In the 1989 movie "Wall Street," the character Gordon Gecko made a memorable statement: "Greed is good." While I would not go that far, greed does sell group benefits. Last month, we looked at fear as one of those Maslowian primal motivators. This month, we'll look at another sales motivator - greed.

What is greed?

To some, greed is one of the seven deadly sins. It is avarice for sure. I am not advocating greed. I simply want to acknowledge that greed exists in abundance. That said, are your prospects and clients greedy for more? Yes, they are. I know from experience that employers respond to greed, and I'll bet you know this too. All of us are motivated by greed. I am now asking you to realize this powerful psychological driver in your prospect by incorporating it fully into your sales presentation. That's it - nothing sinful, just smart business.

Everyone wants to save a buck or spend less. Greed appeals to benefits buyers in a big way because we're usually dealing with big dollars. I found this out first hand in the early 1990s when I developed a health claims data analysis technology for the middle market. I joined a brokerage with this skill set to analyze health care claims and perform modeling to show specifically what an employer could do to save X on Y. It took off like wildfire.

What was happening that made this such a success? We were touching the greed nerve in a buyer by identifying specific savings instead of the fuzzy estimates that the carriers provided. Greed would trip the trigger of the buyer because, for example, changing the copayment on an office visit by $10 meant a lot of savings for a mid-size company.

You do not, however, need a large client for greed to pay off big time. Today's high benefit costs mean that incremental changes in spending add up fast.

Giving employers decision-support tools and control of their health claims data along with predictive modeling empowers buyers and appeals to their sense of greed by showing them exactly how to save money. I took that technology and some other ideas I invented and developed it all into what I think was the first value-added services company for insurance. I ran that company for seven years and saw that by building cool things that employers wanted, more sales were made. In its simplest form it was offering a buyer something he or she wanted and perceived as valuable, but did not have. I and my team of techs learned how powerful simple greed was in a sales shoot-out.

Producing savings

You can turn on the greed motivator in your buyer by producing savings in their benefits package and overall human resource management. This is what great sellers do well.

Here's a real life story on the use of managed care network disruption analysis, which can produce big savings for large employers. I was doing some consulting work for a major consumer lock company. At the time they had around 1,400 employees, five HMOs, an indemnity plan and a PPO. Then and now, managed care panels were more saleable by having large networks. We performed a network disruption analysis. We analyzed the nexus of a plan participant and a physician, clinic and hospital. As one might expect, we found a tremendous overlap across these HMOs and the PPO. Simply put, plan participants could largely be in any panel and have their doctor and clinic/hospital relationship. The disruption analysis told us that we could consolidate the five HMOs down to two networks. We didn't tell the five HMOs who would be the winner or loser in what our data analysis showed. Instead, we pitted one HMO against another, offering a larger employee population in return for better rates. The result was amazing. We consolidated their HMOs down to two panels for a net savings of $2.8 million. Two plan participants had to pick new primary care physicians. Those two plan participants were dependents. The allure of that $2.8 million was very strong. We were heroes and solidified our relationship with that employer.

Actionable intelligence

I had a major public utility as a fee-based account. They had around 3,000 employees. The benefits manager wanted to put in a wellness program. Like many wellness vendors, this vendor lacked hard claims data on the chronic health problems in this group. The wellness vendor came in planning to reduce long-term costs by addressing the usual suspects like heart disease, cancer and a few chronic disease cohorts. Health risk assessments and blood tests aside, the wellness vendor was shooting in the dark where wellness opportunities existed across the entire range of health maladies.

The actionable intelligence in this case was a detailed claims analysis that pinpointed which high-cost maladies existed in the group. The data analysis was a greed motivator because it showed the employer where to tell the wellness vendor to focus its interventions. It reduced the costs of assessing the group's wellness opportunities and gave the wellness vendor a jump start on its programming for this employer.

Make buyers look good

A large buyer had locations across a large area of southeastern Wisconsin, where I live. The buyer had a large panel PPO that covered most of the physician groups, clinics and desired hospitals in the areas where employees worked and lived. One day, a PPO upstart approached the buyer with astounding discounts if the employer would simply direct its employees to a few hospitals and clinics through plan design. Mind you, the employer already had these providers in the big PPO, but at a lesser discount. The question was: Would the employer save enough money and employee goodwill by directing employees to the skinny network when the employees could have access to the same providers and many more, but at a lesser discount to the employer?

To answer this question, one has to purchase all-payor data from vendors that glean these data from HCFA. The opportunity became more complicated when we realized that one of the hospitals in the skinny network was a teaching hospital, with naturally higher costs. In the end, we analyzed the all-payor data and figured out the true costs of care at each facility in the skinny network and the large network by isolating the costs of being a teaching hospital, technology at each hospital, its ratio of Medicare-to-private-patient load and a few more metrics.

Bottom line? The skinny network was producing a 2% real savings if the employer would direct its employees to it. Put another way, the employer could keep the bigger network, which employees liked, by foregoing a 2% savings. Here's where you come in. Appeal to the benefits manager's sense of greed by providing the ammunition for him or her to make the case to the benefits committee. They'll stay put and he or she will be a hero. You'll be a hero too. That concept sells!

Negotiating product rates and terms

We cannot talk about the greed motivator without talking about product rates and terms of the purchase of insurance products and services. Every seller understands this one. However, if you've been reading my columns, you know how I preach against selling based merely on rates. You have to add to the value proposition something that the buyer desires. The combination of great negotiated rates and terms along with added value is a killer greed motivator. It's really not that complicated. You just have to offer more than your competitor does to use the greed motivator.

Stealing low-hanging fruit

You come across a group whose broker is not adding value and who has not marketed the plan(s) for a few years. The cyclical pricing nature of carriers in a competitive marketplace usually means that you can put money on the table for the prospect just by moving the business to another carrier. All things being equal, you can push the greed button by producing new rates. Add value to the rate and you stand to pick up the group if rates are a big enough pain point for the prospect.

Health care reform and greed

As of this writing, health care reform legislation is still a work in progress. Some sort of reform is, however, going to become law. We know that the bills passed separately by the House of Representatives and the Senate are front-loaded with taxes in 2010 before any benefits start in 2014. That means that aside from normal health care inflation, employers will have new taxes on health insurance to contend with as carriers pass these costs along to buyers through higher premiums. Play the health care reform card by negotiating premiums down and, sad to say, offer plan designs that cost-shift to employees. Remember it's about greed.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I do not believe that either the proposed public option in the House or the "insurance exchanges" proposed in the Senate will make the cut in the final bill. These schemes will, at best, be watered down. That means sellers will have to adapt to a new legal framework, but group insurance as we know it will continue to exist, albeit at a higher price and with rationed care. Higher prices mean that greed will once again be a motivator. Sell greed and make more money.

National Association of Health Underwriters' Jessica Waltman shares NAHU's top priorities in working with lawmakers to improve health care reform. Hear her speak exclusively on eba.benefitnews.com/podcasts.