Now that we're into a new year, it's a season when many employee benefit consultants turn their sights to earning new clients. Do you still chase new business? Simply getting your foot in the door can be the ticket to earning a group's business, even if they already have a broker. The challenge becomes: How do you get them to open the door?

Here's an idea! For eight years, I've worked alongside brokers selling telehealth, advocacy and other non-insurance benefits. Bundles of these services are an appealing strategy to prospective groups around the country. If you approach it correctly, they can open doors and set you apart from other brokers. 

TIP #1: Watch your approach

You'll need to change your approach based on where you are in the product cycle. When trying to get your foot in the door, you want an idea that's innovative enough that someone will want to talk with you to learn about it, but not so early in the innovation cycle that most people won't actually bite.

I've witnessed firsthand the growth of the telehealth industry as it's shifted from the "early adopter" phase to the "growth" phase, and expect we'll soon be in the "maturity" phase. Your prospecting approach doesn't need to be complicated, time-consuming or fancy. But what worked before won't work as well now.

TIP #2: Selling to an early adopter phase group

Five years ago, a broker friend was on a push to sell new businesses. He was opening a new office in a new city and was prospecting groups of 250 to 2,500 lives. Most groups would take 18 months to earn a broker of record (BOR) on medical insurance. So when prospecting, he spoke about two things: how awesome his team was at analyzing self-funded risk, and how they worked harder to find innovative cost-containment solutions like telehealth. Many times, he got his foot in the door with a sale long before he earned the full BOR. It worked because most incumbent brokers weren't telling their clients about telehealth. And yet its value was undeniably self-evident, so over the next few years, my friend sold many groups and thousands of lives.