Could Selling Payroll, Open Doors for New Sales?

liquidblue33

Super Genius
100+ Post Club
yea, i did see the post on learning to sell payroll, but that was spam. Here is the deal. I started selling insurance back in September. I have been "surviving" selling mostly individual plans. For now, i do a lot of phone cold calling to small businesses. Nothing out of the box, just keep hammering away at it. I am hooked up with a good local GA to offer group. I have done a couple of proposals, but they turned into individual sales after the owner looked at the cost.

Recently i have been considering other ways to supplement my income, because as you all already know, not everybody i cold call is even a viable prospect for health ins. "we are all covered through a spouse", "I'm with the VA", "on Medicare", "we use a PEO", etc. etc. Well not long ago i called on a lady who owns a locally based Payroll company. She has been successful competing with the big names and now wants to expand. Her pricing and services are good and the average commish on a small business (ten employees) would be around $400.

My question is, have any of you guys or gals every tried to sell payroll and then pick up the employee benefits. If i make 100 cold calls for payroll service, do you think the response would be any better then if i made the same 100 phone calls for health insurance? Could i bring them up in the same call? I know that most likely i will just have to give it a test run, but i wanted to get some input and opinions from some people who have been in the business longer than myself.
 
Keep focused on what you want to provide. If it's health, do health, if it's payroll, do payroll. If it's employee benefits, do all of employee benefits.

I'm guessing, but I think you'll find that most companies who want payroll services have them already and are probably pretty hard to move. You'll find the occassional business owner who wants full bookkeeping service, since he's tired of doing it himself.

I've never tried to sell payroll. I have a few companies that I will refer the business to (payroll, or more likely, bookkeeping as a whole), but in general, this isn't my business, I prefer to stay focused on what I do.

At the end of the day, it's all about where you make your money.

Dan
 
I work with a man from paychex, we refer business to each other, it has been a very good business relationship, and mutually beneficial to both of us. I could see your idea working
 
I work with a man from paychex, we refer business to each other, it has been a very good business relationship, and mutually beneficial to both of us.

I'm glad it worked for you because I recently found out that Paychex actively sells group health. They want to be a one-top shop for businesses.

I had an arrangement with a local Paychex rep here and sent him some leads and prospects... and wondered why I never heard back from him. Well, a couple of weeks ago I got a call from a company called PrimePay and the regional manager told me that unlike PayChex, PrimePay does NOT sell or market insurance services and that I might want to end my "partnership" with PayChex.

I met with the local rep and decided to give her a try.

I didn't know who to be more pissed off at... the PayChex guy for not telling me that he was going to take my leads and compete with me... or myself for not doing my usual research and due diligence.

I've been telling my small biz clients about my PayChex experience each chance I get. Small biz people understand the concept of "fair play" and "let's not spit in the soup as we all have to eat"... as opposed to large banks and companies with an Enron or AIG culture. If I'm the cause of a client to leave PayChex and go with someone else, I will consider it a "victory" of sorts.

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency
 
You are correct, PayChex & ADP are both in the benefits business now.

We use Quickbooks here in our office and use PayChex for payroll services. The bookkeeper here asked our PayChex rep an intergration (with Quickbooks) issue and the rep said he would stop-by our office to help...and asked if he could bring along their benefits specialist.

PayChex is also making a hard marketing push (cold-calling) to the Long Island, NY area right now.

Benefit brokers would be wise to be aware of these payroll companies as serious competitors.
 
I'm glad it worked for you because I recently found out that Paychex actively sells group health. They want to be a one-top shop for businesses.

I had an arrangement with a local Paychex rep here and sent him some leads and prospects... and wondered why I never heard back from him. Well, a couple of weeks ago I got a call from a company called PrimePay and the regional manager told me that unlike PayChex, PrimePay does NOT sell or market insurance services and that I might want to end my "partnership" with PayChex.

I met with the local rep and decided to give her a try.

I didn't know who to be more pissed off at... the PayChex guy for not telling me that he was going to take my leads and compete with me... or myself for not doing my usual research and due diligence.

I've been telling my small biz clients about my PayChex experience each chance I get. Small biz people understand the concept of "fair play" and "let's not spit in the soup as we all have to eat"... as opposed to large banks and companies with an Enron or AIG culture. If I'm the cause of a client to leave PayChex and go with someone else, I will consider it a "victory" of sorts.

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency

Ouch, thats a shame Al. My guy let me know upfront he did group health, but at the time I only did individual anyways. It's a shame you teamed up with a dishonest guy. I hope you become a thorn in that guys side over what he did to you. Good luck, Al, I will be rooting for you :)
 
You are correct, PayChex & ADP are both in the benefits business now.

We use Quickbooks here in our office and use PayChex for payroll services. The bookkeeper here asked our PayChex rep an intergration (with Quickbooks) issue and the rep said he would stop-by our office to help...and asked if he could bring along their benefits specialist.

PayChex is also making a hard marketing push (cold-calling) to the Long Island, NY area right now.

Benefit brokers would be wise to be aware of these payroll companies as serious competitors.

Jack of all trades, master of none. Russ Brown tells it like it is:

 
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Ouch, thats a shame Al. My guy let me know upfront he did group health, but at the time I only did individual anyways. It's a shame you teamed up with a dishonest guy. I hope you become a thorn in that guys side over what he did to you. Good luck, Al, I will be rooting for you :)

I sent a letter to the rep so he would know that I was not happy with his ethics, etc. He called and we had sort of a meeting of the minds. He says that while Paychex DOES sell group health, he personally does not do so (is not licensed) and he says he does not pass on leads to anyone in his office that does sell this. He feels he was truthful with me when we first decided to share leads.

Of course, I told him I felt otherwise and we politely agreed to disagree. I kind of see his point and I think he sort of sees mine. He didn't think it would be fair of me to bad mouth him to other clients, and he convinced me that it probably wasn't. So we agreed that I would recommend PrimePay (his competitor) and say to clients "No matter what payroll service you use, make sure they don't compete with your service(s) because some of them might."

I don't really want to harm him personally... it is not HIS fault his company sells group health... and I take him at his word that he does not do anything to help Paychex in that arena. He's not a bad guy... been doing it for 8 years... and I guess I'm just the first person that took exception to him and his company. We had a long talk and I think he will have a lot more transparency with other agents from now on... which will be a better victory for me than if his livelihood was impaired.

Case is closed and we've both moved on.

Al
 
good to hear things have worked out.
My attitude on things has always been
if someone screws you, screw them back 10 times harder then they screwed you.
Dont know that its always been healthy. but.....
 
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