News
By Chris Pyne, Unum senior vice president for Sales and Client Management
First, the good news: Your benefits expertise and support have never been more important to the clients you serve. Now the bad news: Your benefits expertise and support have never been more important to the clients you serve. The deeper we dig into the benefits challenges facing employers, the more value we can provide. But these days, that means a whole lot of digging. If employers were chasing only the moving target of health care reform, that would be enough to keep all of us busy. Add in the cost pressures of an unsteady economy, the challenges of making sure diverse employees have the right benefits choices and the best benefits education, with human resources staffs stretched thin – and now you have an incredible balancing act to perform. It’s a lot to manage, but it’s also an environment where benefits providers and sales partners are in an incredible position to make a difference. That’s why Unum’s approach to sales and client management is so deeply connected. Our people in the field aren’t simply a sales force – they’re dedicated experts charged with getting to know and understand the challenges facing brokers and consultants and the employers we serve. It’s about consultation and expertise with an eye toward the long term; it’s about meeting benefits challenges with the right solutions that take into account how the external environment affects the questions we ask and the solutions we offer. That consultative approach is an important way we support the work of brokers in delivering benefits solutions tailored to meet the needs of each client. It’s an approach that offers resources dedicated to serving as an extension of our broker partners in support of our collective clients. And in this challenging environment, the more resources we can all dedicate to thinking strategically about meeting those benefits needs, the better. But as important as it is, our work isn’t always about the big picture. Day-to-day service and the relationships that support it are equally critical, for both brokers and employers. Our dedicated service teams work every day tackling the details to ensure our local field team can always stay focused on acting as strategic partners to businesses and their benefits advisors. They focus on making it easy to ask a question, get an answer and move on. The tight connections between those service teams and our field help power our ability to meet a variety of needs – from building customized education and enrollment campaigns so employees understand and appreciate their benefits to providing the right resources to help employers navigate health care reform. When we help our clients meet these challenges, we all benefit. The more completely we understand those challenges, the more powerful the solutions we can offer. And that looks good whether you’re focused on the big picture, the day-to-day details or all of the above.