Why collaboration is independent brokers’ secret weapon

The English poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island,” which is true — unless you are an employee benefits agency owner or producer.

In this career, you are truly isolated, and you learn to keep your own counsel. You may have a beer with a competitor, but you would never discuss your strategies or clients. And I get it. Employee benefits has always been a zero-sum game: if you win an account, another broker loses an account. So agency owners and producers learn to keep their cards close to the vest — and keep their business private from other owners and producers.

And yet, I’m writing this column from Sir Richard Branson’s private island in the Caribbean, where I’m his guest for a week-long mastermind retreat with a group of disruptive leaders from around the world. The purpose of this gathering? Collaboration. We’re all here to grow people and leaders, and to learn to grow our business and our impact in the world.

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To that point, I’ll quote another great poet. “The times, they are a-changin’.” That holds true for independent brokers and advisers. Driven by venture capital and private equity firms, the insane level of M&A activity in our industry is decimating the ranks of independent benefits firms, creating giant national players that didn’t exist three or four years ago. In addition, established national brokers continue to acquire agencies and books of business in order to show growth to their shareholders.

You already know what all this means for you: fewer independent firms to compete with, but more competition from the national brokers. That’s more challenging for the independent guys — so how can you keep up?

Savvy independent brokers and advisers are collaborating, and even partnering, with each other to become more effective for their clients, and win business from bigger regional and national brokers.

In Indianapolis, Jeff Fox, then the benefits practice leader and principal at HJ Spier, collaborated with Ben Conner, CEO of Conner Insurance, to host the NextGen Health Care Executive Summit, a half-day event for area business leaders. Both Jeff and Ben invited their own clients and prospects, unafraid to expose them to what was, technically, their competition. Instead of fearing each other, they agreed not to take each other’s accounts and focus instead on employers with large regional and national shops. Jeff even recruited Ben to join the NextGen Benefits Mastermind Partnership, a national peer-exchange program for innovative agency owners that had already helped Jeff take his business to another level.

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In Texas, Tammera Hollerich, CEO of IBT Consulting, was approached by a local government transportation agency to respond to a benefits RFP. Feeling she lacked some of what the agency was looking for, she partnered with Dallas-based Danny O’Connell, CEO of Next Level Insurance. Together, IBT and Next Level were more competitive than on their own.

In Michigan, Michael Lutz, CEO of Compass Benefits Group, is partnering with Mike Hill, founder of Total Control Health Plans, on select groups where together, they are more competitive against bigger regional and national brokers.

Instead of aiming their firepower at each other, these independent advisers are standing back to back, protecting each other’s book while partnering to make themselves stronger and more competitive against brokers they never would have targeted in the past.

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The result? These advisers have won mid-market groups with hundreds, even thousands of employees, from larger regional and national brokers. As the national houses and regional brokerages are coming downstream after smaller groups, these collaborative independents are avoiding each other’s clients and going upstream to take larger groups from the bigger shops.

And all these particular advisers have collaborated with each other to learn and master next-generation benefits strategies that allow them actually to improve the quality of care, eliminate employee out-of-pocket expenses, and reduce employer year-over-year health care costs by $2,000 or more per employee per year.

If you want to take bigger, mid-market accounts from bigger, even national, brokers, find a like-minded broker or adviser in your market, lay your cards on the table and collaborate. When done correctly, one plus one can equal three.