To grow your brokerage faster, it is essential to better equip your existing sales team.
Increasing pure organic growth is at the top of almost every brokerage’s priority list as growth provides the revenue to solve most challenges within a brokerage.
Growth enables a brokerage to hire top talent, promote internal stars, provide pay raises, and add capabilities and resources to stay competitive.
However, organic growth is not without its challenges.
Finding talented salespeople to fuel growth has been a decades-old challenge.
The best salespeople are usually locked into their books of business at their current brokerage.
Meanwhile, training new talent is a challenge that often ends up taking too long or is flat out unsuccessful due to either the candidates, the complexity of the sale, or the infrastructure of the training and support system.
Acquisitions (many debate whether this counts as organic growth) and cross selling can help with growth, while asking account executives to help bring in new business helps in certain organizations and causes challenges in others.
Help Your Current Sales Team Close 20%+ More New Business
While it makes sense to look at every opportunity, leveraging more growth out of existing sales teams is something every brokerage should do today.
Below are five ways to help your current sales team to close 20%+ more new business. Plus, a tip on how to enhance your current probing techniques.
- Ask – Don’t Tell
- Use a Framework
- Take a Deeper Dive
- Show Employers Something Different
- Provide Financial Confidence
- Show Prospects That You’ll Respect Their Time
Ask – Don’t Tell
Every salesperson knows that good selling begins with asking questions, not highlighting your finest attributes, as tempting as that may seem. Genuinely caring about what services an employer currently values and what their vision of success looks like over the next 12-24 months is a great first step.
In my decades of experience as a benefits broker, I’ve found the more structure you can put around your questions the higher quantity and quality information you will receive.
For example, you probably ask employers, “what’s working well” and, “what are some things you would ideally like to see change?” During your next meeting, add in specific places where you want their mind to go.
For example, you could say, “what’s working well in the area of strategic planning.” Or, “what are some things you would like to see changed in financial forecasting?” This little tweak can be a game changer.
Below is a list of qualifiers you can add to your standard questions:
- Strategic Planning
- Financial Forecasting
- Managing Costs
- Administrative Burdens
- Day to day support
- Employee Engagement
- Compliance, Etc.
Structure makes it easier for the prospect to tell you exactly what they value. It also makes it gives you a clear path to extend the conversation to spend more time on what matters most to your prospect. I have had meetings last more than an hour – simply because I kept nodding and asked, “what else” a half dozen times.
Use a Framework
Once it’s your time to share, start by providing a simple framework that describes and differentiates what you have to offer. By setting expectations, the prospect will naturally lean in to learn more.
Think about a business process or approach you offer that can appeal to prospects on a universal level. Perhaps you can show how your hiring, training, and account management processes leads to more informed consultants, exceptional consistency and lower turnover. With that framework, it will be easier for them to see how this translates into better long term results to your clients.
Here is an example of a successful framework
When framing the benefits of the Vertical Fox Dynamic Modeling Platform, we start by stating the big picture.
Better data leads to better analysis and collaboration … which, delivers better results than one could achieve from static PDFs.
Next, we set up the framework and differentiation.
- By capturing all plan, cost, demographic and financial data in one place, you can provide a complete view of an employer’s programs.
- Leveraging real-time tools and data, you can sort, analyze and model different assumptions collaboratively with employers to uncover trends and strategic opportunities.
- Once you are clear on what’s possible and what an employer’s ideal result is, you can leverage our underwriting and contributions engines to sensitivity test and negotiate more favorable outcomes.
The framework works because it’s clear that what we are offering is a better process than what the employer currently receives. We are not disparaging anything the employer’s current advisor provides. Rather, we’re simply showing an alternative process and structure that provides a superior outcome.
Take a Deeper Dive
The first question people ask themselves in any situation is, “how will this impact me?” It’s human nature to be more engaged when a conversation is specific to your situation and the impact to you, your career, and your personal life are clear.
To increase your level of success and show your commitment to add value, ask to dig into their data (in a de-identified format). Offer to do a little work and come back with specific observations and discussion points that tie into the vision of success they already shared with you above.
Armed with their plan, demographic, cost, and financial data, analyze their information to see if you spot:
- Gaps in coverage.
- Disconnects between their vision and their current state (do their benefits support their stated corporate and philosophical goals?).
- Opportunities for financial improvement.
- Places to create better employee engagement.
- Tie ins between their population and the types of benefits others with similar populations may offer.
