Employee Benefit marketing is using methods developed before the internet was born. Meetings used to pass on information better disseminated by other means are a waste of time and money. There is a better way.
Author Archives: Tim
Trusted Source Marketing is Enhancing Influence in Existing Relationships
Featured
Unlike Permission Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing, Business Marketing, Interactive Marketing and a host of others, Trusted Source Marketing is not about searching for new customers.
Those influenced to buy beneficial programs via payroll deduction are not customers. They are our employees. First and foremost our influence is used with their advantage in mind. We recognize our place and our reasons for following this course of action. When our employees take advantage of the benefits we offer in larger numbers that is good for the company. Some programs offer greater advantage to the company than others but they all are good for the company if they are good for the employees. If they are not good for the employees, we will soon know if we encourage dialogue.
Dialogue is another key to Trusted Source Marketing done well.
At its core the Trusted Source Marketing concept is about influencing those who trust us to consider and decide about products and services usually offered as employee benefits. Employers, large and small, will want to be considered Trusted Sources because there are compelling reasons to become a Trusted Source.
By encouraging greater understanding of the benefits offered there is increased participation. By doing it in ways that allow people to make decisions in their own time without coercion respect is shown. Too often companies have added a benefit without any mechanism for disseminating information or offering easy access to it. This does little good.
Current systems are expensive and inefficient. More importantly, they don’t work very well. Too many good benefits are ignored because they are not effectively explained. It is not about promotion or bells and whistles. It is about taking the responsibility to bring good ideas to the people who trust us. To actually take the time to create a well balanced benefit program and explain why we have decided to offer each and every benefit.
The process at its best provides information about the advantages and disadvantages of any program offered.
Employee Benefit agents can use Trusted Source Marketing to increase sales in existing client companies. In fact, any agent who does not go to their existing client base first does not understand the concept. Become a Trusted Source. Go to your clients and explain why it is important to rethink their benefit programs and why they offer them in the first place. They should be quick to see how improving delivery while reducing their costs makes sense.
Transportation Industry Trusted Sources
A great example of a Trusted Source is a company who acts as a general contractor between client companies and Independent Contractors. Drivers, labor, nurses, IT professionals, accountants, and a host of other occupations have a growing cadre of ICs.
This has become much more common in the last several years particularly in the transportation business. Owner operators as they are sometimes called can work local areas or long haul over the road as they wish. The client companies gain too.
The drivers get access to different insurance products that are required by shippers and receivers like Occupational Accident Insurance. Other coverages such as Life Insurance, Health Insurance Programs, Legal Services, Accounting Services, Workers Compensation Insurance, access to Truck Leasing Programs and others are also made available with this win win win arrangement.
Trucking companies or motor carriers win because they can get all the drivers they need quickly. The administrative aspect of hiring a driver is handled by the GC and this further reduces exposure to the carrier for the owner operators. This works without their own personnel department doing all of the required background checks, insurance checks and the like. They often pay flat rates and certainly know what the costs are going to be up front. A firewall is created between the motor carrier or courier company and the ICs because the ICs work for the General Contractor by contract.
The truckers win too. Most of the coverages available through quality firms are going to be discounted so they get the coverages they want and need at reduced rates. More importantly they have help getting loads and this increases revenue, reduces costs and downtime. The trucker support company becomes a Trusted Source for coverages needed by the drivers. The drivers depend on the company to bring necessary and useful products to them at the best possible pricing.
The “General Contractor” in this arrangement earns their pay by doing everything the trucking companies and drivers don’t like doing. Things like dealing with government agencies who regularly try to reclassify workers and insurance companies who are trying to charge for ICs as if they are employees. They are also responsible to the drivers to investigate the companies whose benefits they offer. The savings generated for both “clients” in this equation is where there is a profit. And everyone wins.
Though there are many trucking operations who currently employ tractor drivers and couriers it is increasingly risky to for these companies to employ drivers and use owner operators. You can contact this blogger for recommendations for both trucking support and or courier supply companies.
Employee Benefits, where do they come from?
Employee Benefits is a simple term. Everyone knows what it means to them. That’s right. Depending on who you are, what your position is, where you work, if you have family, and how old you are your attitude and understanding of Employee Benefits is different.
