Do you consider your clients or prospects “partners”? It’s almost a trendy thing these days to call them that. Are you being trendy or do you really mean it? I find myself looking in the mirror on this one, and decided to get literal and search Dictionary.com for the actual definition. Seven definitions appeared as nouns, and in my book, the first and last one couldn’t be more different:

• Definition 1 (D1) – “a person who shares or is associated with another in some action or endeavor”

• Definition 7 (D7) – “a player on the same side or team as another”

Is Zywave a D1 or a D7? Are we someone who agencies are just associated with or are we a team? It’s a story like this one that makes me confidently say the latter.

Becoming a Team Player

Marsha is the benefit planning director at PayneWest, a Zywave partner and a champion for our employee benefits administration portal, HRconnection®. This story begins with a 550 employee school district account PayneWest won and started to service. As most brokers know, winning and serving public sector accounts is a slow process. It was business as usual as Marsha, her team and Zywave began loading nine plans into its HRconnection site. The school district then requested the online enrollment function, one that Marsha had little experience with.

After turning to her partner relationship consultant, Dana, Marsha was able to get the online enrollment function set up and employees started using it with ease. During this process, Marsha realized there was a real opportunity to use HRconnection to meet other clients’ needs, meet a broader market demand and win new accounts.

Marsha needed to get her team on board. So she turned to Dana to help her better communicate to her team the ease and importance of online enrollment in today’s world. Dana quickly developed a training webinar for all the producers on the team, featuring ways to use online enrollment to prospect, deep-sell and win new accounts. Dana took care of fielding any and all questions Marsha’s team had, responding quickly and efficiently so they could get out there and do what they do best—sell and service accounts.

For any technical issues that arose, Marsha knew who to rely on—Dan from partner support. Dan took care of all the details within the tool to make sure functionality was at the top of its game—helping to garner trust with producers. This was a team effort through and through, and the focus was the growth of Marsha’s agency.

Are You Doing Enough for Your Clients?

When you invest in Zywave, you’re getting a partner, and when we say that, we mean “a player on the same side or team as another.” You clients are looking for and need a D7. Do you understand their industry and business? Are you offering ways to help them achieve their goals and execute?

D7s should be able to answer “yes” to those questions and effortlessly explain what they bring to the table. A D7 is a lot more than just “associated with another in some action or endeavor.” Look in the mirror. What does it mean to say you are a true partner, and is that you?