Here is a roadmap to a new, proven revenue stream that can be easily sold and grow continually. It is called an HR hotline. It is contracted revenue so you can also sleep at night knowing that the checks will keep coming in. I write this from personal testimony, having set up many brokerages on this wonderful untapped revenue source.
President Barack Obamas signature legislation is a blessing for your business if you play it right. The Affordable Care Act and its myriad of new employment rules overwhelm your clients. This should be right up your alley since you are in the business of providing advice. Extend that advice to HR.
I recently had a conversation with one of our brokerage clients in the northeast. The president of the agency has 2,000 small and mid-size groups. My firm offers an HR hotline at a most nominal fee to his brokerage and others across the country, but there are other quality firms you can contract with, too.
A growing number of smart agencies use this opportunity for financial success. You likely leave money on the table and miss an opportunity for great customer satisfaction with this service on every call you make this year where you do not sell this product.
The tsunami of new and old employment rules befuddles employers, particularly groups with fewer than 75 employees. Employers with more than 75 employees start to have expensive HR managers. Employers with fewer than 75 employees have even more expensive amateur staff trying to pull off a serious and expensive part of your employers business: human resource management. Does that make sense to anyone?
Look at your book of business; employers with fewer than 75 employees are a massive group. You just have been presented with an easy upsell product to gain more revenue from someone who already loves you and will love you more once they discover the quality, low price and ease of this product.
The pro forma
We charge the client I alluded to above $300 per month with a one-year renewable contract. He marks the service up to $400 and makes $100 per month, per client. At 5% of his 2,000 small-group clients, that equates to $10,000 per month with zero work once the sale is made. He just basks in the new revenue and goodwill he receives from the very happy group of clients. At $400 per month, the employer gets a bargain, compared to calling their attorney at approximately $400 per hour. The client receives unlimited fractional HR from experts for less than $5,000 per year. How many of these can you sell? Gaining new marginal revenue per account will be one of your best strategies in 2014. Would this service help your retention? Absolutely! It is a very sticky sale to the employer, and every producer likes that.
My client in this column uses the fear motivator to sell the service. Once the sale is made, he just services the clients benefit needs, while the HR hotline service does the rest. He vicariously offers sound advice that clients want and need, and makes a few points for his trouble. He is grabbing a bigger hold of the client. Does not this sound like something you should be doing?
Davidson, CEBS, is founder of Davidson Marketing Group, FutureOffice Network and Dial FONHR. He is also on the faculty at the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Reach him at
