How to Shift Your Focus to Cover “the 80%”

If you could win the lottery 80% of the time by buying your ticket at a gas station or only 20% of the time by buying your ticket at a convenience store, you would buy from the gas station! If this is such an easy answer, then why are employee benefit agents only focusing on 20% of human resources activities?

When selling employee benefits, the customer influencer is usually the head of HR. Nowadays, that person is spending 80% of their time on compliance and 20% on benefits. If you are not presenting compliance solutions, your client only values your agency’s worth at 20%. Helping your client with compliance will entrench you deeper. Why don’t agents do it? Because they do not see the immediate gratification of increased commissions. When an agent can help solve issues on the 80% side, the agent becomes more valuable and can solidify a longer relationship. Increased customer retention will help to reduce the amount of time and money spent finding customers. As an extra bonus, helping tackle the 80% side could increase a group’s receptiveness to adding additional lines of benefits, which will help drive higher commissions.

How can you easily address the 80%?

Many of the issues that HR spends 80% of the time on are onboarding tasks like new hire packet prep, orientation, data entry, filing. A solid benefit administration system will have employee onboarding features that many of the company’s new hire documents, confidentiality agreements, and other forms required can be uploaded and turned into electronic forms that can be signed online by employees and tracked by HR. Take for instance a non-compete document. The form would be uploaded into the ben admin system and assigned to the applicable classes of users – let’s say Management. When a new manager is hired, HR would put basic info (name, dob, ss#, email) into the ben admin system. HR sends a link to NH where they would fill in all demographics, select benefits, and sign off on all paperwork including the non-compete form. When done, HR gets a notification. HR can then track forms that are not completed and send reminders for those to complete.

How do you become a benefit admin system expert? 

You don’t have to! Your role is to let your client know you have solutions to 80% of their problems. GRA’s 1Enroll service will do the rest. Contact us today to learn more or to get started.