July 2014

Ep #16: How To Make Your Agency A Feared Competitor – With Kevin Trokey

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Today, Kevin Trokey joins us on the program.  Kevin is a founding partner of Q4Intelligence, a consulting firm dedicated to removing the barriers that keep independent benefits and insurance agencies from reaching their full potential and becoming feared competitors.

Kevin reveals how his extensive experience as a broker and a principal helped him develop the firm’s unique approach.  Tune is as Kevin outlines his company’s solution-based selling system that changes the agency model.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • How Kevin’s prior experience as an agency principal helped him to develop his transformational methodology.
  • What Charles Dickens has to do with agency transformation.
  • The unintended consequences of traditional agency management.
  • The barriers that keep agencies from taking control of their business.
  • How Q4Intelligence separating the product and the consultative stages of the process.

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Ep #15: Medicaid Enrollment Strategies Help Employees and Their Employers – With Ben Geyerhahn

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It is my pleasure to welcome Ben Geyerhahn to the program. Ben is the CEO and founder of Benestream, a company that helps identify employer’s Medicaid-eligible employees and makes it easy for them to enroll in Medicaid. This provides a more appropriate plan design for that population while taking them off their employer’s core plan.

I’ve invited Ben to talk about how Benestream has shaped the shift with their distinctive methodologies and tools. We also cover how brokers can use Medicaid to help their clients save money and comply with PPACA.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • How Ben’s experience in the public sector helped him to envision the shift and shape it into Benestream.
  • The path the company took to develop its unique methodology and software.
  • How Benestream works with brokers to help them bring the concept to their clients.
  • Why Medicaid-eligible employees have different needs than other employees.
  • Why Ben thinks the number of Medicaid expansion states will continue to increase.

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Ep #14: A Former Canadian Helps Brokers Deliver Post-ACA Focused Benefits – With Reid Rasmussen

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ShiftShapersCoverArt This week, we welcome Reid Rasmussen, co-owner and president of Texas-based Freshbenies.  Reid is a former Canadian whose background informed his insight into the future of American healthcare reform and helped him to shape the shift by creating a unique product offering that provides help to those dealing with today’s health care designs.

Tune in to learn how Freshbenies helps brokers make “big company benefits” available to a much broader market and where Reid sees that marketplace going in the future.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • What Reid saw in Canada that transferred into an understanding of
    coming needs in the USA.
  • How looking outside the health care industry informed Reid’s process.
  • Why there was a need to make “big company” benefits available to individuals.
  • How Reid helps insurance brokers to see non-insured products in a different light.
  • Reid’s vision of the future of today’s benefits brokers.

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Ep #13: New Employer Conversations in a Post-Healthcare Reform World – With John Spann

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On today’s episode, we are pleased to be speaking with John Spann of Spann Insurance in Nashville. I invited John the program to discuss innovative conversations he is using to position more traditional benefits in a post-reform market.

A 63-year old third-generation property & casualty insurance agency with an internal benefits practice, Spann Insurance was created by John’s grandparents in 1951. Learn how John’s family-run agency has been able to re-evaluate its benefits practice and help clients create employee appreciation in the light of health care reform.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • How the employee benefits practice fits within a P&C agency and what some of the challenges are.
  • How PPACA has shifted the focus of John’s approach to his book of (mostly) small group clients.
  • How John creates a new opportunity for employers to provide appreciated benefits when their employees purchase their core coverage from the exchanges.
  • How John leverages individual products within a group motif.
  • How disability income can be used as a “new” benefit.

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