product spotlight | employee benefits From Transactional to Transformational

Benefits advisors can transform their practices and elevate their success by using these relationshipbuilding strategies with their clients.

By Drew Niziak

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Creating and executing benefits strategies can be challenging. Your clients place a tremendous amount of trust in you to understand the nuances of their business and to work with them to develop a custom set of solutions for their individual needs. And even when the solutions are finally in place, the work doesn’t stop there. It’s actually just getting started. With execution comes the opportunity to further guide and support clients in ways that can foster great results for them and their employees.

Here are a few tried and true ways to maximize the impact of your client-benefits strategies.

Education

If there is one constant in employee benefits, it is that change is inevitable. This means that clients often rely heavily on their advisors to help educate employees about their policies and insurance options. According to the 2017 Aflac WorkForces Report, 74 percent of employees admit there are at least some things they don’t understand about their overall policies.1 Advisors are well-positioned to serve as educators and help ensure both clients and their employees understand which policies may best fit their evolving needs.

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Clients often rely heavily on their advisors to help educate employees about their policies and insurance options.

Delivery

Oftentimes, the method and presentation can be more important than the details themselves. Sixty-seven percent of employees say reading about benefits is long, complicated or stressful.1 So, instead of only using long manuals or extremely detailed benefits guides, advisors can supplement these with “bite-sized” pieces of information, such as brochures, fliers, short presentations or even online platforms, which are easier for clients and their employees to digest.

Continuous improvement

Clients rely on benefits advisors to evaluate their offerings and to make recommendations, trusting their advisors to take a long-term view of their benefits strategy. With ongoing dialogue between benefits advisors and clients, robust benefits packages and cost-savings opportunities can sometimes become more apparent, along with a deeper understanding of the benefits selected. Ultimately, staying present, proactively anticipating and addressing challenges, and having ongoing dialogue help keep clients focused on the big picture and enable them to view advisors as an indispensable and trusted extension of their business.

Technology

Online or digital options for benefits communications and administration are constantly advancing. Helping clients identify and leverage the right benefit technologies can help ease burdens for everyone involved. Employees can get access to benefits resources around the clock, receive enrollment-deadline reminders, get detailed benefits statements and see an easy, one-page view of all the benefits options and selections available. Clients or employers can also have access to ACA Compliance reporting and be less likely to miss reporting milestones, all with employee benefits aligned in one single system.

Clients can achieve great success when they leverage the expertise and resources benefits advisors provide. By applying the relationship-building fundamentals described above, advisors can elevate client relationships from transactional to transformational and see how these strong relationships contribute to a growing and thriving benefits practice.

1. 2017 Aflac WorkForces Report. The Report is the seventh annual study examining benefits trends and attitudes. The study’s surveys, conducted by Lightspeed GMI, captured responses from 1,800 benefits decision-makers and 5,000 employees across the United States in various industries. For more information, visit AflacWorkForcesReport.com.

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Drew Niziak has more than 25 years of experience in group sales in the insurance industry and is senior vice president of Broker Sales at Aflac. He is responsible for broker sales strategy, as well as for the development of national and regional marketing relationships with insurance brokers (Aflac herein means American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus and American Family Life Assurance Company of New York.)