In his book, Elements of Influence, Terry R. Bacon cites from another author’s book. Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination.  Levitt states, “Customers attach value to products in proportion to the perceived ability of those products to help solve their problems.  Hence a product has meaning only from the viewpoint of the buyer or the ultimate user.  All else is derivative.  Only the buyer or user can assign value, because value can reside only in the benefits he wants or perceives.”  In other words, the buyer makes the choice.

The role of the Trusted Source begins with a perceived duty to bring useful information about potentially important services to their constituency.

The essential nature of a Trusted Source is trustworthiness.  This can be achieved in two ways.  The first is to always and only act as a trusted source by doing the due diligence required to assure those being influenced that the products and services offered are indeed, in the opinion of the Trusted Source, worthwhile.

The second and equally important aspect of this trustworthiness is found in choice.  The purpose of the influence is to encourage participation in worthwhile benefits but the final decision rests with the person doing the buying.

Logical persuasion can be effective in influence if the trusted source knows the audience well.  Understanding who they are and how they operate can guide the influence/decision process.  It is important to know what is important to them and what they expect.

I think this is good for you.  If you think it is too, I will make it easier for you to get it. Providing benefits in a group setting can lower costs through through group discounts. Easy payment arrangements via payroll or settlement deductions and access to products and services not always available to individuals are all useful aspects of this process.

These comments may dissuade some company leaders from making the decision to cooperate in Trusted Source Marketing.  Not everyone will think it worth the effort.  The consideration includes at least two competing positions.  We already provide access to enough voluntary benefits, why should we take on this added responsibility?  The other is a realization that the responsibility is already theirs.  And if Trusted Source Marketing will reduce costs, increase participation and improve communication and morale then it is worth doing things differently.

Employees who don’t understand the value proposition of the various benefits offered don’t really have choice in the equation.  On the other hand, regular communication about the various aspects of the myriad products and services available, access to information through links to the providing companies and attendant access to product experts can improve understanding and make their choices informed and intelligent.

Advantages of the Trusted Source Marketing™ model accrue to employees, agents /brokers, and companies that decide to become a Trusted Source.

We have too many meetings.  And we have too many bad meetings.  Where do enrollment meetings, benefit information meetings, and benefit ‘fairs’ fit? As it relates to the company goals and the company’s work these meetings don’t fit.

Trusted Source Marketing™ may be the method to best explain, influence and thereby increase employee understanding, participation and satisfaction with all types of company benefits. There will be opposition even from those who might gain the most.

Company meetings should be an important tool to move an organization forward toward its goals.  However, benefit meetings cannot be as effective as other means for disseminating information about inherently personal matters. Individual decision-making is best done privately.

How many of you have been in a meeting with dozens of people, or even hundreds, where the purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to explain the new 401K or new health care options, then one or two people ask very personal questions with specific parameters that are so narrow that no one else in the room can be helped by the answer? The meeting ends with too few learning too little.

These meeting are a very costly waste of everyone’s time and the organization’s money. Since there is currently no real mechanism for information dissemination besides handing out some booklets, everyone loses.  People don’t buy what they don’t understand.  They are frustrated and confused.  Then they call the personnel department with real questions and the expert has left the building.

How much better would it be to have a system that allows for individual requests for information to be met by those who have it and who are paid to provide it?  Company management, as it relates to their responsibility for benefits, can focus on their real questions-which benefits to offer, from which companies, and why.  Currently, too much depends on the salesman’s ability to get through the gatekeeper and not enough focus on how best to get the word out about the real advantages of participation by employees.

The biggest reason to oppose new benefits is that HR and management knows how expensive it can be to set up an enrollment.  So new programs are very difficult to begin. This is another reason to consider becoming a Trusted Source.  Use modern methods of communication to communicate about things important to individuals privately.

If your business is the marketing of voluntary benefits you would want to use Trusted Source Marketing™ to improve sales.  In fact, properly implemented, the method will reduce costs while increasing participation in every offered benefit.

As an employer, why would you want to use Trusted Source Marketing™ with your employees?

What advantages accrue to the employees, to the client companies and to the brokers with this system?

Why do companies offer benefits?  The stock answer is to attract and retain good employees.   If a product offered via payroll/settlement deduction is worthwhile, employers would want to see broad acceptance and participation.  Again, to attract and retain.

As a salesman of voluntary benefits a common refrain heard from company owners and HR professionals is, “Most people don’t participate in the programs we have now.  Why would I bother to offer another one?”

How can Trusted Source Marketing™ make a difference? The HR’s answer, to attract and retain good employees provides the motive.  The effectiveness and reduced expense and time wasted in information/enrollment meetings are real gains for the client companies.

Once an owner or HR department has determined that their business is better off when an employee has good benefits it logically follows that the more employees who get the coverage the better off the company will be.

Retention is a big issue.  Training expense, pre hiring expenses, seasoned help versus the lower productivity of new hires are just a few reasons why businesses want their people to stay.  The more reasons good employees have to stay the better.  When considering changing jobs people ask themselves lots of questions.  Benefit packages are an area they think about.  Just changing the payment arrangements for some can be sufficient reason to stay.

Currently more benefits are sold face to face in benefit counseling or enrollment meetings than via secure web site signup.  But just like automobile insurance has become an internet commodity, Trusted Source Marketing of voluntary benefits can and will be done successfully with lower costs,  less “lost time” and less disruption in the workplace.

Other reasons why employers are interested in Trusted Source Marketing™

• Trusted Source Marketing creates communication paths about things important to the employees.
• Dialogue between employees and employer about benefits improves dialogue about all aspects of business
• Greater understanding of advantages of all voluntary benefits
• Leads to greater participation
• TSM system creates access to providers from employees, privately, one on one for inquiries and reduces questions directed to employer’s staff
• Companies with widely dispersed operations may not be able to have “benefit meetings”

Tomorrow we will examine some advantages to employees, agents and brokers.

Which companies meet the criterion?

Put simply, everyone would like to think of him or herself as a trusted source. My mother was and many people in my life have proved to be. But in the context of employee benefits and sales, what are the criterions for the companies to fit the model. Let’s begin with who doesn’t fit.

Any company that takes the stand, “This is the way we do things!” is not going to change to a completely new way of communicating to their employees about benefits. Companies that only supply benefits because they think that they must because they are competing for employees is not the same thing as having an understanding of people’s needs and their role in helping meet them.

Trying to get a company like this on board to the idea that they have a responsibility to help their employees with easier access to benefits that can improve their lives will likely prove futile.

Conversely, those companies who see the benefits offered as a way to improve employee welfare. Who take the time to vet the offerings. And who sincerely want those who would benefit to participate are ideal no matter the size of the company.

Obviously, scale in the benefit world is important. These programs can have a greater effect on a greater number if we are talking to a large audience.

When Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999 we were all still being “sold” with interruption marketing. Now, most of us are giving permission to at least some of our friendly vendors to everyone’s advantage.

Al Pittampalli’s book, Read This Before Our Next Meeting, clearly states that using meetings to provide information is not the most efficient method. He might call these meetings a pox on us all.

Trusted Source’s will reap the advantages of employees who are assured and reassured that their employer has their best interest in mind.  That benefits are offered only after the companies have been vetted and the products will be useful to at least some of the base.  Everyone wins when employees not only have access to benefits they need, usually at price discounts and payroll deducted, but are also comfortable that their trusted source is has done the necessary due diligence.

We will have time to consider what sort of companies may be “early adopters” of this strategy and how to approach them in future blogs.