The five finalists for Benefits Selling's 2015 Broker of the Year come from different parts of the country. They have different approaches to the business. And, they serve different client bases. ¶ But they all share one trait: success. And in an era defined by systemic changes to health care, these brokers and agents succeed by helping their clients navigate today's benefits industry.

Vanessa Edmond

While technology has taken over how benefits professionals interact with many of their clients, Vanessa Edmond still relies on gasoline, rubber and horsepower. Some industry types might call her old school, but she'll take it. And in her view, it's the only way to go.

See, most of Edmond's clients are elderly, and she shows them how to purchase Plan F Medicare supplements, which she says helps her clients find more affordable options and helps their health care dollar stretch a little further. It might not be the most glamorous job in the industry, but Edmond says it's one of the best parts of her job.

“I do more individual business, the senior market,” Edmond says. “I go to their homes because they're elderly and they'd rather stay at home. So I go to them.”

More recently, Edmond, 55, also has found a role around her community of Scott City, Missouri, helping people sign up for coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In those cases, too, Edmond gets behind the wheel and shows up at her clients' homes, ready to assist.

“Most of them want me to come there and show them how to do it,” Edmond says. “I took the training to learn it, so I know a lot more about Obamacare than if you call into Healthcare.gov. It's not the commission; it's the way I help people. I'd rather help people than get the commission. It helps them save money.”

While Edmond's business is small, it's growing. Edmond also sells final expense, life and health insurance as well as annuities and Part D prescription drug plans. In 2015, Edmond says her client roster grew to three times the size of the previous year, mainly through word of mouth. Several of her clients, she says, have shared her business cards with other people who are now her clients.

Edmond got her start in health insurance when she was hired as an office manager for the Thomas Insurance Group in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Her boss there, Laura Faye Thomas, helped Edmond get her license and allowed her to start meeting with clients. In 2012, the agency was sold and the new owners laid off Edmond.

That move, however unfortunate, was critical to Edmond's business. She couldn't abandon some of her clients from the old agency, so she set up shop in her home. It didn't take long for her client roster to expand.

“I love what I'm doing,” Edmond says. “I love seeing people's faces when I save them so much money. A lot of them are on a fixed income and I save them quite a bit. I've got other clients that are pretty well off, and they don't mind, but I still save them money.”

She credits plenty of her success to Premier Senior Marketing, which helped market her services and generate some of her client base. But she's also vocal about crediting the big guy upstairs.

“The key to my success is God,” Edmond says. “I'm a Christian. I owe everything to Him.”

Robert J. Russell

Talk to Robert J. Russell for a short amount of time and it's obvious he's not like other benefits brokers and agents. For starters, he sells more than just benefits packages—he's into real estate in Florida and Texas. He also produces and hosts an internet radio show. And, he's a one-man, do-it-yourself agency.

But the most visible instance of how Russell is different is his image. Literally, his image.

While most benefits professionals include a formal portrait in their print and online advertisements, Russell instead uses a caricature of himself. It's one of the ways Russell illustrates how he's different from his competitors—and to communicate to potential clients that he does things differently from the rest of the pack.

“Back in 1988, I was looking for different things to do in advertising,” Russell explains. “I was doing TV and billboards and radio. Someone tried to sell me something and said I needed to do this because every insurance agent is doing it. I said, 'Hold it. I don't want to do something everyone else does. Come back to me when you have something different from everyone else.' I want to do things different from everyone else. That's why I use a caricature instead of a photo. My wife said no one would take me seriously, and she might be right, but at least they'll remember me.”

Russell's desire to take the road less traveled has served him well over the course of his career. His business—Robert J. Russell Cos. of Flower Mound, Texas—started off in 1985 catering to traditional group clients. But over the years, Russell expanded his offerings, branched out into other areas and took his business online. Now, he oversees 10 websites with plans to expand his online presence even further.

In today's benefits market, Russell focuses on phone and internet sales—the last time he visited someone's house was in 1998, he says. Even though he might not be in front of people, he's pushing his services into the realm of social media.

