Producers: We need to change our thinking about disability and disability insurance — and talk to our clients about it.
According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 percent of workers don't have long-term disability coverage. This suggests that our clients and potential clients would be very vulnerable should they become disabled.
Disability is a rather abstract concept to most people. They often associate it with the aftermath of a serious and dramatic accident (think Christopher Reeve) and don't believe that it could ever happen to them. To turn my clients' attention to the full extent of the matter, I typically I use the following phrase: "If you get sick or injured and it disables you …" While they may not imagine themselves disabled, everyone can relate to being sick or injured. (I would caution against solely saying "sick or injured" because those two events do not necessarily constitute a disability under the terms of a disability insurance policy.)
Furthermore, even when people do imagine themselves disabled, they often visualize it inaccurately. Most people see their potential disability as a physical inconvenience. They might say, for example, "I could do my job from a hospital bed," or, "I could do my job in a wheelchair; I just need to be able to use the phone." But these people are thinking about disability as if they were feeling just fine and a wheelchair was just a different type of desk chair.
Your clients should realize that when sick or injured, people don't feel well. And when you don't feel well, you're not very effective at your job. So I make sure I talk to my clients about the Big Three Disablers: sleep deprivation, pain, and pain medication.
How the 'Big 3′ can take you down
I know about the Big Three because some years ago, I had the misfortune of shattering both bones in my lower right leg while playing soccer. Although my right leg isn't critical to my work, being rested, feeling good, and being lucid are. I didn't sleep well for a year. Every time I moved even the slightest amount, the broken bones shifted and I woke up in excruciating pain. How well do any of us work when we are exhausted?
I had my choice of either being lucid but in horrible pain, or being comfortable yet doped up with pain medication. I don't think too many of us would want to do business with someone who was in either state, yet our clients tell us that it would take "a lot to disable me." I chose pain over the fog of pain medication, and it took all of my focus to be a tolerable (not good and definitely not exceptional) husband and father. Work was totally out of the question — all from a simple broken leg.
Helping your clients understand
As producers, we need to make reality and solutions accessible to all our clients, and we need to have the courage to challenge their misconceptions. This is the script I use with my clients:
"Mr. Client, if you had a printing press that printed a $6,000 paycheck every two weeks for the rest of your working life, wouldn't it make sense to purchase a warranty contract to make sure that the paycheck would come, even if the press broke down? Let's take your first check in January and purchase that contract to protect all the other paychecks."
I encourage you to reach out to your clients and prospects about disability insurance and ensure that they protect the one thing that funds all the other parts of their lives — their paycheck. We are right around the corner from Disability Insurance Awareness Month in May, which allows you to piggyback on the industry's outreach to consumers to remind them of the importance of protecting their paycheck. Remind your clients today about the reality of a disability — and the value of having insurance in place to help protect their income during recovery. Because it can happen to them.
Brad Elman is a principal at Nine Dots Benefits in Los Altos, CA. He can be reached at elman@9dotsbenefits.com.
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