Winning Employer Confidence - Part 2: Employer Apprehension

March 10, 2023

By: Erick Kuhni

erick@benefitsculptor.com

Every broker wants to close more business, but getting employers to bite on is difficult. Why is that? Let’s look at it from the employer’s perspective.

Today most small businesses with more than a few employees already have a benefits plan in place, and if you were to ask them about, it’s not their favorite part of running their business. Employers generally have three main stumbling blocks that prevent them from taking real action by working with you:

1. Part1 Confusion – They are confused by the what, when, why, and when of your solutions (If you missed part 1, you can find it here)
   

2. Part2 Apprehension – They are afraid of how the employees will react to benefit decisions

3. Part3 Termination – They most likely have a broker already, and hiring you means that they have an uncomfortable confrontation head

Let’s talk briefly about these issues and what you can do about it

Part 02 Apprehension:

What is the number one concern of employers? It isn’t the rising cost of health care, or quality of care. Those things matter, but that’s not what is on employers minds. The number one concern that employers have is finding themselves in a position where they are unable to run their business.

When it comes to their employee benefits offering, the top concern in the employers mind is “how will my employees react to this years renewal”. How you talk about employee benefits, particularly health insurance, has a huge effect on how the employer perceives us. When we show up to prospective clients and say things like “we have an aggressive strategy to tackle the high-cost of health care” or “we are on a mission to disrupt the health care market”, what the employer hears from these messages is, “this broker want’s to make big changes, and my employees don’t like change”. Under pinning this thought in the employers mind is the larger question of whether they would lose employees by hiring you. The way you talk about healthcare and strategy is everything when it comes to winning employer confidence!

Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t recommend change or your innovative solutions, but you have to position it in a way that will make employers and their employees comfortable. You do that by focusing on what’s in it for them. Whatever your recommendation is, you want assure prospective clients that your agency is employee-focused.

For example, rather than talking about how you intend to disrupt health care, you can say something like this, “Our agency has come up with an innovative solution that we’re excited to share with you. We designed our benefit strategy by focusing on ways to improve the employee experience, and from there we were able to identify cost-saving efficiencies that will enable you to manage your budgets and offer a strong contribution”.

When it comes to winning employer confidence, it's all about alignment. By aligning your "why" with the employer's "why", ie, the employee experience, you can show them that you are focused on helping maintain labor competitiveness. You may still pitch your solutions, but by framing your conversation around the employers concerns you can make a big difference in how the employer perceives you.

Part 1 of this series covered employer confusion, and in part 2, we discussed employer apprehension. In the next and final part of this series, we'll dive into the last stumbling block, their current broker! Stay tuned to learn more about how you can overcome this obstacle and close more business.