Workers’ compensation coverage is one of the hardest types of business to win, as agents aren’t able to “shop around” for lower quotes—the premium is what it is, at least in the short term.

However, long term, you can certainly help employers reduce their work comp rates through proper claims management and safety practices. This is where you can demonstrate your value to a prospect and convince them that their agent wasn’t doing enough. In fact, in many cases, you can show how much they are overpaying for their work comp premiums and educate them on how you can help reduce that number.

Open the door with free value

The key to this strategy is giving away something valuable for free before you ever even discuss taking the AOR. OSHAlogs is an incredible web- and mobile-based tool for agents to use with all their clients and prospects. It makes it simple to track injuries, create required OSHA logs, and more—plus, as the agent, you get notified every time there is an incident. This allows you to promptly follow up and help manage any potential claims.

It’s simple to give any employer (client or prospect) a free account on OSHAlogs and quickly show them how they can enter their past OSHA data and track incidents moving forward. This will greatly simplify their OSHA recordkeeping efforts and they will think highly of an agent who provides such a beneficial tool (for free) without even writing their insurance.

That can easily be enough to win over a prospect, but the real power from a prospecting point of view is the analytics data. By getting an employer set up with OSHAlogs, you now have access to a trove of valuable data, such as past incidents, claims, OSHA logs, DART rate, and more. From here, it’s simple to say: “Hey, while I’m helping you with your OSHA compliance, I noticed that you have a bunch of claims that are over 10 days…” (or whatever catches your eye). This opens up a strategic conversation about claims management and safety, plus the impact on their work comp premium.

Close with hard numbers

Once you have opened up the strategic conversation about how claims management and safety programs can lower work comp premiums, it’s time to hit the prospect with some real numbers: their own work comp premium and if they’re paying an unnecessary surcharge (i.e., if they’re paying more than the average for similar industries and companies).

Ask if they can provide their experience mod to you so that you can tell them if they’re overpaying for work comp insurance. For example, if their e-mod is more than 1.0, you know that they are paying a surcharge—and it’s the perfect opportunity to ask if their current agent had made them aware. Then discuss the data from OSHAlogs and suggest strategies to lower their mod, letting them know that if you were their agent, you’d be regularly involved in OSHA compliance and work comp strategies to keep their employees safer and their premiums lower.

These strategies can work any time of the year so here’s a timely spin: the March 2 OSHA recordkeeping deadline just passed, and many employers did not comply. Learn how to use the deadline to amp up prospecting efforts in this guide.