Are you looking for ways to do more business and strengthen your relationships with clients? Selling ancillary products is a great way to accomplish both goals. They can enhance your clients’ benefits and help you retain valued customers. A robust benefits package that integrates health/medical, plus rich dental, vision, life, disability, and other optional coverages can help your clients attract and retain top quality talent. For many brokers, it’s a seamless cross-selling opportunity.
How many of your current clients only offer medical insurance? With the right approach, you can show them how they can build their business, sharing in the cost of ancillary or voluntary benefits with their workforce. It can cultivate a culture of caring that engenders loyalty and improves the health and well-being of employees.
It’s true that many businesses still aren’t offering their employees insurance coverage outside of their standard health insurance. Some are trying to cut costs, but some just don’t know enough about them. As an agent, you can educate your clients and help them find what is best for their business and their employees.
Here are few reasons why all insurance agents should take advantage of this easily accessible market and sell ancillary insurance products.
What are Ancillary, Voluntary or Supplemental Products?
Ancillary products are coverage options offered in addition to the main insurance you’ve sold to a client. Often, health coverage is the primary plan you’ve helped the client obtain. Dental, vision, disability and life insurance are examples of common ancillary products sold in addition to health insurance. Ancillary insurance products are sometimes referred to as voluntary because the employee can opt in, and often pays a share. They are also known as “supplemental” insurance products and are used to supplement existing benefits. Agents commonly use ancillary products when cross-selling Medicare or Small or Large Group benefits.
Because you’ve already completed a previous sale with your client, it’s relatively easy to make the additional sale. You’ve built a relationship with these clients. Now you need to pinpoint their problems, or the gaps in their coverage, and present ancillary products as the solution. You might even find that bundled coverage can translate into tangible cost savings for business owners, further enhancing the affordability of insurance packages, especially if there is a voluntary cost share with employees. This can be another strong selling point.
Why sell ancillary products?
Client Retention, Revenue Growth, and Market Expansion
To build strong relationships: Building strong relationships is great for both you and your client. There’s a sense of mutual trust. They learn to rely on you to have their best interest in mind, which means they’ll keep coming back to you. That translates into increased commissions, client retention and referrals - and happier employees and clients! It also positions you as a comprehensive service provider, and trusted advisor. This can also foster client 'stickiness', engendering sustained engagement and loyalty over time.
To support employee retention: Ancillary insurance is also great for your client’s employee retention. Many people these days are looking for more than just health insurance and a good-paying job from an employer. They not only want the 401(k) and paid time off (PTO), but they also want insurance coverage that’s going to supplement what they’re not getting from health insurance. The better the benefits, the happier employees will be and the longer they are likely to stay at that company. Happier employees can often mean more productive employees, as well.
To lower medical premiums: The great thing about bundling in any industry is the chance to save money. Many insurance providers give incentives to groups who add ancillary coverage to their medical plans. This may include a lower cost for premiums.
They’re better for your business
Commissions: We can’t discuss the benefits of selling ancillary products for agents without discussing the actual business of it. Just like with selling anything else, the more business you do, the more money you can make. It’s as simple as that.
Client retention: Like employee retention for companies, selling ancillary products to employers makes those clients more likely to stay with you. The less they must shop around for additional coverage, the less likely they are to switch to another agent in the future. Being a one-stop-shop for employers is good for them and great for you.
Expanded client base: By providing basic healthcare coverage alone, your lead pool is going to be limited to companies that just need that basic insurance. However, adding ancillary products to your repertoire also opens you up to employers who are looking for those products on top of health insurance.
Develop stickiness: This is very similar to client retention and expanding your client base, but we thought it worth mentioning because every aspect of your business is related to stickiness. Briefly, this can mean how well you resonate with clients and how much your clients “stick” with you. Everything from your marketing messages to your networking strategies should be done with stickiness in mind. You can also do this with ancillary products. By offering ancillary insurance you are adding more value to you and your business and therefore, as previously mentioned, are more likely to retain clients and have a wider pool of potential clients.
The wrap up …
The advantages of offering ancillary products far outweigh any disadvantages. Your clients will benefit from additional insurance products, and your relationship will strengthen even more, which in turn, will help your business. Moreover, bundled coverage often translates into tangible cost savings for clients, increasing the value and affordability of insurance packages.
To wrap up, adding valuable coverages to health insurance plans is a big deal for brokers. When you focus on giving clients lots of great benefits and are proactive about offering extras, you can stay ahead in the ever-changing world of insurance. By doing this, brokers become like trusted friends to their clients, making sure they get the best insurance experience possible. This helps everyone succeed and keeps those client-broker bonds strong for the long haul.
How we can help: CoPower to the rescue!
Dental, Vision & Life. Build Custom Bundles for Your Clients!
With CoPower, you can mix-and-match from a comprehensive product portfolio or grab one of our pre-made bundles; all from the nation's top carriers. We do this by packaging the best dental, vision and life plans available and offering them, hassle free. You get three amazing products at one low price with one service team and one bill, it's that simple. This model results in amazing coverage, incredible customer service, and happy, healthy people.
If you haven’t checked out our CoPower portfolio, we highly recommend that you try quoting them on your next group. Catch up with your Amwins Connect Regional Sales Manager to learn more.