In his book "Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story," Peter Guber writes about how motivating people to act in the way we want often depends on our ability to touch a chord through a story that illustrates our message.
Aesop's fables and Biblical parables are two profound examples of the power of story. If you just say: "you'd better work hard or you may not be able to pay your bills and that would be a disaster," you may be making the same point as the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. But you probably wouldn't identify just how short-sighted and insensitive the grasshopper is without hearing the story.
Story can be interwoven into enrollment in many ways. One is the negative:
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Susan was offered a short- and long-term disability plan at work. It would cover 60 percent of her income and would cost about $25 a month. But Susan hadn't missed much work over the past few years, so she decided to save the money and hold off on buying the plan. Less than a year later, her doctor informed her that she needed surgery and would miss several weeks of work, more if there were complications. She asked her benefit administrator if she could apply for the disability plan and found she couldn't qualify. Susan figured out too late that she had saved a couple of hundred dollars — and had lost thousands.
The other story approach is the positive:
Jack was offered a critical illness plan at work. Though he hadn't heard about the product, he decided he was much more likely to face the cost of surviving a critical illness than he had realized. For one thing, he knew quite a few people at work who had gone through a critical health issue, and most of them talked about all the expenses their medical plan didn't cover and the financial hardships that resulted. He purchased a $20,000 benefit for just over $25 a month. The benefit may have saved his family from going bankrupt when he had a critical illness event just a few years later.
Though the two enrollment scenarios above are made up stories, they're thinly disguised real-life tales. I've worked with people just like Susan and Jack.
I highly recommend "Tell to Win," and I urge you to think about your own experiences when asked "why voluntary." You will be surprised how easily examples come to mind, and you will win over the mind of prospects.
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