See WSJ Article.  The new minimum Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) requirements mandated by the federal health overhaul will force health insurers to adjust their business models and aggressively reduce administrative expenses.  The fastest way to reduce the MLR is to implement technology initiatives to automate and streamline processes and transactions.

MLR is a performance metric that measures the amount of spending on medical expenses as a percentage of total premiums or revenues.  The new law stipulates that the MLR must exceed 80% for providers of individual and small-business health plans, and 85% for large-company health plans.  Said another way, providers of individual and small-business health plans must not allocate more than 20% of total premiums to administrative costs plus profits, and providers of large-company health plans must not exceed 25%.

Is your company asking you to target larger deals and cross-sell solutions? Are you being asked to develop a more meaningful relationship with customers? Are you trying to establish yourself as a business partner rather than a vendor? If so, you’re probably redirecting your selling efforts toward customer executives.

If you are struggling to engage these executives, you need to think about your sales approach. Are you asking awkward questions like “What keeps you up at night”? Do you portray a negative tone by probing for pain and posing irrelevant questions like “If you had to do it all over again …”? Have you used the solution selling vision processing model to produce meaningless chatter like “If I could help you grow sales, decrease costs, and increase cash flow, would you be interested?” If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to step back and retool your sales strategy.

FASTalert: Bank of America’s CEO Shares His Vision, Finally.  See  WSJ article.

BofA’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, laid out his long-term vision for the U.S.’s largest bank by assets.  For sales reps selling into Bank of America, you should consider this presentation a ROADMAP for your solutions.  To get the investor presentation and audio file, go to BofA’s website.