When you are young or new in the business, you need to demonstrate value and knowledge to overcome the incumbent relationship. It’s critical to differentiate yourself, bring solutions that prospects and clients value, and show confidence in your value proposition.
- Value Proposition. A value proposition describes how you create value for those whom you serve. It is a clear, concise statement that summarizes why the prospect should embrace your offering and how it exceeds that of your competition. The ideal value proposition is an irresistible offer, an invitation that is so compelling and attractive that the prospect would be out of his or her mind to refuse. Your value proposition must go beyond functional product or service offerings to express the results a prospect can expect to achieve. The research of Beyond Insurance evidences that the incumbent often delivers products and services without a meaningful value proposition.
- Claims Review. When you ask a prospect a simple question about his or her claims experience, would you agree that most are sitting in the dark? They are not receiving loss runs, claim reviews, and often have no clue as to claim status, loss ratios, valuations, or how open reserves impact their workers’ compensation experience modification factor. A simple strategy to discredit the incumbent is to educate the prospect that a workers’ compensation claim is valued for unit statistical reporting 18 months after the policy inception. Offer evidence that they have unattended open reserves that impact their modification factor through a claims review.
Kevin Ring, Lead Workers’ Compensation Analyst for the Institute of WorkComp Professionals, suggests the following, “Today’s consumers need to know the specific data elements, including payroll and loss information, which formulate a unit statistical report. It is also imperative that they comprehend how and why a claim is valued.”
- Risk Assessment. Provide risk assessments focused on the identification, evaluation, prioritization, and management of risk, a process through which you take on the mentality of an outsourced risk manager. The goal of the assessment is to guide the prospect through four primary means of dealing with risk: 1) avoidance; 2) reduction; 3) retention; or 4) transference. Because the incumbent agent is mired in the insurance transaction, he or she leaves the risk decision matrix dormant. You, on the other hand, convey that the objective of your risk assessment process is to ensure that uncertainty does not derail business endeavors.