Being an employee benefits broker is not for the faint of heart. The learning curve is constant and steep, you’re selling an invisible product that people need to have but don’t want to buy, and you get to take the heat for spiraling healthcare costs that you have little to no control over. The struggle is real.
The thing is, you’re doing something really important, and you can make a huge difference in the businesses (and the lives) of those you serve. Even better, you can do all of this this while turning promising prospects into carefully curated clients.
The key is in shifting your perspective:
- From product-centered to prospect-centered
- From telling your story to uncovering their story
- From selling a product to diagnosing a problem and providing a solution
It’s not about you
Because we’re talking about health insurance, let’s use a physician analogy. Your doctor is a health expert. She’s studied this stuff for years, has tons of knowledge and experience, and can fix a whole lot of problems. So you make an appointment. When the day finally arrives, you walk into her office and she immediately hands you a prescription for Tylenol with codeine.
Sure, maybe you’re suffering from stress-induced headaches, in which case this might be a pretty good fix. In fact, this prescription could potentially address quite a few aches and pains that have been bothering you. But what if your symptoms indicate something completely different? What if you’re actually suffering from fatigue and memory loss? Tylenol isn’t going to help you. And even though you might not retain this information thanks to your unreliable memory, we can probably all agree this isn’t the best solution.
Good doctors ask lots of questions. So do good salespeople.
In order to be able to use your expertise and do what you do best, you have to find out what your prospect’s needs are. And to do that, you need to have prospect-centered conversations that reveal the things they are struggling with. Once you have their ailments nailed down, you can offer ways to improve them.
Keep in mind that client needs will change over time. Just because you fixed something once doesn’t mean you’ve found the cure-all. Keep the prospect-centered mentality alive, even as you bring more great clients into the fold. Continue having the right conversations, asking the right questions and providing the right solutions.
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