Part 1 - Benchmarking from Coffee Shop to Boardroom

In this story our Advisor was alerted to an opportunity to meet a prospect in the city that was meeting brokers to discuss their employee benefits plan.  There were clearly some events that had prompted this exploration and fortunately our Advisor Partner got the referral from a colleague on LinkedIn.

Our Advisor went into the Monday morning coffee chat not quite sure what to expect but ready to ask questions, learn more and share their approach.  The client opened up about the concerns management has had that the benefits may not be where they should, they've worked with the same broker for years and the same provider and HR now has the green light to explore what they might be missing.  Our Advisor took this opening to share the concept of benchmarking. Using CloudAdvisors our Advisor was able to produce a blank report (no client plan) but with a ranking of data from the prospects industry and province. They shared this basic sample (paper report, we'll get them onto a tablet soon hopefully!) and it changed the conversation.  Instantly the dialogue shifted from concept to context and advisor and employer were debating different benefit options.  Every other broker had discussed taking the plan to market and evaluating cost but this touched on the other half of the equation, evaluating coverage! Our advisor partner suggested they would be able to comprehensively benchmark the benefits as a start and this information would quickly reveal some of the gaps and essentially, show the employer what everyone else was doing differently.  With that, they parted ways and later in the day, a benefits booklet in PDF was emailed to our Advisor Partner who uploaded it to CloudAdvisors. 

As our Advisor Partner in this story has a Professional License our team conducted the data entry and alerted the advisor that the group was ready for benchmarking.  With confidence in hand from a quick turn-around an email was sent to the prospect to suggest a follow up meeting, this time in the prospective clients boardroom and with full detailed comprehensive benchmarking findings. From the simple sharing of the concept of benchmarking and a blank report, our Advisor Partner was able to leverage their new technology to engage this employer, get the booklet and secure a follow up meeting, this time with more decision makers in the room!

We hope this brief example encourages more advisors to talk about sharing benchmarking in prospect scenarios and not just with clients.  We also hope this will have more curious employers ask for fresh insights that could help them make better decisions!  Stay tuned for Part 2 of this story and how our Advisor Partner turned the boardroom benchmarking presentation into an AOR and a new client!

Continue to Part 2

For More Information:

How to Generate Benchmarking Reports for Virgin Groups