Q. How do you figure out who tracks it?
To me, it doesn’t really matter who does it. You just want to make sure somebody does it and that they are consistent and that you don’t get lazy on it because that’s what can happen. If you were just to do it one month, and then you don’t do it and don’t follow up with it, it loses half its effectiveness.
There is always going to be that effectiveness that each person understands that the way they get compensated is going to be dependent on it. It may not matter to them what other people are doing.
I have people in my office that say, ‘I’m going to maximize this every month guaranteed.’ They could care less if two-thirds of the people don’t even get one point. They are in it for the money. Then I have other people that say, ‘You know what, it’s not as important to me.’ Those are the people we are constantly trying to work with.
Q. Where does this rate when you are looking at cuts?
I would think it would be the last thing you want to cut. It would be better to cut excess fat. If you have some employees you can do without because volume is down, that would be the first thing I would do.
Now I’ve never been in that position, so I don’t like to fire people. I know in an economic time [like this], it’s hard to do that. If you were to take away the WIG program, it’s like raising taxes in a recession. It’s the last thing you want to do because it further contracts the economy.
If you’re losing 10 percent of your clients and you grow by 10 percent, the net effect is where you started. Why would you want to take away something that could offset the recession? I would do an across-the-board cut or try to find some fat I could cut out.
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