If you have been in the Voluntary Benefits arena for any length of time, you know that there are a plethora of reasons for a Decision Maker or Business Owner to implement a Voluntary Benefits program. Below are the top ten.

Top Ten Reasons For A Business To Implement Voluntary Benefits

• There is no direct cost to the business owner to implement a VB program.
• The employees pay the VB premiums if they want the products.
• There is no hard sell to the employees.
• Better benefits help attract better employees.
• Better benefits help keep better employees.
• The employees are thankful to have the opportunity to protect their lifestyle and their family with VB.
• The VB programs are significant in the lives of the employees when they need them most.
• VB programs can lower the employee’s and employer’s payroll taxes.
• VB can lower fraudulent Worker’s Compensation claims.
• VB help keep the business owner out of the loan business.
• VB can cure cancer. (Not really, I just threw that one in to see if you were still paying attention.)

Quick side note here… Do you have these 10 things memorized? Can you say them in your sleep? I might suggest you memorize them before going any further….

So how can the Decision Maker possibly say no to a program that has a list of benefits as long as the one above? How can they possibly shoot you down? Trust me, they figure out a way.

Unless you get the Decision Maker out of their comfort zone, your chances of closing are somewhere between slim and none.  And Slim just left the building. I’m not saying it won’t ever happen. In fact, if you meet with enough Decision Makers, you will close a few cases. If their sister just was diagnosed with breast cancer, they might let you talk to their employees about your cancer program.

So how do we get Decision Makers to “feel the pain” of staying at their status quo? How do we help them to see that it is critical for the health of their organization that they offer Voluntary Benefits? The answer to both questions is that we have to knock them off their comfortable perch. We have to disturb them. The best way I have found to do this is by asking them disturbing questions.

Disturbing questions get the Decision Maker to stop for just a second and realize that perhaps there is something that they hadn’t considered. Perhaps it would be important to offer these types of benefits to their employees.

Conclusion: Sometimes you have to disturb the business owner to get them out of their comfort zone.

Question: Are you willing to challenge the Decision Maker, risk upsetting them, and possibly get a no? Or would you prefer a bunch of maybes….