Marty Traynor is vice presidentof voluntary benefits at Mutual of Omaha.

This month, we'll consider some additional ways of thinkingabout voluntary benefit enrollment that can help getinside the minds of eligible employees and help them make gooddecisions.

In her book “How to Fascinate,” Sally Hogshead lists seventriggers that key people's personalities. She equates influence tofascination—if you're fascinated by an idea, you will not onlyrespond favorably (buy it), you will also continue to favor it (ownit) and potentially become an advocate (sell it).

Related: Recommendation tools make a big impact onemployees' benefit selection

Hogshead's insight is that how people respond to a product orservice depends on how the idea fascinates them. The seven triggersof fascination (and possible corresponding statements duringenrollment) are:

• Passion (don't leave you family high and dry—you care forthem)
• Alarm (you have financial risks that could ruin you or yourfamily)
• Mystique (you probably don't realize what this product will dofor you)
• Power (take charge of risks—don't let them take charge ofyou)
• Prestige (only caring people provide enough protection fortheir family)
• Rebellion (live on the edge, but protect against your greatestrisks)
• Trust (this protection is reliable—it's there when you needit)

If you are intrigued by this model, go to www.howtofascinate.com and take the assessment to findyour own type. It will help guide your enrollment presentations byhelping you understand how you tend to fascinate others. Then buildyour presentation around your strongest talents, as well as gaugingthe triggers that will be most effective with your audience.

Another part of the toolkit to help make enrollmentopportunities more effective is the use of stories. In his book“Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Powerof Story,” Peter Guber observes that motivating people to act inthe way we want often depends on our ability to touch a chordthrough a story. Stories resonate on both the logical left brainand the intuitive right brain.

Stories can be interwoven into enrollment in many ways. One isthe negative:

Let's consider Susan. I used to work with her. When a voluntarydisability income protection plan was offered,she decided it was too difficult to understand and too expensive,so she didn't buy coverage. A few months later, she found out sheneeded surgery and would miss several weeks of work. She was turneddown by the underwriters. Susan saved a couple of hundred dollarsby not buying the product—and lost thousands.

The other story approach is the positive:

Jack was one of my coworkers. When we were offered a critical illness plan, Jack knew nothing aboutthe product. But when he thought about it, he realized he knewquite a few people at work who had gone through a critical healthissue, and most of them talked about all the expenses that theirmedical plan did not cover. He found he could purchase a $20,000benefit for just over $25 a month. The benefit may have saved hisfamily from going bankrupt when he had a critical illness eventjust a few years later.

When you think about how to influence employee behavior duringenrollment, think about how techniques like fascination andstorytelling can bring life to the benefit options being offered.They can help make enrollment experience more fulfilling foreveryone.