By Bill Rusteberg
Health insurance brokerage is nasty business. It’s a replacement sale reliant upon destroying relationships. For some anything goes, colored under the heading “All Is Fair In War.” The good news is sometimes the good guys win. So how are they able to do that?
This short article focuses on only one aspect of unfair business tactics we have experienced over the years, a particularly brutal and unfair one that can destroy a relationship faster than a speeding bullet and is as powerful as a locomotive. It takes a partnership to coordinate and achieve total destruction of an existing relationship.
The best way to explain this is the tale of two plan sponsors, both of which were my clients. They are high profile clients any broker would give up their first born for. Good relationships were in place and a level of trust established with key decision makers.
As is always the case in our business, competing brokers would call upon these groups from time to time to begin the process of destroying relationships. One succeeded and we lost the case while the other didn’t and we kept the case.
What was the difference? Why did we lose one but keep the other?
The succeeding broker, over many months of repeated contact with our client, convinced the CFO they would be better served by firing us. It worked. The client fired us by simply stating “We’re going in a different direction.” When asked for specifics none with any merit were given.
The other case, one which we kept, the same broker made a debut. Prior to an upcoming renewal the CFO forwarded an email sent by the broker to the owner of the company pointing out misleading and untrue facts about us and our relationships within the insurance industry. The CFO’s message, “Bill, look this over and give us your thoughts please.”
Without hesitation we typed out an email hitting every point made by the broker as untrue with a factual explanation. We were thankful to be given the courtesy and opportunity to respond to what we proved to be an unfair, misleading, deceitful and dishonest attempt to gain their business at our expense. The other client failed to give us that courtesy.
In each instance there were two “decision makers” dictating the outcome, the plan sponsor and the competing broker. The issue was birthed in the practice of an unfair business tactic promulgated by one to be accepted or rejected by the other. In one instance we were given a fair “hearing” but in the other instance no “hearing” at all.
Years later I learned what the succeeding broker told our client in his successful attempt to destroy relationships. It was the same message as was delivered to the client who kept us on board, but unlike the other, gave us the courtesy of a chance to respond.
A few years after I was fired a broker friend called and said, “Bill, I met with your former client. They told me the greatest mistake they ever made was firing you. You should call on them, I bet they’ll hire you back”
“That’s nice to hear.” I responded. “But once trust is lost you can’t get it back.”
POSTSCRIPT: The client we lost has since changed brokers several times. The client we kept is still on board.
