Health Insurance Industry
Client Solutions
Major health insurance underwriting staff needed time management techniques to deal with increased workload.
Major health insurance firm experiencing declining enrollments transitions to a more consultative selling approach.
National health insurance provider upgrades skills of telephone customer service team.
Dental insurance firm upgrades selling and negotiating skills of sales force, sales support staff, and underwriters.
Free 15 minute phone consultation.
Time Management Training
A regional health insurance firm had added some additional states to its core base of business but had not increased the number of employees. The sales staff focused on bringing in new business in these new geographic regions, which resulted in a 20% increased workload for the underwriting staff. The complexity of the underwriting process to evaluate new customers, combined with the fact that the number of underwriters had not increased, created stress among the underwriters to do more work that was deadline-driven.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
A Peak Selling sales training consultant spoke initially by phone with the Director of Underwriting, during which the above issues were first identified. A follow-up meeting helped to clarify the specific training needs but also revealed a critical new piece of information, namely that the underwriters were working together as teams to handle the increased workload in the new states.
Sales Training Solution
A customized 1-day sales training program was designed for this client, and used certain sales training modules from Peak Selling’s Time Management for Sales and Team Selling workshops. Each participant also completed a self-survey to identify their strengths and areas for improvement when working on teams. To ensure that the underwriters used the skills afterward, we provided them with a variety of reinforcement tools such as "Solutions for Common Time Wasters” and "Weekly Worksheet for Setting Priorities”.
The Director of Underwriting reported afterward that the attendees had learned and applied many practical sales and time management skills, and that the managers and senior underwriters were also using the sales training workshop concepts to mentor the newer underwriters.
Sales Training for Health Insurance
A major health insurance firm needed to reverse a decline in enrollments.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
For a variety of reasons, enrollments had declined in the past few years. To help reverse the decline, new senior sales management was hired. The new sales management team assessed that the entire sales force needed to become more consultative and less focused on price. More specifically, the sales force needed to do a much better job of asking probing questions, differentiating themselves from competition, and communicating this information through the broker to the client.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling's Value Selling Workshop was customized extensively to address all of the above issues. Since the entire sales force was involved, we wrote realistic role plays so that they could apply and practice the skills in actual sales situations, ranging from calling on the owner of a small business to meeting with brokers or consultants who represented large corporate clients. To ensure that the sales force used the sales skills afterward, we provided the managers with a variety of reinforcement tools such as our coaching kits.
Relevant training materials available for managers through our Coaching Kits product line, specifically the Selling on Value Not Price and Handling Objections kits.
Customer Service Training
A national health insurance provider needed to upgrade the skills of their customer service team to handle challenging customers over the telephone.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
The sales force had done a good job of bringing in a lot of new clients and members, but the health insurance firm found that the customer service team was not performing up to expectations at servicing and responding to incoming telephone calls from these clients. The health insurance firm wrote internally some Telephone Caller Scripts. However, these scripts by themselves did not greatly improve the situation. The management team and training department decided that a customer service training workshops was needed.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling designed a customized version of our Customer Service and Support Workshop. We also consulted with the health insurance firm to revise their Telephone Caller Scripts to be more customer-focused and concise. During the workshop, the customer service employees had an opportunity to practice using these new scripts in realistic situations. The teaching emphasized two main areas: first, what they could say or do to "wow" customers and, second, how to maintain call control yet still build rapport and strengthen the relationship with the caller.
Value Selling and Negotiation Training
A dental insurance firm initiated a national sales campaign, and needed to upgrade the skills of the sales force, sales support staff, and underwriters to sell and negotiate on value, not just price.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
The new president of the dental insurance firm brought in a new senior sales management staff to lead an aggressive sales growth campaign into new markets throughout the United States. They assessed that the current salespeople, sales support staff and underwriting employees were doing a good job at servicing existing clients, but needed to upgrade their skills so that the sales growth campaign with new customers would meet profitability targets.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling used a combination of our Selling on Value and Sales Negotiation Skills Workshops to kickoff the sales training program at their national sales meeting. To ensure that the entire organization worked as a cohesive team on these new sales opportunities, the sales training workshop included sales support staff and underwriters. Each salesperson applied the concepts to a real life situation, and worked purposely in intact teams with the appropriate sales support staff and underwriters. Since the class size was large at the national sales meeting, we provided a series of follow up workshops taught in smaller groups.