For an insurance agent to be a Trusted Source that agent must be a cut above the norm.

If the agency’s business is simply to file paperwork that is requested by the client it is not a sales organization.  That is ok.  Even great for some agencies.  The good personal lines and business insurance producer takes the client’s best interest as his own.  Any and all recommendations must be based on meeting the true risk assessment needs of the client.  This is not easy.  It is a lot more work that just taking orders.  The client cannot know everything about what his or her situation demands relative to insurance needs.

How can they even be aware of what coverages are available?  Only if their professional agent makes them aware.  Unless a particular coverage is mandated by statute it may never be on the radar for many people.

In my discussions with agents I have heard it said that two important yet mostly ignored personal lines are disability insurance and long term care coverage.  Both of these, based on age at purchase and other factors, can be quite expensive.  But if the agent has the trust of the client at least the client will consider the coverage and be aware.  And the sooner the better.  My belief is the most valuable coverage available for business and family is LegalShield.  And it is the most affordable coverage available.  The fact is that use of the membership often pays for itself.  And the more one uses their membership the more value they receive.

Personal lines are complicated enough but when it comes to business insurance guidance the complexities grow exponentially.

All businesses have multiple complications and risk factors.  Some businesses are more complicated than others.  Farming for example is an endeavor with many government agencies regulating myriad aspects of the work.  To know how to mitigate some of the risks in farming with insurance products is not for the faint of heart.

There is one company’s products that can help tame some of these complexities. LegalShield Family and Business memberships can be applied in so many situations that it is impossible to list them.  The concept, unlimited access to expert legal help, is simple but the application is often astounding.  Money and time saved, trouble averted, opportunity realized, issues prevented, peace of mind are all results of easy, affordable access to experts in all twenty six areas of law.

The Business Owners Legal Solutions Plan from LegalShield can and does provide assistance for the owner and the agent.  How?  An attorney expert in business law can illuminate insurance needs without having any personal stake in the purchase of policies.  So if and when an agent recommends increasing coverage based on their analysis of the business’s needs that need should be verifiable.  If my agent tells me I need a larger umbrella to protect the business it can be discussed with the attorney.

Every business has people who also have myriad issues that range from the trivial to the traumatic.  The entire spectrum of worker from president to entry level often have family issues that would be best dealt with the help of an attorney.  Decision Analyst just did a study for LegalShield.  Families often go it alone because of cost issues.  It need not be.

I was having coffee the other day with a friend whose job is in human resources.

We were discussing how Trusted Source Marketing might affect those who work in human resources.    As we discussed the various aspects of Trusted Source Marketing it became apparent that those companies who adopted Trusted Source Marketing and their HR departments could improve the value of the company’s benefit program.

He told me that when times are good HR departments are more highly valued than when times are bad.  Periods of high unemployment can actually get to the HR department before the rank and file.

As we have discussed before, the use of Trusted Source Marketing  can make benefit packages more effective.  A good benefit package helps keep good people on the payroll. The human resource professional who makes it his or her business to help employees get the greatest advantage of their benefit program brings great advantage to the employer.

I think it obvious that this will make the human resource professional more valuable too.   A well considered, well executed, and regular use of Trusted Source Marketing techniques will enhance and improve management’s appreciation of HR while also bringing value to the employer and employees.

We also discussed the fact that companies are different.   The management philosophy relative to benefits can vary immensely.  From no benefits at all because they are too much trouble to a plethora of disjointed benefits to a well considered and disseminated program of thoughtful benefits chosen for their positive effect on employee’s lives and their family’s lives.

Trusted Source Marketing can be a tool that HR makes the latter type company more common.

But how will this happen?  Management must come to the conclusion that people want good benefits. They even expect them.  The company that takes responsibility to only bring the best benefits and then institutes a continuing education/information programs to encourage participation and use of the benefits will itself gain prestige, improve morale, illustrate real caring, and thereby keep their employees on the job and happier.

Gauge how much the process can be worth by those criterion.  Human Resources can help their colleagues and their companies with a trusted sources marketing plan.

As is often the case, one of Seth Godin’s blogs of the day has me thinking about my own notions of Employee Benefit marketing.  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Seth talks about two aspects of a sales transaction.  Is the item to be bought or sold.

The basic premise of Trusted Source Marketing is the employer or other Trusted Source endeavors to create access to products and services of good value to their employees or other constituency.  Not with the idea of “selling” something or even having someone “buy” but with the intent to bring value.  The intent to assure the audience that someone who is trusted has done the work necessary to assure the quality of the company, the service, or the product so that we can buy with confidence.

