

“This encourages the brokers' clients to become referral generators,” Rosaluk says. “Nobody likes a stranger— everybody likes to deal with someone they know and trust. So if they get a referral, that's really good, because there's an implied trust factor.” Rosaluk also encourages brokers to leave the brochure with prospective clients after presentations or sales pitches.

“Whenever a broker tells someone or the benefit adviser tells potential clients about their service, half of that will be forgotten or misunderstood,” he says. “The advantage of the brochure is to make it easier for brokers to explain their service to others, particularly to decision-makers who didn't develop rapport with them. And it will be much more effective if some of their personality shows through.”

Katie Kuehner-Hebert can be reached at [email protected].