Are you selling offensively or defensively?

For two decades, industry voluntary sales increased year after year. Growth was largely driven by new brokers entering the business, primarily from the ranks of the traditional medical and group brokers. But these new entrants did not begin growing their sales and increasing production each year as one might expect. Instead, they sold a few cases each year, with results changing only slightly from year-to-year.

Many of these brokers were selling defensively, offering voluntary products when a client asked about them, or when a competitor came on the scene. And apparently, the likelihood of these things happening was not changing much from year to year. Voluntary productivity increases were low, but the waves of new entrants kept industry sales growing.