How to Sell Health Insurance for Part Time Employees

When you approach these employers, it's not just about showing them that you can get affordable health care into the hands of their employees. You're actually mitigating the costs of losing good employees and having to retrain new ones.

I really believe you guys are helping advisors focus on a part of the market that is very overlooked. You know, those businesses that have seasonal part time people who aren't typically either eligible for benefits or, or can afford major medical or full benefits. Talk to us a little bit about what you're doing at Evolve because I think, I think you guys have a very cool niche and again, you're targeted on a very underserved market.

Yeah, we are. And you know, there's a lot of industries that are underserved and a lot of the reasons is because they have such large populations of part time and seasonal employees. And right now I think the theme, if you turn on any news channel, it's dei, you know, people want to be feel included. Okay, so this isn't a DEI comment. This is actually people don't want to feel excluded when it comes to the benefits. So in the industries that we've created a solution for, it actually all started out with the staffing industry. We realized that the staffing industry was heavily underserved. And I'm not taking a shot at any traditional major medical broker out there. I understand that you're going to look at every company with the 8020 rule. Is this person going to be on the good end of the 80:20 rule or the not so good end? But here, here's where I believe this separates one benefit broker from the other. Is the one that's like, nope, I'm not messing around with that, it's not worth my time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The other, the other broker over here is like, well, maybe there's just not a solution that we found for these folks yet. Let's get out there and look. And so what Evolved Benefits has done is, has evolved the minimum essential coverage and minimum value plan world. So I will be fully transparent on this. And I agree because I was back in the benefit world when MEC plans were straight up snake oil. And the reason why they were is because the one carrier that was actually coming out heavy in the marketplace, they were training these brokers that did not know how to really talk about it. They were literally training them to go out in the market and use it as a replacement to the major medical plan. Well, all so all that's doing is just turning that broker into a commodity peddler. Because the main focus was, look how much cheaper this health plan is. I'm going to save you so much money if that employer on the other side, they're, they're like, this guy's a licensed agent in front of me, he must know what he's talking about. And the agent I have right now didn't show me this bor.

Right away you're hearing big savings.

That's right now a minimum essential coverage plan is a minimum essential coverage plan. It does not have hospitalization services. It has very robust acute care primary care specialist, urgent care lab X ray, a full prescription program with Teladoc. That's how most people use their day to days. But back in, and I'm going to say around 2014, it really had a snake oil type of connotation. So evolve benefits. We evolve that by first and foremost creating the tpa. Because these industries that we work with, there's a lot of high turnover. Think of restaurant franchises, think of the hospitality industry, the landscaping industry, and think about how competitive it is when it comes to poaching good employees from the companies within the same industry. So when you approach these employers, it's not just about showing them that you can get affordable health care into the hands of their employees. You're actually mitigating the costs of losing good employees and having to retrain new ones.

Well, you're right. I mean, you're in it. You're talking about industries where somebody may leave for another employer for a dollar more an hour. Right. And any kind of quality benefit can be a great retention attraction tool in those industries. And I always think back to my time as an advisor, those were the groups that people get frustrated with. Right? Well, they have 200 employees, but they have 32 on the plan on the major medical. And number one, I think a lot of advisors just ignore that type of prospect because, well, I have there's 200 employees, but there's only 32 on the plan. They don't think, well, what can I do for the other 170?

And my question is, why wouldn't they ask that about their own client?

Because they're care, they care about one thing, their revenue.

And they're very jaded in that there's only a major medical plan available.

Well, they think that's it. And what's interesting, the irony in my opinion, because I used to think this way, 200 life group, there's only 40 on the plan. We're only going to make like 15, 10,000, $15,000 on this. But we're Gonna end up having to do the work for 200 even though we only get paid for 40. And we forget to think, but what if we had a benefit for the other 160? You, if you're focused on your revenue, there's an opportunity to optimize your revenue also.

That's organic growth. How much does it cost in your marketing to get a new group? If you're anybody that's out there prospecting and getting new business, whatever you spent on getting that new group, you could literally analyze your existing book of business, see the delta on a census of any one of your clients and say, hey, I've got this many. Only this many people are on the major medical plan. What are we doing with these other folks? The thing is, is I'm going to call a lot of people out right now and I don't care. They're lazy. They don't want to learn that. They'd rather go play another round of golf than learn about another solution. And this is why a lot of brokers are getting displaced right now. There's so many hungry, younger kind of brokers out there that are using technology. They're collaborating with payroll companies, HRIS systems, they're collaborating with the commercial side of things. There's a lot of collaboration going on and people are getting warm handoffs to these opportunities and they're literally displacing incumbent broker that's been a legacy broker, a 10 year, 15 year broker.

