The 2015 Benefits Selling Expo, held in Scottsdale, Arizona, drew more than 950 attendees, 114 exhibitors, a new Broker of the Year winner, two talking heads in a PPACA debate and plenty of industry dialogue in its 11th year. If you missed the event (where were you?!), here's a look back.

Be a broker champion

There are a lot of threats out there for benefits professionals: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, mergers and acquisitions, rising health care costs and technology, to name a few.

But the biggest threat to your professional — and personal — success is actually yourself.

That was the word from Jack Singer, president and CEO of Psychologically Speaking, to a room full of brokers at the opening keynote of the Benefits Selling Expo May 19.

“I'm convinced everyone in this room has a gift but not everyone opens it. All of us either have a best friend or an enemy in our head,” he said. Which one you choose it to be—either a motivating voice or a voice telling you you will fail—“is the key to success, and also the key to your health and the success of your life,” Singer said.

Keynote speaker Dr. Jack Singer: “Become a champion.”

He told brokers the way to differentiate themselves from just a “sales professional to a world-class professional” is to create a winner's mindset with “linguistic nutrition.”

“What you say to yourself has to be nutritious, but it is usually poisonous. You tell yourself, 'I can't do this. What if this happens?' You have to change it not just for your career but for your life.”

Here are ways to do that and become a “champion benefits professional.”

1) Recognize, and silence, your inner critic. There is a thing called “imposter fear” that hinders success for every single person, Singer said. “This is the thought in your heart of hearts that 'Everyone has faith in me, but I don't and everyone will find out I'm really a failure.' It's about being afraid of what can happen.” Brokers and agents, for example, might fear competition is getting stiffer, someone won't bite on your sales pitch or PPACA might doom your business. That turns on the “fight-or-flight response,” Singer said, which also hurts your health.

“It's not OK if you have these anxieties or worries 30, 40 times a day,” Singer said. “Every time you worry or are anxious, it turns down other parts of your body. Your immune system is shutting down because of your lack of control over your internal dialogue.”

The first step, Singer said, is to acknowledge that that inner voice exists and that it's not OK. Second, Singer said, “whenever you receive positive feedback, as soon as you can, pull out a notebook and write down what that person said. And those times when you are feeling helpless and hopeless, read it and it will evaporate those feelings.

2) Think mental toughness. Simply put, you have to grind through when things get tough, Singer said. “Think to yourself, 'I have to start prospecting because sooner or later someone is going to benefit from what I'm offering.' Don't let stuff get you down. Bounce back from setbacks. As soon as you recognize it, get it to stop. As soon as you start a negative thought, snap a rubber band on your wrist. Thoughts are habits and they come back,” he said.

3) Repeat an identity statement to yourself. Don't be humble about your gifts and what you can, and do, offer as a benefits professional. Know you have value. Think about what your gifts are and repeat it to yourself daily.

“Tell yourself, 'I am a fabulous benefits professional and here's what I'm good at.' This is what you need to repeat to yourself over and over again.”

4) Focus on the process, not the outcome. Though the ultimate outcome a benefits professional wants—closing a sale—is important, you can't get to it without focusing on the process. “Take charge of the process of being a world-class benefits professional. People who worry about outcomes are those who won't get them,” Singer said. “If you worry about commissions, approvals, closing the sale, you aren't thinking about the right thing. If all you're worrying about is the outcome—if I'm going to make a sale—you take away the process which leads to the sale.”

5) Make a great first impression. The first seven seconds, Singer said, are critical in making a great first impression to clients. Most importantly, you have to remember to be an active listener and to focus on clients, and not on yourself. “You have to smile, you have to maintain eye contact, you have to ask them questions about their life instead of selling them something,” Singer said. “Take a genuine interest in them—whether it's the church they go to, the football team they like or their children. If you do that, they will read that interest and they will trust you.”

Tucker Carlson entertains the crowd.

PPACA is 'flawed'

Though their political affiliations diverge, commentators Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson agree on one important thing: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is imperfect, at best.

“I have a thinly-veiled contempt for the people that rolled [Healthcare.gov] out [last fall]. First impressions really matter. And if you can't get the computer to work, for a computer-based program, that matters,” said Begala, a political analyst, CNN commentator and former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “It was really embarrassing.”

During a lively debate May 20 at the Benefits Selling Expo, the talking heads sparred over the problems plaguing PPACA and the law's importance to political parties in the future.

Though Begala said the policy behind PPACA has been flawed, he sees a silver lining from long-term outcomes, as evidenced by a plunge in the number of the nation's uninsured—Gallup, for one, says the nation's uninsured rate dropped 5 percentage points alone since the individual mandate went into effect—and a slower annual health care cost growth.

Attendees enjoy lively keynote debate.

Perhaps the biggest indicator of success is his own experience with how the law works: Begala and his family are enrolled in Obamacare.

“Once you got past that first rollout, it's been good. It's been great for me and my family.”

Carlson, editor-in-chief of The DailyCaller.com and co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend, was quicker to bash PPACA, slamming the law as the result of lobbying at its best.

“This is the ugliest kind of legislation by lobbying that's ever been,” he said. “It's an inside game. The administration will say, 'This law was for you, and you needed it.' That's not true. You and the rest of the country got left out.”

“Part of my frustration with Obamacare is the way it was sold and oversold,” Carlson said. “It was based on deceit.”

Paul Begala makes the most of his turn.

Carlson also criticized how quickly PPACA was thrown together and fed to the public, citing the debate over the subsidies language, and the subsequent Supreme Court case King v. Burwell, as an example of this.

“There was a drafting error in the single most important legislation document in my lifetime. Really?” Carlson said. “The legislation was so shoddily constructed that it's actually offensive. It's offensive to the public.”

Begala agreed, criticizing the administration for not having a backup plan should the court kill the subsidies.

“Most of the people in Obamacare get that subsidy,” he said. “And there is no backup plan—in either party. It's a disaster—and in that case, maybe the court will have common sense and admit it's just a drafting error.”

But Begata is not completely confident that will be the case.

“I have zero faith in the court,” he said. “They don't live in the real world; they are entirely too political—more than any in the history of the court.”

Plus, Begata noted, the Supreme Court already saved PPACA once, so it very well could, “in the second bite of the apple, throw it out. It could go either way; it really can.”

Colonial Life networking party in full swing.

But despite the subsidies case ruling, and for better or for worse, the health care reform law is here to stay, they both agreed.

“It's here to stay,” Carlson said. “People yearn for predictability. Ten years from now, they will be getting an inferior product at a higher cost. Republicans were wise to understand that once you implement it people will come to expect it. Soon, they will settle for less in exchange for predictability.”

Both speakers addressed problems with the Republican party—namely, the fact that the GOP continues to rally for repeal of Obamacare, without getting into specifics or how they would fix the law.

The rallying cry is way past its due date, they said.

“The Republicans … it becomes like a stalker thing. They stand in front the White House with a boombox saying 'I hate Obamacare,'” Begala said.

That sentiment was among a main theme the pundits pressed during the nearly 90-minute headliner: Adapt or die. The political party that's willing to adapt and rapidly change as the times change is the party that will succeed over time, they said. And it's also a lesson for business—in particular, for benefits brokers, Begala said.

“[These politicians and presidential contenders] are trying to adapt,” Begala said. “And I guarantee that's what you're doing in your business, or else you wouldn't be here.”

Broker Innovation Lab reception.

But there is a striking difference between those in politics and brokers, he continued.

“What you do,” he said to the crowded room, “[is] you help people. You help them live the life they want to live. Not so much in politics. What you do is really important.”

Photographs by Tom Jordan