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.

For most groups, telehealth is no longer an early adopter product. Continue using telehealth to prospect, but shift your focus…

TIP #3: Selling to a growth phase group

Last month, I spoke with a 600-store women's retailer about their benefits. They've drastically raised their out of pocket costs on their medical plans, and are getting big-time push-back from the employees. Further, during discovery we learned they have 3,500 part-time employees who don't get any benefits.

We introduced the idea of telehealth, which they had not heard of. But we didn't leave it there. We knew the incumbent broker would immediately tell the client they had a solution. We were at risk. Today, introducing the idea alone isn't enough. We needed to bring more expertise.

Instead, we introduced the idea of a suite of "consumerism tools," including:

• the next-generation of telehealth: being able to save specialist visits by emailing specialists

• advocacy services to help employees struggling with navigating the complexity (and out-of-network medical bills) of those higher-deductible plans

• Prescription savings options and a transparency tool to enlighten employees needing Rx options

Because we're now in the growth phase, the differentiator is more than just telehealth – it requires adding more value with other helpful non-insurance services. Also, it's having expertise around these services. We told the client that other brokers (or their medical carrier) will tell them they can get them a lower rate on telehealth, but their usage will be many times less. To make sure we set the bar high enough that most others won't be able to climb over, we ended with a solid case study.  

TIP #4: Change your focus

In the early adopter phase, you could earn significant business by simply being the first to mention a new idea. In the growth phase, your success rate will shrink unless you change your focus:

• Expertise: Explain that you will help them successfully launch the new strategy, and therefore get better results and ROI. 

• Expanded products: Leverage that product story to introduce other early adopter products, or different bundles of services that solve other issues.

• Address competitors: I don't believe in directly putting down competitors. But at this phase (and as we grow to the maturity phase) you should define for the prospect why your solution is better than "the market."