If you’re in the workers’ comp space, there are several things you should avoid at all costs.

1. 

   Joe Paduda

   Do not talk about your service as innovative or cutting-edge. Insurance people in general, and work comp people specifically, avoid innovation like the plague. Innovation is scary, risky, uncertain and potentially career-damaging. While it might help improve results somewhere, it might also cause friction, upset employees, add stress and surprise folks. None of this is good.
2. Do not focus on what’s good for the entire company. Counter-intuitive, right? Well, not at all. Organizations don’t make decisions. People make decisions. And those people mostly make decisions based on what makes them look good, more important, more successful, which may — or often may not — make the organization more successful. Example: buying health care based on how much of a discount you get off overpriced and often-unneeded services.
3. Talk about what works in other industries. As a hugely insular, parochial and navel-gazing industry, workers’ comp is not interested in how other payers address health care costs, health care quality, pricing, reimbursement or evaluation thereof. Nope, workers' comp is different, special, unique and in a world unto itself.
4. Suggest you have something that is materially better than what they are doing today. Absolutely not, because if you do, that implies what the prospective customer is doing is inadequate, ineffective unproductive, or all of the above. Nope, most buyers would much rather not know that they can improve.

What does this mean for you?

So, is all this tongue-in-cheek? Heck no. After three decades in the business, I am quite sure these faux pas are much more likely to lose prospects and customers than increase sales.

Joseph Paduda is the principal of Health Strategy Associates, a consulting firm focused on improving medical management programs in workers’ compensation. This column is republished with his permission from his Managed Care Matters blog.