Tips to stand out as a strategic advisor to clients
Offering proactive, year-round, tailored guidance may help brokers and consultants earn their clients’ trust and drive business.
Employers have long leaned on brokers and consultants for guidance in navigating the employee benefits space. But this guidance shouldn’t be limited to specific points of time, such as when a client is navigating the request for proposal (RFP) process and switching carriers, or when a client is in the midst of open enrollment or having difficulty understanding how a certain regulation may impact them and their employees.
Proactive guidance
Anticipating a client’s challenges and opportunities before they become urgent can set top-notch brokers and consultants apart from others.
Outside of renewal or open enrollment season, stay in touch with the client to keep tabs on benefit utilization and cost trends. Regular monthly check-ins, for example, can surface issues regarding how benefit plans are performing and whether employee needs are changing.
If a client expresses a growing need to retain young talent, then perhaps suggest adding benefits that are popular with that demographic, such as maternity benefits, behavioral health solutions and digital-first or consumer-driven health plans. If low utilization stems from employees not understanding benefit options, it may be beneficial to support HR teams not only with specific educational materials that the carrier may provide but also ideas to tweak their communications and engagement strategy. If the client is chiefly focused on rising costs, encouraging preventive care through adjustments to plan offerings could be the solution.
Whatever the focus, it’s important to keep the client’s business objectives top of mind and find opportunities to bring them recommendations before they come asking. This can help earn a client’s trust and reinforce the value you deliver as their chosen broker or consultant.
Data-driven insights
Foundational to providing that proactive guidance is that it is rooted in data-driven insights. Without data to back up a recommendation, a broker or consultant may run the risk of losing credibility with a client.
That’s why working in tandem with the client and their carrier and any other vendors is critical to understanding their plan performance and identifying opportunities to close gaps, reduce costs or drive more effective utilization.
For example, low preventive care utilization could signal a need for employee communications that underscore the importance of primary care provider (PCP) relationships, or a plan design that requires care to be coordinated by a PCP. Or perhaps adding or encouraging participation in an incentive-based wellness program could help drive behavior changes. Another example that many employers are grappling with today may have to do with fast-rising specialty drug costs, which could be addressed with specific clinical programs or new formulary approaches.
When brokers can connect the dots between data and a specific achievable solution, thereby guiding the client toward solving a problem, their value is clear.
Collaborative relationships
Key to any relationship though is a push and pull. Brokers and consultants may prefer to work with certain carriers or benefit vendors, and some clients may be more demanding than others, but approaching every interaction with a spirit of collaboration is essential.
It’s about listening to the needs of clients, pairing that with the knowledge you have of the market and then working with different carriers and vendors to understand the value they can deliver.
Oftentimes, brokers, consultants and carriers are collaborating behind the scenes to find solutions to their mutual clients’ problems, and that’s where some of the most creative and innovative recommendations tend to come about. Because when all parties align themselves around the single goal of client satisfaction, that can be the key to winning business and retaining clients.
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