This can extend to the selling of these services too.  Once the “due diligence” is accomplished employees can then engage the sales agent with the confidence that they can explore the options that best suit their individual situation without worry.  No worries that they will be encouraged to waste their money.  No worries that the product or the company can’t really be trusted.

Yes buying and selling may be the bottom line but the transactions can be done with confidence if the Trusted Source does what is necessary to be trustworthy.  And once a product or service is made available it is necessary to continue to carry the message of its availability and its use by others to encourage those who might need it to get it.

During the course of my work I have the opportunity to talk to many people. I talk to CEOs, presidents, general managers, HR directors, and many other people who hold responsible positions in their companies.

All of these people know what they are doing. Many of them are very good at what they do. Their companies make money. The employees of these companies are satisfied with the way their companies treat them.   Their customers continue to do business with them and many of these companies continue to grow.

So when someone comes along and suggests that they change something about how they do business that person wants to upset the status quo. This is not an easy thing to convince successful people to do.   If it is not broken why fix it? This is a very common attitude in business.  I agree that change for the sake of change is not worthwhile. So the question is, will the effort required to institute Trusted Source Marketing be a worthwhile change?

Since I am a proponent of this change everyone will rightly guess my answer.  So let me list some of the advantages that come from this change.

• reduced expenses related to too many information meetings
• improved understanding of benefits increases use and appreciation
• increased participation in voluntary benefits helps retain employees
• encouraging feedback, including complaints, exposes the good and the bad
• timely responses to complaints indicates respect and increases morale
• more communication between employees and employers is a good thing

There are many more advantages that accrue to everyone involved.  What do you think?

Why do companies offer benefits?  To win.  Recruiting and retention of top of the line people requires a great benefit package.  Even recruiting good employees who will show up and do the work that needs to be done requires a good benefit package.

When the employer makes the decision to become a Trusted Source that decision requires an attitude change.  Not only are we as a company going to offer the best employee benefits available in today’s market, we are going to take the time to make sure that our employees get the information they need to make informed decisions.  This attitude creates a lot of positive effects that can be difficult to measure.  But there are some savings that can be immediately quantified.  Fewer meetings mean lower costs to deliver information better delivered without a meeting.

When an insurance company makes the decision to work in concert with the Trusted Source, spelled employer, the relationship changes.  It implies a cooperation to do everything possible to provide to employees, the ultimate consumers, the information they need in a manner that is effective.  This can include access to real people to answer their specific questions.  It doesn’t even have to be 24/7 live access.  Email can suffice in some cases.  The questions must be answered in a timely manner and if a follow up telephone call is warranted, it must happen. Of course real-time online chat is becoming more and more common.  And it is a great tool.

Employees win with trusted source marketing  because they get what they need at lower cost. Having benefits that truly improve the quality of life is a win. The broader and deeper the benefit package is the better. As long as I am able to define what I want and am able to get the answers to questions I have, as an employee I win.  As an employee I have to take responsibility to understand what is available, how it might affect my life and my family’s life, and how I want to spend my money.

To reiterate: when the employer takes responsibility to bring effective low cost solutions to their employees and companies providing these benefits take responsibility to make it easier for employees to understand those benefits and responsible employees take the time and effort required to make good decisions everyone wins. I

I find myself rereading to Al Pittampalli’s  book Read This before Our Next Meeting.  Al  really defines many of the reasons why meetings waste so much time. There are alternatives to benefit meetings.

There are many insurance companies that are developing web-based solutions to the problem of enrollment meetings. Many companies that have developed web-based enrollment, web-based information sources, and becoming more common is the web-based live chat. These technologies are all important aspects of systems that will be and must be used for Trusted Source Marketing.

Remembering that there are several reasons for instituting Trusted Source Marketing let’s review number 1.   The most important reason is the simplest. Many employees are not taking advantage of many benefits because they don’t understand them.   When employees don’t take advantage of their benefits retention is not enhanced by offering them.  When good benefits are offered, understood, and the employee enrolls that benefit becomes another reason the good employee stays with the company.

But this might not be the reason that companies adopt Trusted Source Marketing.  The inefficiency and ineffectiveness of enrollment meetings held at most companies  might not be enough reason to try something else.  However these meetings used to transmit information about benefits are a huge waste of time.   Time wasted in business equals wasted money.  It turns out that it can be a lot of money.

In the company has 100 employees that cost $50 per hour a 1 hour benefit meeting cost more than $5000.   Do the math.   A large company with 10,000 employees will spend half million dollars.  Of course this does not compute the lost production.  It does not compute the lost momentum.  It just begins to tell how expensive these meetings are.

So if adopting Trusted Source Marketing can improve retention of good employees and save companies large and small lots of money why wouldn’t everyone do it?

