Mixing High-Tech and High Touch

I came to MJ Companies two and a half years ago to launch and build our presence in Colorado. Prior to that, I worked for almost 18 years at another company that is one of the largest brokerage sponsors in the world. I went from a massive organization to anchor a small, independent one. One of the main reasons I did that was because I felt like I was so far removed from actually serving clients, which is what I love to do. I wanted to get back into that core client relationship. Companies hire us and stay with us because of that personal touch that the firm offers every client, so when we launched here in Colorado, that was point No. 1 for us.

Our price has to be good and our tools have to be as well. But what they [new clients] have told us has been that we presented very differently than everybody else they met. That we really seem to respect each other as associates, and we don’t talk over one another. And we really do project to partners that we would be a flexible organization.

It can be small things, like taking a complex piece of insurance data and explaining what it means to them. Or when new pieces of legislation pass, tell them if it’s important to them or not to worry about it. So, I think part of what it takes is to lean in one more inch. Just taking that one extra step. Instead of just diving into business, start an email with one or two sentences about the person you are writing to, like something about their family.

Technology is needed to do things that are low value, time intensive, and process related. For example, we draft a lot of communications for our clients to help inform their employees during open enrollment. We use personal psychology to understand what kind of platform will resonate with them. If we are working with a manufacturing company, they are probably going to relate more with a platform with bold, bright colors. With a restaurant client, it would be more fun, fresh, and silly. Either way, their brand, colors, tone, and culture all come through. And because it’s all digital communication, we can track everything. We can track how many people have looked at the information, how long they spent reading it, and which videos they watch. So, it helps to know, for instance, if none of a client’s employees clicked on a video, maybe they should take it down.

First and foremost, you have to know your client. So, when we’re getting to know a new client, I like to ask questions during our networking process that give us an idea about their use of technology. I ask how they like to be communicated to—by text, phone, or email. Do they prefer to meet in person or virtually? I ask how they leverage technology in their business and how they communicate with their customers. Because generally, that’s how they like to be communicated to as well. I ask how they are embracing technology and artificial intelligence in their firm.

If they are using it in their own business, they’re probably going to be OK with us delivering more technology. Whereas if it’s an organization like a municipality—like our county, city, or school district clients—they’re a little bit slower about adopting technology. Then you tailor how you deliver services around that. We have a very robust technological tool that houses all of the kinds of financial metrics that a company would need to manage their benefit program. Every one of our clients uses it, but some have their own login so they can get into it and play around and get under the hood. Other clients rely on us to do it for them, and we can build ad hoc reports. We have a lot of flexibility there.

When I was considering coming to MJ, that was probably my No. 1 concern: whether MJ would have similar tools as larger firms and similar expertise and talent. And I’m sure potential clients are wondering about that as well. I found out two things. One, just because the company is smaller doesn’t mean they’re not extremely well funded. Large companies have to answer to shareholders, so they often don’t make new investments as rapidly as private organizations. Private organizations don’t have to worry about maximizing shareholder profits so they invest more dollars back into the business. I saw that working at a larger organization for 20 years; everything had to drive back to shareholders, and for our technology we were using Windows 7. Coming to a firm like MJ, I was blown away in a good way. I have seen the investment in so much technology that lets us deliver more to our clients.

Because we are an independent firm, we’re better equipped to be nimble and flexible with technology. All firms are investing in technology for their processes and operations. They invest so they can do as much as possible with as few human beings as possible because people are expensive. When they do that, it forces all of their clients to use the technology in the same way. But we take a more personalized approach. Our contract is pretty much the same with every client, but how we deliver the tools to them is different. Other firms can’t, or don’t, do that because that takes too much time.

I mentioned the financial analytical tool that we use. Part of our job as a broker is to help clients develop strategies to manage their healthcare costs long term. In order to do that, we need to know where they’re spending money. There’s plenty of tools out there that take in claims information, so we can know that Company A is spending a lot on pharmacy and build a strategy around that. And Company B is spending a lot on emergency rooms, so let’s figure out how to change that. There are plenty of tools on the market that can help mine and aggregate all of that data. But there are limitations to those tools. They can be really expensive, and you are at the mercy of the vendor—you only get an upgrade when they decide to do one, or you may have a field that you want that you can’t put in. Third-party tools aren’t meant to get really specific for one particular user. So, we decided to build our own. We invested in data scientists and coders and built our own in-house tool. This allows us to do upgrades when we want. We cut out the middleman and deal directly with the insurers. They feed us the data and they are more comfortable giving that information to us and knowing it’s secure.

Meeting people and looking them in the eye helps build trust and rapport. The key thing for me is trust. You can’t build trust through technology. It’s really hard to be authentic when you’re behind technology. One great example is ChatGPT, which is the best and the worst thing. I think there’s a role for ChatGPT in what we do. We write a lot of collateral materials. And when we’ve created proposals, we can ask ChatGPT to answer a particular question, and it will do it.

But you can’t use that to answer questions for your clients. Like when Roe v. Wade got overturned. I needed to know what that meant for my people. If they came to me asking what they needed to do, I had to think that through for each client. I would call them and even go to their office and help them understand what they should know about it and if they lived in a state that is going to be impacted by it. That is the personal element of what we do that I still don’t think any amount of technology is going to replace.

I got a piece of advice when I was coming out of college and got my first job: find a reason to touch base with every single client every single week. I love it when people reach out to me and say they were thinking about me. I know people are busy and maybe they don’t have time to reach out every week, but maybe once a month. Or stop now and again and think about who they haven’t seen lately and reach out to them. And it could be something as simple as a quick call saying you saw a baseball game last night and thought about your client who loves baseball. We all get busy. We all get caught up.

But write those two sentences at the beginning of an email to greet the person instead of launching right into business.

I had a client who was asked which vendor partner they couldn’t live without, and they said MJ. If you were asked which one of your vendors you couldn’t live without and it’s not your broker, it should be.