Using the Vertical Fox platform, once a prospect’s data is in the system, a consultant can quickly identify gaps in areas like LTD coverage, anomalies in contributions, Medicare eligible employees enrolled on the active health plan, employees making surprising health care decisions, turnover statistics, new hire trends, the fairness of the past year’s renewal, and much more.
The end goal should be to deliver a presentation that generates a WOW response. When our sales team presents Vertical Fox to employers, we regularly hear comments like, “I learned more from you today than I learned from my current broker all year” or “I don’t get or haven’t seen anything like this before”
Show Employers Something Different
Coming up with great observations is important … but, so is packaging the information in a way that jumps out at an employer and differentiates you from other brokers.
Think about creating a branded analysis package that looks and feels high caliber. Highlight to your prospect that this is not a flashy one time effort to simply win their business but a representation of the quality of work that you will regularly produce.
Building out a customized analytical package that is thorough, insightful, and sustainable over time will differentiate you from what employers receive today.
A customized analytical package also provides your champion at the prospect with something tangible when they recommend the move to your firm.
Brokers utilizing Vertical Fox consistently stand out in the crowd. The platform easily shows prospects all of their current and historical data — leveraged in a real time dashboard with sorts, engines, and analytical tools that provide value for the lifetime of the client relationship.
The interface instantly impresses employers as something incredibly powerful and collaborative while delivering a premium feel compared to what they receive from their current advisor.
Provide Financial Confidence
Even if you spend time pointing out cost control opportunities in the deeper dive stage, providing financial confidence is critical to either secure the gains you have made or help tip the prospect in your favor for good.
It’s almost impossible for an employer to tell if they are receiving good consulting because there is little that is tangible. Employers see marketing results, may have a long relationship with a carrier that they think is favorable, or maybe reviewed an underwriting in a spreadsheet.
When we speak with employers, few, if any, would say they feel confident they are receiving a good deal. As important as cost is, it’s surprising there has been less focus and transparency in this area.
Even though it’s one of a company’s largest expenses, most financial executives don’t have a sense for whether they are receiving a good financial deal.
Here are 3 ways to show prospects how you will provide them with financial confidence.
1. Use a Financial Education System
Take the time to build a financial education system that provides transparency and educates your prospect on how all the financial pieces come together and how you pull each one apart when negotiating on their behalf.
2. Demonstrate the Details
Show them in detail how you account for variability, identify key assumptions you need to consider to weigh the pros and cons of alternate funding arrangements, help provide periodic financial forecasting and explain how you leverage key data variables to help drive the financial negotiation in their favor.
3. Improve Your Transparency and Collaboration
Demystify the renewal process and talk about how you will work collaboratively with them to generate the best possible financial results.
At Vertical Fox, we leverage claims and underwriting dashboards to provide live modeling tools to forecast costs, analyze renewal components, vet various funding arrangements and sensitivity test all of our assumptions.
Since the process is totally transparent the data is always accessible to clients, the platform’s collaborative tools can be regularly used in meetings. This helps to educate and instill confidence that the employer is benefitting from the broker’s deep technical knowledge.
Show Prospects That You’ll Respect Their Time
Once you have shown your prospect that you approach things differently and will leverage their data to drive superior results, give them a bonus they didn’t expect — more time.
As much as brokers want to be more efficient, clients don’t enjoy sitting through more meetings than necessary. This is especially true when HR needs to pull in the C-suite for strategic, forecasting, or renewal discussions. Getting everyone back in the room a second or third time is often a heavy lift.
Show your prospect that rather than just showing up that you will work to anticipate questions and will proactively prepare to minimize dragging their team into extra meetings.
Areas that can slow progress down include understanding who is covered in which plans, how financial variability might impact future costs or projections, or evaluating alternative contribution scenarios during renewal season.
Showing you put some forethought into streamlining areas that often turn into log jams, will help both you and your prospect.
Brokers who leverage Vertical Fox can analyze population or demographic questions in real-time, modify forecasts, and model contributions with HR and the C-suite right in the room.
The ability to answer questions and keep the ball moving saves everyone time and shows the prospect how much you value and respect their time.
Increase Your Closing Ratios by 20% or More
With a little planning and extra effort you can set yourself apart and increase closing ratio’s 20% or more by giving your current salesforce the tools they need to be more successful.
Embracing technology on your entire book can increase growth even further. A recent MIT study showed companies leveraging technology as a differentiator grew 30% faster than their competitors.
Vertical Fox helps you leverage real-time data to provide better advice, drive better collaboration, and get better results for your clients and your business.
To learn more about how we can help you grow faster with your existing sales team, book a meeting or schedule a personalized demo today.