I believe every good company will eventually adopt Trusted Source Marketing.

When I began writing this blog on Trusted Source Marketing there were large gaps in my understanding of how we might best use technology to improve how companies communicate to their employees about their benefits.  There still are gaps but they are shrinking.

The truth is that there are many companies who have been working on the technical side of the issue.  We can communicate with everyone in any organization.  With ever improving software we can  focus on individual’s needs even if that individual is one of thousands of employees.  The technical side of the question will be handled by others.  But it is not the whole answer to better Employee Benefit understanding and participation.

Trusted Source Marketing relies on technology to make it possible.  No doubt.  But the essential component is the desire on the part of companies to actually change the dynamic.  Owners, CEOs, Presidents etc. must decide that they want to take an active role in assuring that their employees have access to and understanding of the myriad benefits available.  Then they need to engage in the process.

We can save large employers millions of dollars and simultaneously improve both the understanding covered employees have about their benefits and increase their participation in them.  The saving will occur because we won’t hold ineffective information meetings that gather large groups of people together so everyone there and be confused.  The net result will be a stimulation of employees to enroll in every program that offers advantages they need.  And regular communication about the products and their uses stimulates member usage.

Employee Benefits have been marketed, they have been sold, they cover millions of people.  Why change anything?

From the Employee’s point of view it may well be that too few understand too little about their benefit plan.

From the Employer’s point of view it can vary from, the current method costs too much to it is ineffective.

Agents are interested because we can do a better job for our clients.  But this isn’t enough.  It also has to help generate greater revenue while it is reducing costs to client companies and improving understanding and participation among the employees.

The technology is here and the need for improvement is real.

Trusted Source Marketing is a change in the way companies work with their insurance companies.  It is a different way of relating to the employees about benefits.  It is acknowledging the responsibility to communicate about issues that directly affect the families of those employees.  Employee benefit effects go well beyond their influence to attract and retain good employees.

When a company adopts Trusted Source Status it considers the whole package. Everyone is affected by the change?  .  So that means there is a lot of cheese being moved.

Is it worth it?  Again I ask, why offer employee benefits?  You say, “to attract and retain good employees.”  The employee asks, “Why should I take advantage of the benefits?”  Currently their answer might be, “I don’t because I don’t understand them.”

If the company owner can improve employee understanding and therefore participation while simultaneously reducing the costs associated with the effort there are two clear winners from the change.  Please move our cheese.

The benefit advisor (insurance agent) is faced with a very different way of doing business. And since different is complicated or difficult (or just different) then they may balk at taking initiative to start moving everyone’s cheese, including their own.  But there is an upside for everyone.  Encouraging, even help implementing Trusted Source Marketing will improve sales and retention.

Let’s move some cheese.

Some of the Trusted Source Marketing™ concept goes back to my discussions with an owner of a large Employee Benefit provider.  From my view his company holds a Trusted Source position with hundreds his client companies.  They depend on his company to only bring them useful, effective solutions to issues that the company and their employees face.  This is the same situation that company owners have with their employees.  He doesn’t see it this way.  Great salesmen establish themselves with great companies and operate in an environment of trust.  This is not the norm.  But if anyone in sales will adopt the attitude of being a Trusted Source and always and only do what is best for their clients, this is the beginning of great.

In the marketing of Employee Benefits one of the big issues for some years has been increased costs in the primary benefit at every company, health insurance.  The whole process has been reduced to delivering the bad news about the next rate increase.  There have been solutions proposed, see Obama Care, but how this will all play out in the market is anything but clear.

Trusted Source Marketing™ focuses on existing trust based relationships and is ideal for introducing new products, explaining existing ones and integrating the relationship between vendor, company ownership and the employee who is the consumer of the benefits.

Company owners don’t like delivering bad news to their employees any more than do the health insurance providers.  What to do?  Be trustworthy.  Honestly discussing what is happening is a beginning. Investigating and considering alternatives and inviting feedback is also important.  But is there a mechanism in a larger company for this to occur?  I suppose there are companies that are effectively communicating to the rank and file about what is happening.  Hopefully those channels feed information and ideas back and forth.

The employer/employee relationship always has an inherent trust component.  When the employer takes it up a notch and decides (with the help of a trusted advisor) to take even more responsibility to assure that their employees understand the values presented in the benefit package, Trusted Source Marketing™ begins.

At the beginning of a Trusted Source approach to employee benefits the company has to decide to be open about the whole process.  And then to tell their employees exactly what is being attempted.

And that is trying to influence the employee benefit process to everyone’s best advantage. Everyone has things to gain and to lose.  Open, honest, regular communication combined with choices can lead to a happier, better informed workforce with coverages that appeal to each individual.