What To Take Away From Todays Workplace CI Sales Success

In the workplace, we see the wonderful dynamics of the “seminar” sale when the product is introduced at employee meetings. These meetings provide a rare opportunity to get people to connect with the frequency of heart attack, cancer and stroke. Even people whose lives have not been touched by one of these diagnoses get to see around them the pervasiveness of these events.

Another lesson: Worksite insurers have learned to focus on the practical aspects of the sale.

They have come to terms with the products relatively high price. In this environment, for example, there are no calculations of “how much CI coverage do you need?” The operative question here is “how much can you afford?” The good players go a step farther, presenting the cost in the simplest possible termsper day, per week, per pay period.

A $30 monthly premium sounds like (and is!) a bargain, when expressed as “less than a dollar a day.”

There is a lot of discussion in the industry about product features and covered events. The U.S. market does not yet have a “norm” in the design of the CI insurance product. Instead, the insurers, often with the assistance of their reinsurers, define and differentiate their own CI offerings. It is interesting to see the wide variation of CI products available–and the success of a quite diverse menu of features. Employers select the version that works for them. Typically, they choose plans that allow employees a minimum amount of product choice, if any.

Employees count on the employer to have made a good choice. Therefore, when the product is offered to the group, one element of the sale already has been determined.

In terms of CI coverage, the common denominator is always the “core” diagnostic events of cancer, heart attack and stroke plus, typically, a few additional events such as major organ transplant, kidney failure and coronary bypass.

What is noteworthy is that there seems to be little if any measurable difference in response by employees to different CI products, other than what could result from differences in the quality of the products presentation to the prospects.

The take-aways? The appeal of CI in the worksite market is that it pays upon diagnosis of events that most people relate to and will experience at some pointcancer, heart attack or stroke. The other product features are the “bells, whistles and frills,” not the basis of the decision to buy.

The KISS (“Keep It Simple Stupid”) principle applies absolutely. The agent/broker must understand the fine points of the coverages, but what this product does is central to its appeal. The need is almost universal and it applies in particular to “middle America.”

The U.S. CI marketplace is poised to explode. The worksite distribution has been quietly and successfully bringing this product to a very responsive audience. Other distribution channels can and should learn from this model. The product is easy to sell when you do it right and there is a huge population of prospects out there!

is vice president-CI insurance marketing for Optimum Reinsurance Company in Dallas, Texas. Her e-mail is: [email protected].

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, January 16, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.