Some of us think that the only employee benefit we need is a paycheck. Give us our money and let us decide what we want to do with it. Many of us gripe about state and federal income taxes, social security deductions (another tax), local employment taxes, and every other deduction that comes out of our pay.
There are only a few deductions that we actually have much to say about. Not the taxes. They are coming out at a rate set by someone else. Some of us have some control about how much of our pay will be deferred to fund our own retirement beyond Social Security.
The only deductions that are within our own purview are the ones we allow to fund the various voluntary benefits available where we work. This is limited by what is offered where we work. Some companies will consider offering another benefit if enough of the employees request it. But generally the only benefits offered are ones brought to the company by outside sources. Few companies hunt for benefits.
If a company is large enough there will be insurance brokers soliciting it for the opportunity to present options to the employees. Even in this scenario, it is not the employee who creates the need. It is an outside agency appealing to the boss for access. One business owner once said to me that he only offers health insurance because he must. If he didn’t his people would leave for a competitor who does. He won’t allow other product benefits because he doesn’t run a business so his employees can get sold something by someone else.
This is part of the current picture. However, there are companies who want to do everything that they can reasonably do for their employees. These companies recognize that their people are the reason the company can function. They deal with the reality that their number one most important job is to find great people and keep them.
The last group of employers would be, in fact are, Trusted Sources. These are the companies to locate and work with. How do you find them? Talk to people. Those who are happy where they work could be your greatest referral.
Trusted Source Marketing™, where does it belong?
I was just talking to a long time friend of mine who is a professor in the business school of a university about Trusted Source Marketing and this blog.
His first comments to me concerned a couple of typos in an earlier post. I suspect I will make a few more. But some of our conversation was more important.
He said that not all companies are open to the idea of listening to their employees. One of the hallmarks of a Trusted Source would be an eagerness to know what people think. His point was that this system will not work with every company.
We talked about how this program isn’t really necessary in smaller companies since ownership or management is close enough to the trenches that everyone knows what everyone thinks about benefits, how business is going and who just split up with their girlfriend.
But in larger companies that are truly interested in the well being all of their employees Trusted Source Marketing™ can indeed be used to everyone’s advantage.
Employees win in several ways. Continuous information flow about benefits can highlight how others are being helped. Seeing how programs work for others can help people see it work for themselves. Two way communication can inform management how current benefits are or are not meeting expectations. Usually there are cost savings with group benefits using payroll deduction. This payment method also simplifies enrollment and assures timely payment of premiums with no lapse in coverage.
Employers gain from improved participation. If benefits are offered to improve moral, aid in recruitment and retention, help employees with life issues, and generally make the company a better place to work then the increase in participation will enhance each of these advantages.
There is another group involved. Actually it has several layers of stakeholders. Benefit Vendor Companies, Brokers, and Agents are all part of the current benefit system. They will likely continue to be part of any systems that develop over time. Some will continue to do business the way they have always done business.
Brokers and agents who decide to take advantage of Trusted Source Marketing™ and propose it to their client companies may have the most to gain. By taking their own place as Trusted Source to their clients they can enhance their reputation and increase their income. Instead of worrying about what is going to happen to their health care insurance commissions they can do a better job for their clients and their employees by bringing much more to the table. Client companies employees like being treated like adults will tend to stay with the broker who showed them how.
This is the way we do things.
There are thousands of companies whose business it is to bring employee benefits to millions of people who work for other companies.
This is the way it is. The methods used to facilitate these billions of transactions have been developed and honed over time. Lots of time. It can be said that these traditional ways of doing business have worked. Are they the best way to continue however?
A few questions. Were these methods developed before the advent of the personal computer? Were benefit fairs being used to explain the various aspects of health plans, retirement plans and the plethora of voluntary plans before virtually everyone had access to email? Were people sitting with groups of other people trying to decide in a few minutes what they should do about what was being offered? Heck, were the systems still widely used to promote benefits developed before widespread use of toll free numbers and cell phones?
