PPB March 2015

Help! Insurance Costs Are Killing My Business

ECOND IN A FIVE

PART SERIES

health coaches, gym memberships, massages and more to set

the stage for employees who care about themselves and their

own well-being.

A wellness program has one goal—to improve health in

order to prevent or eliminate health risk factors and future

chronic diseases. The keys are to keep healthy people healthy

and to teach unhealthy, at-risk people how to reduce or elimi-

nate risk factors in their lives.

The common characteristics of an effective wellness pro-

gram are:

• The establishment of a supportive work environment that

encourages positive lifestyles

• Risk reduction through cessation of tobacco use, encouraging

exercise and fitness, improving nutrition and stress reduction

• Modifying health risks such as obesity, high blood pressure,

high cholesterol and, anxiety and depression

• Encouraging cancer screenings and preventative exams, flu

shots, immunizations, and dental and vision exams

• Using coaching, training, tools and incentives (promotional

products!) to help individuals make behavioral changes to

enhance quality of life

• Requiring voluntary employee participation.

Selling A Solid Return On Investment And Saving Lives

When you become an expert in producing safety and well-

ness programs, you literally become a

lifesaver. If that’s not reason enough to want to learn more,

try this on for size. That little wellness program referenced earlier

in this article was a $250,000 to $500,000 sale that repeated

year after year. When you provide programs and solutions that

save your clients’ money, improve their corporate culture,

increase productivity and provide proven ROI of 200 to 500

percent, you develop loyalty and move from being a commodity

to being a valued consultant.

Paul A. Kiewiet, MAS+, CIP, CPC, is an industry speaker,

writer and consultant and the executive director of the

Michigan Promotional Professionals Association. He is a former

chairman of PPAI and was inducted into the PPAI Hall of Fame

at The PPAI Expo in Las Vegas in January.

Next month:

Do your clients suffer from lack of loyalty

from their customers? Paul Kiewiet identifies opportunities

to help you solve that problem in part three of this series.

Find more winning campaigns by subscribing to PPAI’s

IDEA Source at ideasource.ppai.org/idea

MARCH 2015 •

PPB

• 73

“The key to wellness programs is to recognize when people are doing

things right. What gets recognized, gets repeated.”

For More Information

•

Visit

www.osha.gov

for guidelines and suggestions,

and to learn more about opportunities for safety

programs.

• Ask your favorite suppliers for wellness and safety

program-related case histories and resources.

• Spend one hour a week researching the topics online.

• Ask current clients what they are doing for employ-

ees in this area and suggest ways to enhance their

programs with the one marketing and communica-

tions tool that creates interest, affinity and engage-

ment—promotional products.

• Many of the largest insurance companies are already

in the wellness market. See what they are doing and

where opportunities might exist to help them expand

their efforts.