And you bring up a good point. I know you said younger. I mean you're 52, dude, but you still get technology because you're all over LinkedIn. You have what, 27,000, I'm sniffing 28. You're crushing it there. And your content, you're all over the place. And I gotta believe that has an impact on how the broker market that you work with perceives you because they see you all the time.

Well, you know, it goes back to we talked about this before we started recording. You know, some people shut it down at 4pm and go home and they're all about the TV remote. Yeah, I'm not that person. So I will take a little break and give myself a little Tommy time, I call it. But no matter what, there's going to be a couple hours where I'm staying current on what's going on in the industry, what new technologies out there. It's not just for me. It's again, we talked about altruism when I talked about the themes of these books that I'm always attracted to. I'm Always asking myself, am I being a maximum service to the brokers I work with?

Yeah.

And one of the ways I can always be a maximum service is do some research that they don't have time to do and help them out with some knowledge that they can use to maybe go in a group, because I already did that research for them and also for myself.

Well, one thing I love, too, especially with your content, you know, if you haven't followed Tommy on LinkedIn, make sure you do. You put out a lot of video content, which I love. You constantly teach brokers about what you're selling, the mechs, you know, the MVP plans, whatever they might be. You're constantly talking about it. And that's. You're one of the few that really get what it means to use content to drive value. Because you have an attitude of, I'm here to serve, I'm going to give away the good stuff. And that's why you've. You're. You guys are having the success you are.

It's the go giver mentality, which is another great book.

Another great book.

I'm so glad you said this because anybody listening right now, if you're going to start doing your LinkedIn marketing, don't ever make it about you. This is. I'm not going to mention the company. I got to say this in a way where I don't call somebody out. There's a national company. Okay. They're national. I saw a post that said something like, our marketing department is the best ever. We did this.

This.

And I am.

Yeah. A lot of degrees in here.

And by the way, we're here to serve you. You read that. You're like, you.

Yeah, no, I get it.

Literally, just. Just serv. So if you look at, if you look at the content that I make, you'll never hear me once talk about myself. We're getting right into what the subject is. Okay? We're talking about today because we're educating people 100%. And sometimes it might seem redundant if you see it every day, but guess what? The same. There's 28,000 people in my feed. Somebody might not even see my feed for two weeks, so they might have missed it. So I'll just talk about it in a different way. But there's so much stuff to talk about, not only in this space, but around it. Because as health insurance keeps getting more expensive and these renewals keep coming in higher and these brokers are now scrambling because. Especially in the large group space, you know this because you were a broker when you get a 52% renewal and then you go out to market with RFPs and you all get DTQ'd because they look at the high claims, now you're in a spot and now you're very vulnerable to get displaced. So you need to come up with a solution. And I'm not going to give that way. On this podcast, I'm going to encourage you to get into my contact information, schedule a call.

I. I'll tell you that.

I'll teach you how to get out of that action. Oh, yeah, I'll teach you how to get out of that mess real quick. I've helped over 100 brokers last year get out of that exact situation. And I'm not just talking about the boutique brokers. We're talking about all the major.

What you're telling me is if you're, if your back's against the wall and you got a renewal that you can't do anything about finding me. Find the guy who knows a thing or two about having his back against me.

And trust me, this isn't an idea and you won't be a guinea pig. I've helped over 100 brokers get out of this very scenario. Not only did they keep the business, they didn't get displaced, but guess what? They ended up casting a larger net over the entire population, employees, because again, they only had those 15 people on the plan. Now they have 115 people on a couple of different plans.

I have a feeling you're going to get a lot of emails and potential calls after that comment because I'm sure there's plenty of people listening to this episode that have been in that position, especially about a month and a half ago when they were dealing with their January 1st.

Absolutely. It's been happening more and more. So it's actually 2025 you're going to see. So just to show you, we actually grew almost 140% this last year. Okay. Because of what's happening.

Congratulations.

Thank you. That one scenario right there is one of the major reasons why we grew and it's getting worse in that way, which means our solution is more relevant.