If the hard part of the job is prospecting, and the easy part is selling to qualified, interested prospective clients, what can you do to make prospecting easier and more productive?
Volunteer to be a guest speaker at relevant professional conferences. Select topic(s) that will be of interest to your audience. Consider subjects like: creating a benefits strategic plan to guide all your major benefits decisions and expenditures; or how to more effectively engage employees in managing their health and their health care purchasing decisions; or tiering employer benefit contributions based upon employee participation in wellness offerings to achieve an ROI.
These are great examples of topics because they will resonate with your audience, and you are not trying to sell anyone an insurance product. You are not selling widgets, so dont promote your personal brand to be perceived that way. You are a benefit adviser and you want to be perceived as educating your audience about a process or an approach that will benefit that employer.
Consider volunteering to speak at: local, county or state association conferences for relevant industry verticals that your practice serves; CFO and CEO conferences since the C Suite makes the benefits decisions and is your real target audience; or accounting, legal or banking conferences to cultivate centers of influence that influence the thinking of your prospective clients on a daily basis.
The beauty of the seminar selling approach that we are describing is that: you will be introduced as a subject-matter expert; you will have a captive audience for 45-60 minutes; you will differentiate yourself from the overwhelming majority of benefit brokers that are perceived to be product vendors; and you will be positioning yourself as a very strategic, consultative, trusted adviser. And when you finish your session, you will receive business contact information for follow-up from highly qualified, prospective clients who perceive you to be different from their current broker.
Elevate your status while making your business development activities more professional and more productive.
Kwicien is managing partner at Baltimore-based consulting and advisory services firm Daymark Advisors and a monthly columnist for EBA. Reach him at
