Case study
Partena Health Insurance Fund
Partena is an independent health insurance fund which provides a personal service, useful digital tools and an extensive package of personal benefits and services tailored to every stage of life.
- Partena has 552 employees who serve 481,474 customers.
- Every month, 132,808 customers arrange their health insurance affairs online in ‘MyPartena’.
The challenge
Two years ago, we started with a RIO test to map out our human capital. We wanted to know who had the most sales potential to stimulate proactivity in the organization. The goal was to distinguish the hunters from the farmers so that we could let everyone function based on their strengths. At Blinc Sales Institute they told us that there is a good salesperson hiding in everyone. So, with that ‘everybody has commercial talent’ in hand, we went to work.
Koen Vandendriessche
Approach
- Workshop for the regional managers in which commercial processes are analyzed, the skills to be developed are determined and objectives and KPIs are established.
- Taking a close look at the commercial methodologies that are already being used and to what extent they are integrated in the daily operations of the field practitioners.
- Creating broad support for the RIO methodology within the organization to align all commercial people with the renewed strategy, so that it can be felt by customers and thus leads to improved results.
- Integrated approach for customer advisors, inbound service representatives as well as office managers, coaches and executives.
- Elaboration of a customized blended (online & offline) transformation process, the associated tools and plug-and-play solutions.
- Personalized approach & anchoring of the ‘change’ (HARTENA)
- Result measurement
The outcome
Partena Health Insurance Fund has experienced unprecedented commercial growth in recent years. One of the drivers behind this expansion has been the development of their custom sales methodology, Hartena, which is essentially a highly relational way of approaching customers. Koen Vandendriessche testifies that the Hartena sales approach has not only led to spectacular results, but also to a positive perception of sales among employees who predominantly have a relational channel of trust.
Koen Vandendriessche: “Today, our RIO coaches have already done three hundred field coaching sessions. That’s three hundred commercial conversations with customers that they follow on-site. In that way we embed the methodology. They work with the RIO coaching document for this. RIO ensures that you immediately speak the same language. During conversations they used to speak past one another and couldn’t put their finger on exactly why. Thanks to a common language, this now goes much more smoothly.”
This implementation requires time and follow-up from a management team that believes in RIO. It’s not: “We're going to do a training session. Take a test, here you have your profile, now do it!” Our RIO coaches also receive monthly supervision from a colleague OM from another region. That is how we monitor quality. The client advisors' approach has a direct effect on our customers and therefore also on our NPS. A year and a half ago we had an NPS of 13 (!). Today, for physical commercial appointments, we are at an NPS of 72. Those are Apple figures!
Koen Vandendriessche
Koen Vandendriessche: ‘A year and a half ago, after testing, we had 24 people who wanted to do front office sales. We now have 45 people, which is almost 50% of all front office staff. Here is a nice anecdote: we recently started with video calls for customers and prospects. So not for service, but for commercial questions. We had opened the assignment and asked who wanted to collaborate on a proof of concept. And I thought: I’ll be satisfied with three or four. Instead, I had to hold them back. And that’s a good thing. I had room for eight people to do a proof of concept. I had to go up to 14, otherwise I would’ve disappointed too many people. So, the negative connotation around sales from three years ago is gone. Just gone. That’s the biggest change our organization has seen. The front office only wanted to do service and now we’re seeing that the “farmer profiles” who once suffered from cold feet are saying: “Go on, give me two more slots for appointments” or “Send that prospect over to me.” We’ve hardly had to replace any people during this transformation process because the “RIO sales story” really hit home.’
Growth thanks to a customer differentiated service provision
Testimonial
One has more of an informative way of selling and approaches a customer/prospect with figures and analyses. Others do this in an outgoing way, with strong words and decisiveness. We emphasize that every style is equally valuable. In that way we’ve actually ensured that the concepts hit home. Our people understand what their channel of trust is and that they, too, can be commercial. During the training courses, they’re presented with techniques and answers for each RIO type. So, it’s no longer “that’s the way to do it” but instead there is a range and thus an opportunity to choose. The “hunger for sales” then comes automatically. Because it’s tailored to their personality.
Koen Vandendriessche
Commercial Manager at Partena
