Taking Back Control: Tips for Creating a Benefits Strategic Plan
Submitted By: Rob Cola, president, Brown and Brown Consulting
Chances are you have changed your employee benefits broker at least once in the past five years. Many of you have likely looked for a new broker every year. Why? Because your healthcare costs are out of control, with annual increases in the double digits, and you think the “benefits bounce” is the best way to find the lowest price.
Surprisingly, switching brokers every year or every other year is actually part of the reason you are facing exponentially increasing healthcare costs – an expense that is eating more and more into your profits. The healthcare system has complete control over your company, your healthcare plans and your annual costs.
The good news is that you can take back control.
You are likely no stranger to creating strategic plans for your company’s growth. You sit with your executive team or your board members or a consultant to identify your business goals and create a plan for achieving them. This plan helps you make decisions for your company and your employees. Ideally, you achieve your goals, grow your company and create a new strategic plan.
By working with your benefits broker to create a long-term strategic plan for your healthcare, you can achieve your cost and benefits goals and take back control from the healthcare system.
Tips for Creating a Benefits Plan
1. Know Where You Are Now – The most important part of any strategic plan is understanding where you are. In the benefits arena, this means having a clear picture of your employees’ needs, the competitiveness of your plans and the options at your disposal. Your broker should help you put in place tools to measure each of these factors since you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
2. Forecast 3 to 5 Years in the Future – You probably know where you want your company to be in the next three to five years in terms of revenue and employees. So where do your healthcare costs fit into that picture? Your broker should work with you to recognize trends in the healthcare industry, understand your company’s goals and reconcile the two in a way that makes sense for you.
3. Identify Potential Risks – There are always going to roadblocks along the way; factors that can throw your strategic plan off course. Your broker should know the typical challenges companies face in maintaining a competitive benefits package. It is their job to help you plan in a meaningful way to help you achieve your goals.
Once you have created a benefits strategic plan, you will have a clear picture of where you are and where you need to go. Armed with that information, you and your broker will have a better understanding of the challenges you will face in the future, ultimately helping you gain control of your healthcare costs.
Become Your Own First B2B Customer
Submitted By: Craig Marowitz, Vice President of Sales, Expert Technology Associates
How Do You Prove That the Products and Solutions You Advocate Will Perform In The Real World? Make Them Part of Your Own Office Infrastructure.
In a sales-based world, there's phenomenal pressure to make numbers. Manufacturers love to push SKUs and fill quotas, and anyone selling their brand is expected to toe the line. However, if your business also supports those solutions, then you're responsible for the continued outcome of the sale. You're not just selling merchandise, you're selling a happy home for your products and services. They have to perform, long-term, to establish positive relationships and generate referrals and repeat business.
How do you guarantee that a complex product or solution actually performs, especially if your merchandise derives from a combination of third-party vendors? It seems many sales teams are willing to stand on manufacturer claims alone. Clients are led to believe your offering will work for them because the box says so.
Yet, as all of us have learned from as early on as our first Hot Wheels set (the one where the cars just didn't rip across the tracks like in the commercials): Not everything works like the box says it does.
B2B companies need to make more of an investment in their products than just stocking inventory. Here's a committed approach: Be your own proving ground. At ETA, we implement business communication technologies: everything from VoIP phone systems, to automatic call distribution, to carrier services, to remote connectivity. We work with dozens of vendors, chosen from a field of hundreds, all making plenty of claims.
We decided that the only way to guarantee that the products we were offering worked was to implement them in our own office. We're a small business similar to those we serve, with an accounting department, a sales department, storage needs, messaging requirements, remote workers, training, etc. In the end, the best way to evaluate vendors, to make sure that equipment delivered on all its promises with an efficiency that we'd be proud to advocate (no "gotchas”), to get our people familiar with the systems from soup-to-nuts, was to incorporate these solutions into our infrastructure. All the telecom systems, messaging, video and web conferencing capabilities and networking we use throughout our offices are the same solutions we provide to our customers. We call it the "Model Home."
This solves several challenges. 1) We know from experience how reliable the products are. 2) Our technicians and help desk staff actually use the systems, so they know how to address questions. And 3), when a potential client asks, "Can you show me an office where this is in use?" we know right where to point them, without imposing on an existing customer.
It's a simple case of putting one's money where one's mouth is, and it's fairly well ignored in the sales world. Most organizations don't bother to use the products they sell, although many could probably find ways to apply their goods and services to their own office environments and procedures. It's easier to make numbers than to make happy customers, but only one leads to long-term, mutual success.
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