When you help prospects or clients see the situation from their employees’ perspective or allow them to tell their story directly to the underwriter, you are differentiating yourself and showing deep levels of emotional intelligence. Here are three steps to building a partnership and helping the organization work, compete, and grow.
- Employee Interviews. The employee interview is a simple, yet powerful method to gain an inside look at the corporate culture and perspectives of risk from the people who are in-the-know. The one-on-one employee interview is an art that will separate you from your competition. Let’s consider the employee interview in the context of the Undercover Boss, the television show that features the experiences of senior executives working undercover in their own companies to assess processes, operations, and employees first-hand in order to implement change that will improve business outcomes. The show evidences that some well-meaning business leaders can be out of touch with the realities of the inner workings of their organization. Why? They have never taken the time to get “down and dirty” in their own business. The employee interview process gives you a unique opportunity to connect with the rank-and-file to capture the strengths, opportunities, and risk issues facing the enterprise. Your prospect will be blown away when you teach them things that they did not know.
- Insurance Coverage Review. As you have experienced first-hand, there are often glaring deficiencies and gaps in a prospect’s insurance program that will cause material harm to the enterprise should a claim occur. A thorough review and analysis of the insurance policies followed by a consultation elevates your status and discredits the incumbent. This occurs because you are empowering the prospect to think strategically about business risks. When a coverage deficiency is identified, educate, magnify, and quantify. Subtly ask how and why the incumbent failed to recognize the risk. In a well-constructed coverage review, the emotions of the prospect will come to surface in the form of surprise, disappointment, confusion, fear, anger, and more.
- Direct Access to the Underwriter. Prospects are seldom given the opportunity to “tell their story” directly to the underwriting community. You will differentiate yourself in the marketplace and discredit the incumbent by giving the prospect direct access to the underwriter…the person who determines the terms and conditions of the offering. This can occur in a variety of ways including the creation of a video crafted by the prospect’s leadership team, a conference call, or an in-person meeting. Underwriters relish the opportunity to develop relationships with their insureds. A synergistic partnership between the underwriter and the insured is a winning formula.