Practice management

Staying in touch. It's what we do with our family and friends ... the people we care most about. So wouldn't it make sense that we also stay in touch with our clients?

In the next several columns I will be putting on my benefit sales trainer hat, with a series of columns called, "If you want to sell, do this." These will be detailed selling techniques that producers in my firm's FutureOffice Network use every day with great success.

It's now February - the perfect time to take stock of where you are and where you are going.

Looking for a way to promote his latest venture, a website where consumers can select an agent at the same time they buy their policy online, Alan Katz decided to start his own blog both as a hobby and in hopes that linking to it would increase the search engine optimization of the insurance website.

Beginning in 2014 all employers with at least 50 employees must buy comprehensive heath insurance for all full-time employees or pay a penalty of $2,000 dollars per employee.

Guardian Life will withdraw its medical insurance product line in all states, and will wind down its existing business over the next two years.

The reverberations from last year’s seismic legislative tilts will be keenly felt by insurers in the coming year. A new report by Boston-based Aite Group finds reaction to health care reform and financial services reform among five trends that will shape each sector respectively.

The value of cyberspace during open enrollment is at least on equal footing with face time, suggest two recent unpublished surveys of employees and carriers that sell voluntary benefit plans.

Life insurance and annuities made modest gains in the third quarter of 2010 — gross written premiums were up 6% over the same period in 2009 — but the industry is far from healthy, warns a report from Aite Group in Boston.

A combination of regulatory, political and economic factors are set to create an uncertain environment for U.S. health care insurers, Moody's Investors Service reports, leading to a continuation of the negative outlook for the industry.

Hopefully you all had a wonderful holiday season, and are back to work energized and ready to tackle the many important decisions that await you.

From childhood on, we have mentors for everything we do - parents, teachers, coaches, counselors. Everywhere we turn, a mentor is there to guide us through uncharted territory and help us succeed.

Some years ago, I was a researcher for a major employee benefits educational association. I learned that changes in federal legislation mean big business for advisers because of the demand they create for education. So here is my educated prediction for the new year: the equation in 2011 will be education equals sales.

With the new year in mind, I have a question for you: Are you working from a blueprint for success in 2011, or are you simply doing exactly what you did in 2010 and hoping for a different result?

Without a doubt, many of us working deep in the weeds of our organization's health plans are wary of the ever-mounting regulations surrounding health care reform. Recently, I attended a presentation that included a flowchart of implementation dates that looked sort of like a MapQuest depiction of lower Manhattan.

It's hard to believe we've reached the end of yet another year - it seems like 2010 began just a couple of months ago. And what a year it has been.

Unemployment. These days, it's an unfortunately common term. Many women have lost their jobs - single, married with children, or otherwise. But even more men have been laid off, which brings rise to another problem: a major shift in family roles.

These are uncertain times for employee benefit brokers and consultants. "Obamacare" and the minions in the federal agencies are entrenching national health care with speed and design. Most recently, brokers found out that pay for the various services they provide employers will be placed on the administrative side of carriers' ledgers, making commissions subject to the law's medical loss ratio restrictions.

Boosting employees' take-home pay by providing voluntary benefits at significantly reduced premiums? That's a winner.

The year that is drawing to a close just might be remembered by benefit professionals as the most challenging one ever. Despite signs of recovery in some sectors of the economy, as 2010 ends the country remains stuck in the worst employment downturn since the Great Depression.