Salespeople often are advised not to talk about politics orreligion, and for good reason. People have strong opinions aboutthese two issues, and being too open about our views is a good wayto run off potential customers. Brokers seem to take the “mum's theword” approach on two other subjects as well: COBRA and taxes. Thedifference is that, in this case, it's our silence that could costus the business.

So why would an advisor steer clear of these topics inparticular? The reason we give our clients is that they fall underthe category of employer or tax law, not insurance law, and anyadvice we provide is not covered by our errors & omissionsinsurance. The real reason, of course, is that we sometimes don'tknow the correct answer. If we did, we wouldn't be so worried aboutmisadvising them. Unfortunately, health reform is a game changerthat's forcing brokers to redefine themselves as consultants.

Going forward, we'll need to do a much better job of proving ourvalue to our clients; in this new role, “pass” is not anappropriate answer when they ask us a difficult question. Does thatmean we need to become experts on everything? Of course not. But wedo need to know the basics and be able to point our clients in theright direction. With COBRA that's fairly easy — a number ofreputable third party administrators provide COBRA administrationservices for a very reasonable price.