“I'm asked to visit companies and talk about how to integrate your business into social media,” he says. “I think social media is where it's at. And if you're not in it, you're lost.”

Licensed in Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina, with plans to expand into Florida, Virginia and California, the 53-year-old Russell sells life, auto, homeowner's, health, dental, disability and vision insurance products. He obtained his real estate license 15 years ago and guides many of his clients on how to borrow against their life insurance policy for a down payment on a home. The strategy has helped his clients realize the American dream of home ownership—and the value of a life insurance policy.

While many brokers and agents invest heavily in outside help with their business, Russell says he's arrived where he is by doing it himself—and he wouldn't have it any other way.

“I do everything on my own; I even cut my own hair,” Russell says. “Why pay someone something you can do yourself?”

Vic Troncalli

Vic Troncalli isn't the kind of person who can retire. He tried it once, after a long and very successful career in the garment industry. He bought a place up in the North Carolina mountains and after six months, he says he was bored. So he obtained his real estate license and began purchasing REMAX franchises. That was a decent business for Troncalli—until the Great Recession sucker punched real estate in 2008.

Looking to escape into something else, he started an Edward Jones office on the advice of a friend. After a while, though, he realized he didn't like finance, but ended up taking some insurance classes and discovered he liked the business. While he prefers insurance to financial advising, he started in 2009—just before the passage of PPACA.

That bit of timing would be enough to kill anyone's business aspirations, but Troncalli is a survivor. All those successful years in his first career taught him how to formulate a business plan and see it through. Today, Troncalli and Associates is a growing agency with clients across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, with plans to move into Florida later this year. Troncalli's agency, which is based in the Atlanta bedroom community of Villa Rica, Georgia, is focused mainly on small groups—a portion of the industry Troncalli says tends to get left behind as other brokers and agents aim for larger clients.

“The key is having good volume and customers that keep coming back,” Troncalli says. “You have all types of people in this business. In insurance, you have people who want to be a Wall Street wannabe. They want to talk to just HR people. I'm out there talking to 'Jeff' and he just started his business and he's got 30 employees and he's trying to figure out how make a payroll.”

Like other finalists, 64-year-old Troncalli has been helping a lot of clients this year with Obamacare. He took a course to get his certification, but says the only way to really learn to help clients navigate the law is through experience.

“This was the first year I've done Obamacare,” Troncalli says. “The only way you understand it is not by the 20-hour course you take—you understand it by working with each customer. I enjoy it because I deal with families. I was raised in the 1950s and 1960s and I'm far from being a saint, but the dynamics today are off the chart—you've got two people working, or dependents on different plans. The government says all you need to do is sign up, but they can't. I found that to be a mission this year.”

Troncalli, in addition to his plans to expand into the Sunshine State, wants to start offering seminars this year to educate people about Medicare and Obamacare while sharing the importance of having a good insurance advisor in life.

“I haven't bought a lead since I started,” Troncalli says. “It's a referral business. And it's that way because you have to care about somebody somewhere, and they have to trust you. I have learned to always do right by the customer.”

Eric Stanton

Not many people would compare selling insurance with serving as a law enforcement officer. Unless, of course, it's someone who's saying their experience with a less-than-reputable broker or agent was like dealing with a crook.

But as Eric Stanton sees it, selling insurance is like law enforcement because they're both about one simple, yet very important thing: security. Instead of making sure people are safe from criminal activity or evil-doers, though, selling insurance is about making sure families have long-term security.

“Honestly, I love helping people,” Stanton says. “It's similar to law enforcement in that you're providing security to people and their families.”

And Stanton is in a unique position to know. Before he became an agent, he worked in the sheriff's office in York County, Maine. As he tells it, he got into a fight with a guy and blew out his shoulder. After surgery, Stanton says he “lucked out” and got an interview with HealthMarkets—an insurance agency based in Dallas—and was hired on the spot.