The answer to these questions is yes. Yet, many will say that this is the way we do things. They will refuse to let anyone move their cheese. No matter if there is a better, read cost efficient and more effective, way to help employees understand what is being offered. To give them the time each of them needs to consider and then to decide. To provide access to people who can answer their questions, when they think of the question. And then to make enrollment, or dis-enrollment, simple and painless.
Companies who take Trusted Source Marketing™ seriously will reap the advantages of a better-informed employee group increasing their participation in the benefits offered resulting in even better morale, easier recruiting, and longer average tenure. The other advantage is these increases come at lower cost. Arranging for all employees to have meetings with advisors or to gather for benefit fairs is expensive. This expense can all but disappear.
Instead vendors will arrange easy communication to their experts via email and/or telephone at the expense of the vendor, not the employing company.
An opportunity to keep employees informed about the coming changes in health care benefits may be the most important advantage that accrues to everyone involved.
The single largest movement in health care plans is to HDHP plans with HSA’s. If you aren’t familiar with the acronym, Google it. Dialogue between the Trusted Source and employees about these programs can lessen fears and increase understanding of the economic advantages to companies and employees.
Trusted Source Marketing™ Not interested.
Individuals interested in pursuing relationships with employers and others who may fit the model as a good Trusted Source might do well to consider one of the tenants of this marketing model. Choice.
If a company owner, after reviewing the reasons given by the agent for adopting Trusted Source Marketing™ declines, ask permission to periodically update him or her on your progress with companies like his. This is basic, 101 sales training.
Some companies when faced with this idea will simply not be interested. Their reasons will be as varied as the person who says no. We all have our own view of the world and the same is true for Human Resource experts, company owners, or others responsible for these individual company decisions.
Resistance to any change is common. Trusted Source Marketing™ represents a huge shift from current operations. I suspect that this will be the single most common reason for not implementing a new program. TSM is a completely different approach from the traditional. Therefore it is not to be trusted. (note a little tongue in cheek here)
For some companies the resistance might stem from the idea that voluntary benefit programs are a pain in the neck and they certainly don’t intend to encourage any more participation than they already have.
Others might decide that it is too intrusive for them to assume that they know more about these things than do the employees. Well if they don’t know more, then they should not participate. After all, part of the job we are asking them to do is vetting, soliciting, and working with those companies who bring real value to people.
The fact of too little participation in current benefit programs bodes ill for anyone attempting to introduce yet another voluntary benefit, no matter that it can be demonstrated to be more valuable than most. Voluntary benefits just don’t do well here is a common refrain. Seldom is the cause acknowledged. When people don’t have enough information to recognize the value of anything they are inclined to “just leave things alone” and pass on real opportunities to improve their family’s fortunes.
Most companies offer benefits and discuss them with new hires. These new hires are unlikely to have the time to really investigate these benefits and thus often leave the task until later. Then, time goes by and things are forgotten.
Companies that offer benefits may see the value proposition in Trusted Source Marketing™ and still decline to participate at this time. This is their choice.
Will people listen to their Trusted Source?
A Trusted Source Marketing Program will be successful only as far as it is able to prove that its primary goal is to influence people to make informed choices to their own advantage. Good information about good products delivered in bite sized chunks without pressure to decide will go a long way to prove this. It does not mean that we shy away from discussing, as time goes by, the other reasons for using the program.
From the outset this is about helping employees get the things that they need and want at lower cost and easy terms from companies that are reputable. It is equally important that the products do what they are supposed to do. The trusted source must do its homework (due diligence).
Many companies offer an array of great voluntary benefits. Historically low participation indicates different things to different people. Some might say that if the products are good then people will buy. A basic premise of Trusted Source Marketing™ is too much information about too many options and too many products packed into too little time creates no decision at all.
We need to present the cost/benefit aspects, the frequency of projected use, and how it might affect our lives. How having the benefit has affected the quality of life for someone else is a story to be told.
Much of Trusted Source Marketing™ is story telling. Do we have stories worth listening to? How can we assure our audience that it will be worth their time to listen? Permission Marketing uses many different incentives to urge customers and potential customers to give permission. Then using the permission wisely, other means are employed to increase participation. Recognize that the communication must morph from monologue to dialogue. This is the source of many stories that should be told. How colleagues are using their benefits to advantage can be the tipping point in decision making.
