How to Sell Payroll without Having to Sell It

At the end of the day, you live and breathe insurance. If you’re selling workers’ comp, your main focus is to find the best rates for your insureds and make sure they’re fully covered if something happens to their employees.

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It can be daunting to pitch new products to them, especially when there’s a learning curve. But you have the special position as a valued advisor in a business owner’s life. Here are some tips to add more value to your clients when they ask for a payroll recommendation.

The Pitch: Benefits of Tying Payroll to Workers’ Comp

Combining payroll and workers’ comp offers several benefits to your business clients. 

As an insurance producer, you can provide value to your insureds by educating them on all the ways they can reduce risk and make their lives easier. Here are the main ones:

Staying Compliant

Keeping track of all the rules and regulations required to stay compliant is challenging for any small business owner. What’s one of the toughest areas to stay compliant in? Payroll.

Payroll compliance means adhering to various state and federal regulations on how employees should be paid. What does this look like for a business? Tracking hours worked by employees and making sure they take breaks, providing paid leave (if that’s part of the small business’ benefits), and ensuring non-exempt employees get overtime pay.

Your insureds also have to record and hold onto meticulous records in case a payroll issue arises. Why is this all important? Even small payroll mistakes can result in a small business facing huge penalties and owing a lot of money.

In California, the Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) gives workers the ability to file civil lawsuits against employers that commit labor violations.  Employees can file a claim online and move forward with a representative lawsuit, which means a class does not have to be certified (as in a class action lawsuit).

That’s not all. 

In 2019, plaintiffs (the suing party/aggrieved employees) won 81% of wage and hour certification cases. The average settlement for a wage and hour lawsuit was $8.2 million.

Furthermore, if a disgruntled employee chooses to file a complaint, they can request timecards from the employer. Every pay period with incorrect timecard data could result in additional penalties.

Business owners need solution providers that know the ins and outs of labor and wage laws. Working with someone who understands the federal and state-mandated requirements for payroll and workers’ comp lets businesses take the best steps to prevent legal action. 

An all-in-one payroll solution like Hourly accurately tracks and records employee working hours, breaks, overtime and paid time off. Business owners can rest easy knowing that their payroll records are compliant. 

Freeing Up Time 

Too many business owners rely on paper timesheets or manual data entry to track employee hours. When payroll time comes around, it’s a constant hustle getting workers to turn in their time cards. 

When your insureds spend all their time tracking down time cards or verifying data entry, growing their small business may be the last thing on their mind.

Using all-in-one payroll software like Hourly takes the legwork out of payroll and makes it easy to keep accurate records. Hourly collects time, task and location data from your workers as it happens and sends it to your insureds in real-time. What’s more—it automatically generates pay stubs and pays workers.

Generating and Keeping Tabs on Employee Forms and Notices

Hourly’s app also ensures employees have all the forms they need, all in one place.

With Hourly, business owners have access to I-9s and W-4s for employees, plus w-9s and 1099s for contractors. 

For employees, the app offers fast and easy mobile onboarding. Each team member can see their pay stubs and tax documents whenever they need them. Employees can also set up direct deposit or make changes to withholdings right in the app. 

Getting the HR Help Your Insureds Need Pronto

Small businesses often rely on a network or community of resources to help them, but sometimes things come up they can’t find quick answers to—like new legislation and paid FMLA leave. It’s nice to lean on an expert to guide a small business owner through these topics rather than letting them spend hours researching it on their own only to figure out they’ve gotten it backwards. That’s where finding the right payroll partner comes into play. 

Hourly offers one-to-one HR outsourcing and online training in topics such as sexual harassment prevention, diversity and inclusion, and more. 

Making the Payroll Transition Easier with Hourly

There are many payroll solutions out there, but not all are created equal. 

Business owners need providers who understand their industry and are available to answer important questions about payroll compliance and business liabilities.

Large corporate behemoths like ADP and Paychex offer online payroll and tax solutions, but customers get a different person each time they call for assistance, and can end up explaining the same problem to multiple people before they get a straight answer (if they get a straight answer). 

Small business owners call customer support because they’ve got an issue, not because everything's going well. It'll make your insured’s life easier if they only have to explain the problem once to someone who can help right away. Hourly assigns each client to someone who knows and cares about their business, but that’s not always the case with other services. 

Even QuickBooks, which provides a host of business services, doesn’t give customers a seamless experience. Instead, it leaves them trying to keep the login credentials for several accounts organized.

Hourly’s payroll solution integrates seamlessly with time tracking and workers’ comp. It’s easy for both employees and their teams. 

Customers, like the ones who provided reviews below, can rely on Hourly to understand their businesses and help them save time and money. 

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While finding the right payroll solution can be straightforward, there're huge barriers to switching, like tax records a small business owner has to keep straight, time cards that need to be brought over, not to mention all their employee data. Just thinking about it is enough to make a person’s head spin! That's why Hourly handles the entire payroll transition for your insureds. Seriously, they do it all and call your client once it's done. It couldn't be simpler.

Grow Your Book of Business

For the insurance agency or independent insurance agent, perseverance and cold calling are no longer enough to sell insurance and grow a book of business. 

To get more results from phone calls and sales meetings, you need to know your client’s industry and the tools that can help them most. Afterall, when they're successful, you get repeat business, and hopefully a recommendation or two sent your way too.

Offering comprehensive business solutions can help you increase sales and boost your referral and retention rates.

Hourly gives business owners everything they need for easy and accurate payroll processing, and to combine payroll with workers’ comp. Explore Hourly’s payroll solutions today.