Working out of his home in Standish, Maine, Stanton in his first year in the industry ranked 33rd out of 4,000 agents. That was over part of 2014. Stanton now has designs on becoming HealthMarket's No. 1 first-year achiever in his first complete calendar year with the company.

“I don't even consider myself a broker or an agent,” Stanton says. “I call myself a 'giver.' I give people security for themselves and their families. I listen to a lot of motivational speakers and that's what they tell you—to form relationships with your clients.”

Helping to propel Stanton's success is PPACA. Stanton says 92 percent of people in Maine qualify for a subsidy, so when open enrollment hits, Stanton is swamped fielding calls. By helping his Obamacare clients sign up, though, Stanton then can offer them any number of supplemental plans, which means his clients emerge from the process with affordable health care and “10 times the protection” they had before enrollment.

“Honestly, I adapted what I did in law enforcement,” Stanton says. “It's diplomacy rather than trying to push stuff down people's throats.”

Stanton works primarily with self-employed clients but estimates that 10 percent of his clients are small organizations. With some of his group clients, he's been advising them to shift their employees to PPACA. But first, he tells the employers to give employees a raise.

“Nowadays, group insurance is way too expensive,” Stanton says. “I advise the employer to offer a raise and let them go find their own policy. I can find them cheaper insurance. I saved a grocery store $45,000 per year just switching their employees to individual plans. It works as long as the employer gives the employees a raise so they can buy their own insurance.”

Stanton also has developed a strong rapport with his clients—even becoming known as a bit of a 24-7 operation.

“I get calls from people who are on the way to the hospital with their kid and asking me what they should do,” Stanton says. “People like the way I help them.”

David Contorno

The difference between a stock car race and a drag race is pretty basic. NASCAR drivers have to endure 500-mile tests of mind and body behind the wheel of an 800-horsepower machine just to have a chance to make it to Victory Lane.

A drag race is over in less than 10 seconds. And while that's the way some sales people manage their client relationships, that isn't the way David Contorno, CEO of Lake Norman Benefits, goes about his business. No, Contorno is running a longer race in an effort to provide great benefits to his clients—many of whom already have taken home a checkered flag in the form of better health care and positive movement in plan costs.

Located in Mooresville, North Carolina—the heart of NASCAR country and a booming suburb of Charlotte—Lake Norman Benefits was launched in 2008 after Contorno relocated from Long Island, New York. The company has grown to serve about 400 group clients and thousands of employees with a staff that stands at 20 professionals. The company offers full benefits packages including health, dental, vision, life, disability, voluntary and 401(k) plans.

“We want to work with employers,” Contorno says. “When their mindset is a one-year, shop-it-out mentality, I ask them if they plan to be in business in five years, and I tell them they need to look at this beyond one year.”

Part of 38-year-old Contorno's approach to employee benefits is to educate his clients about their health care. There's a lot to learn, but Contorno is very serious about helping employers and employees become savvy consumers. With skyrocketing health insurance rates, Contorno says, people can no longer afford to rely on their plans to cover their costs and not feel the pain of rate increases later.

With this hands-on approach, Contorno can be effective in managing his client's health care costs. While he's managed to keep benefits packages affordable for many of his clients, he also has in many cases been able to realize rate reductions for others. That's almost unheard of in today's market.

“I look at our block of business and my No. 1 goal is to be performing better than the national average,” Contorno says. “And our trend is that our increases have come down over the years. There's a spread between the industry and us, and we are outperforming the industry. That's a real indicator of my success. If I can get costs to just be going up with normal inflation or the consumer price index, then I'm so far ahead. Since the 1970s, health care has increased 1,400 percent. That's not sustainable.”

The approach has worked. Contorno's business has a slew of employers on its roster—everything from high-tech firms to NASCAR operations. While there's plenty of room to grow in North Carolina, Lake Norman is active in a couple dozen states.

“You know I'm a sort of serial entrepreneur,” Contorno says. “I'm always looking for growth and to challenge the status quo. We don't have definitive goals for growth yet but we've been showing double-digit growth since I moved down here.”