We need to give reasons to look at the material that goes beyond its origin being the trusted source. The encouragement can be a request for input, a chance to improve the process, even a contest or sweepstakes that requires feedback of some sort. We must engage the influencee to keep them in the game.
Some prerequisites: The stories need to be short. Other stories are best told in video format, again short. Each should have a call to action or at least an easy way to get more information via a link or phone call.
A Trusted Source informs with purpose.
Let’s go back to the why of Trusted Source Marketing™. Life is complicated. Work, family, recreation, retirement, housing, health, buying and selling, education, insurance etc. etc. etc. are all vying for time, attention, money.
An employer can help. Many have decided that providing access to health insurance, retirement plans, and a host of other insurance type products is in the best interest of their employees and the company. The use of employee benefit programs is widespread and well established as a means to aid recruitment and improve retention. It appears that everyone wins with a good benefit program.
If this is true, and it certainly appears to be, then it seems reasonable that improved communications and more focus on the efficacy of these programs will multiply the advantages to all stakeholders.
It is time to reevaluate how information about benefits is provided. It is time to reconsider how and what we are offering to our employees. Do benefit fairs do the job? Can even one on one counseling about retirement plan options, health insurance options, life insurance options, legal insurance, disability income options, long term care insurance, Aflac, dental, and the multitude of other voluntary benefits provide the time and consideration needed to help make good decisions about every offering.
Refer to Al Pittampalli’s book on the modern meeting. Information meetings are often a waste of everyone’s time. There are better ways to get information to people than a lecture with handouts. Gathering everyone together is disruptive to workflow and therefore expensive. Having private meetings is not much better for the purpose of full benefit package understanding. Each benefit has different appeal to different employees.
As I said yesterday, dialogue is essential. Properly done, Trusted Source Marketing™, like Permission Marketing will encourage individuals to communicate. The ensuing “conversation” will allow specific focus on that person’s needs, questions and circumstance. When a TSM message is broadcast to all employees some will want more information now. They can ask. Some will add the info to what they already know for a decision later. That is ok too. Some will continue to think that benefit doesn’t fit their needs and do nothing. Ok.
This process takes time. The Trusted Source has taken the responsibility to improve communication to their constituency about their benefits. Those being offered the advantage of these regular nuggets of benefit gold can ignore the effort. That is their choice. Others who have been confused can use the process to end their confusion.
Dialogue is essential.
Seth Godin lists ten steps to institute Permission Marketing. The first is to decipher the lifetime value of a new customer. This illustrates a fundamental difference between Permission Marketing and Trusted Source Marketing. In the later, the basic question is, can we help our constituency with this improved communication? Of course this is a value judgment but it is not about how much can I get from my employees but what can I bring to them.
His second step is to create a series of communication suites to turn strangers into friends. Trusted Sources will use this rule in with a different end in mind but using similar methods. Emails, letters, web pages designed to encourage participation are all tools used in both methods. This step takes time but there is no hurry. Encourage people to look at the information offered and to respond. Responses will change future communication because that is a result of dialogue. Each communication should also encourage action.
Seth insists on measuring the results of all communication. I agree. In a dialogue between the Trusted Source and those being influenced the responses are the results. It is crucial to acknowledge every response in some way. The negative comments can and will lead to improvements in the process. The positive ones will inform us of what we are doing well.
In both cases it is essential to realize that not everyone will respond. Try again and then again. Trusted Source Marketing is not a one shot attempt to help. It is a commitment to a process that will, if done with the intent to communicate important information, and to listen for understanding, lead to greater participation in all benefits offered. It may also lead to elimination of some benefits as unneeded, unnecessary or just plain bad.
Always be testing and measuring expectations. We don’t need to measure level of permission but we do need to measure how effective our communications are.
Seth’s list includes guarding the permission base. Just as important here, but in a different way. The inherent quality of being a Trusted Source is to be useful and trustworthy.
Michael Gelb, is an author of several books that I have enjoyed including, “Thinking For a Change.” This book, like all of Michael’s that I have read, focuses on how we think and respond. The germane notion here is that we all respond differently because we all think differently.
Trusted Source Marketing™ encourages all to think and decide for themselves with a focus on providing good information.