From the ACA to level-funded plans, it can be daunting for employers to make informed selections when there are so many options available to them regarding what type of health insurance plan to offer their employees. As their trusted advisor, they will look to you to help paint a clear picture of what those options are, making it your job to put out requests for proposals or pull health insurance quotes from multiple carriers, as well as compile relevant documentation, including questionnaires, ultimately presenting all the relevant choices to your clients. In this scenario, manually entering information about each group to each carrier they are offering plans with can take a long time, becoming an arduous process. In this weeks Broker Tool Belt, we share why health insurance quoting software will help you boost efficiency, increase enrollments, and make your groups more profitable so that you can keep moving your business forward to define the next normal.
Have you ever refrained from quoting additional carriers and plan options for the sake of time? The less time you have, the fewer health insurance quotes you can gather. As a result, there are fewer options for your prospective clients, which translates to fewer BORs for you. Instead of entering your groups information into each carrier platform, you can use health insurance quoting software that does it for you.
A health insurance quoting software is a technology solution that allows you to get a list of quotes from all applicable carriers by only entering your groups basic information once.
Adopting health insurance quoting software will help you improve productivity by reclaiming the time spent visiting a number of different carrier websites and putting together health insurance quotes into a Word- or Excel-based proposal. Less time spent on administrative tasks will free you up to focus on selling more products, increasing enrollment, and ultimately, growing your agency. Below we share in more detail the benefits of adopting a technology solution to pull health insurance quotes:
Consider the employers experience: once you reach out to them or they find your website, they are intrigued enough to request a health insurance quote from you. If you need to gather their information, manually enter it on each carrier’s website, and present the results in various rate sheets they have to scroll through, you won’t be able to keep their attention for long.
In a world of instant gratification, they will expect a detailed, relevant response quickly or they will move on to another broker that satisfies their needs. Having a health insurance quoting software that effortlessly helps you compare options in minutes will boost your chances of connecting with your prospects and making a sale.
In addition, if the prospect already has a health insurance plan in place, a quoting software can visibly demonstrate the difference between their plan and others available. For example, it can act as a wake-up call to urge them to question whether they are overpaying for their current plan. When you approach your prospects with a free proposal in the form of a health insurance quote, they will be more open to scheduling a meeting and hearing your presentation.
This is one of the most important benefits of using health insurance quoting softwareletting your clients know without a doubt that you are impartially shopping their options and helping them choose the plan with the most competitive rates for the benefits they want.
Nowadays, people want personalized products and services tailored to them. Benefits are no longer one-size-fits-all. Every group and every employee is different. Take the time to ask your clients about their budget and which benefits interest them most. By getting to know your current and prospective groups, youll be able to provide relevant quotes that meet their individual needs.
Demonstrating to the prospect that youre shopping for the best plan for them, instead of making the decision that is most convenient for you or picking your favorite carrier, will go a long way to convince them you have their best interest at heart.
Adopting health insurance quoting software will make you more competitive. When deciding what plan to offer their employees, your clients arent likely to simply buy the first one they come across; they’ll shop around and consider their options.
As more brokers start using quoting tools, you will need to offer more competitive and personalized choices in order to minimize the likelihood of other brokers coming up behind you and replacing you. The most efficient and practical way for you to do so is by entering your clients information in a health insurance quoting software and sharing all relevant information with them. You want to become their resource to find those options and help them do the comparison and analysis.
As your clients’ trusted advisor, you should know the top 10-15 most popular health insurance plan options within the state you sell in, and a quoting tool can help you solidify that knowledge. Utilizing health insurance quoting software won’t only give you access to rate histories for insurance companies or calculators that you can use to familiarize yourself with carriers, but it will also help you stay on top of rate changes.
Your clients will appreciate you reaching out to them to keep them informed and you can utilize this new knowledge to reach back out to prospects to share about new potential savings.
In addition, quoting tools can help educate employers too. As mentioned previously, quoting tools can serve as an eye-opener for HR professionals. Instead of leaving it up to their imagination, you can provide them with all the options and actual numbers. They won’t need to figure out if a particular plan is affordable or nottheyll have all the information needed to compare.
If you want to go a step further to boost efficiency, re-consider your quote-to-enrollment flow. Much of the data used in quoting and comparing options is the same data used for employee enrollments.
You can choose a technology solution that eliminates redundant, double data entry, saves you time and energy, and also provides a better online experience for your clients. By adopting a system that allows you to do both, you’ll be able to cut down on wasted time and money spent printing, collecting, and binding paper proposals and enrollment forms.
With health insurance quoting software, business decision-makers will receive an accurate comparison of relevant quotes to make smarter decisions, while youll be able to get rid of paperwork and human error to build quick, informative, and personalized proposals for each of your clients and prospects. A technology solution to generate health insurance quotes will improve productivity, deliver that personal touch that sets you apart, and increase enrollments by streamlining your quoting process.