When a company needs benefits coverage, why is it that P&C agents often pass off prospective clients to their benefits agent without taking the time to have a conversation with them first? The answer may seem obvious—because if they need benefits coverage they need to talk to a benefits agent. Think again. 

In the insurance business, we all know the benefits of effective cross-selling. We solidify the client relationship, keep competing agents at bay, and maximize the financial return for each relationship.

However, agents generally don’t cross-sell in the most effective way. We’ll explore a better way in this blog.

How to cross-sell between workers’ comp and employee benefits

What if you could present a case that if your agency doesn’t write both sides of a client’s account, you can't perform effectively for them? Would you be able to cross-sell and win new business more easily? I think you know the answer.

Let’s dig into why this is true. 

The health of your clients’ employees impacts the safety of their population and vice versa. If you are already the workers’ comp agent and you are tasked with keeping injuries at bay, there is a wide divergence of outcomes between healthy employees who get hurt on the job versus unhealthy employees who get hurt. 

Duke University recently did a study that revealed that obese workers who experienced work-related injuries or illnesses had:

• 2 times as many workers’ comp claims
  
  
• 7 times higher medical costs from those claims
  
  
• 13 times more lost days of work

When talking to prospects, discuss how you can help improve accident prevention, and your benefits agent can help with wellness programs and benefits education. Educate prospects on how you will be able to perform better for them by having you write both sides of the account. Use this sell sheet as cross-selling tool!

Tools that bridge the gap

There are two tools available through Emerge Apps that make it extremely easy for you to talk to prospects and clients about the value you add, and explain how these tools bring P&C and benefits together. Helping existing P&C clients understand these tools will ensure they understand the benefits you can provide when covering them for both lines.

• OSHAlogs is our easy-to-use but extremely powerful OSHA recordkeeping app. When you purchase the app, you get unlimited licenses, making it easy to give all your prospects and clients access to showcase your capabilities. OSHAlogs gives you insight to critical injury information, including employee name, title, date of injury, type of injury and days away from work. 
  
  
• With Wellness401k, we embed health and safety topics to care for employees at home and at work, keeping them safe and healthy to return to their families each and every day. You can provide free access to the software (if they’ve already subscribed to OSHAlogs.com, clients or prospects don’t need a new username and password), giving you another easy way to engage with the employer. Let them know you are offering this software to both benefits and P&C clients, and set up some time to talk to them after they’ve tried it out; it will give you an opportunity to talk to them about a potential cross-sell.

Increase your focus on cross-selling today

While benefits and P&C are handled by different agents, employee health and wellness directly impact safety and workers’ compensation. A strong cross-selling strategy within your agency can ensure that you don’t miss out on potential business.

We make cross-selling easy! Grab this sell sheet to use as a cross-selling tool to make the case to your clients.