Brand New (Medicare) Agent Seeking General Career Advice

[ZJohnson]

[QUOTE="
Of course, it assumes you're working and actually selling 10 MAPDs monthly. Now, how do you do that? That, my friend, is the trick and your marketing experience won't necessarily help you there.[/QUOTE]

That's a mouthful...equivalent to a pregnant whale! Ima learning tho!

 

[sshafran]

Thanks... I have been doing the same recently but only hitting them once with little success. I have just recently moved to your strategy, less people, more hits. I'll let you how that works soon.

In my experience, that will net you a higher response rate overall. Will that work better every time? I don't know - the risk with the smaller batches is - quite literally, you may get a "bad batch" -- i.e., 200 who just happened to all have state health plans or something.

I know I need to work on my letters that I am sending. Too wordy but working on breaking it down over the course of several letters and earning their trust.

Copywriting is part science and part art. I've written some letters that I thought would just floor people and I hear crickets. I've written some that I thought were average but they got the phone to ring. Lots of good resources out there on copywriting...

I have reply envelopes and permission to contact forms included in each letter.

You may want to ditch that. Like, yesterday.

The site talks about live stamps vs an indicia. Do you have any opinions on that? I currently use an indicia and addressed with an avery label to get the cost down. I've had some in various industries tell me a hand written address and a live stamp makes a difference.

We use Live Stamps - the open/response rate is better. Indicia screams marketer.

Savvy consumers see the mass mail live stamp and know it's an ad but those are few and far between. Plus, the design recently changed.

I bet a handwritten address would be great and if we were selling Rolls Royce vehicles to high net worth individuals, then I would think the time/money spent writing out the addresses would be worth it. But, we aren't - a med supp pays well but not that well.

I could be wrong, but I think that would just get expensive and time consuming -- too much to justify... the cost to mail a letter would go up by about 20 cents + per letter to handwrite the address. Some fonts may come close but I still think it's obviously printed when I get an ad with "handwriting" on it.

 

[somarco]

Any hints on getting that faucet from drip to gush any sooner?

Figure out what works and then do it.

Figure out what isn't working and stop doing that.

Focus on PRODUCTIVE activities, not sales.

Activity is within your control. Sales aren't.

If what you are doing is generating income the money will follow. This is a get rich S L O W business.

 

[Alston]

You may want to ditch that. Like, yesterday

Why? Too early in the funnel, or do you prefer a different response mechanism? Or some other reason?

 

[MW Agent]

Figure out what works and then do it.

Figure out what isn't working and stop doing that.

Focus on PRODUCTIVE activities, not sales.

Activity is within your control. Sales aren't.

If what you are doing is generating income the money will follow. This is a get rich S L O W business.

There is absolutely nothing to argue in this post, it's on point. However, I used to hate getting this advice as a newbie since I had no idea on what was PRODUCTIVE activity and I would spin my wheels trying to figure it out.

What works depends on your product/target market. For example, I would not want to be new in an area dominated by MA-PD (like mine) and have that be my primary product line. It's my third product line in terms of revenue/time involved, but I still have 350 contracts that I have never once done anything considered marketing for them. I use to be heavier in the employee benefits space, some people started to age in, I learned about Medicare, and it grew organically from there by referral over 10 years.

My point is to pick a product line that you know a way to market it based on your budget and disposition. And I strongly suggest picking something with renewals if you don't want to be on a treadmill your entire carrier (Medicare, P&C, group benefits, ect).

How do you find out what PRODUCTIVE activity is in one of those product lines? You need to do your research and find producers 3 to 5 years in who are doing it. If you find someone like me that's been doing it a while, what I do won't work for you getting off the ground. What I did 10+ years ago to get off the ground may or may not work in today's environment. Someone 1 to 2 years in may not know if what they are doing is really working. 3 to 5 years in fresh enough they can tell you what worked in today's world and they probably have been successful enough to still be in the business.

Beyond that, track your activity and see what is working over time. Remember, almost everything is delayed results, so it's going to take some time on any particular strategy. Once you get an idea what is working best, double down on the winner and focus on growth to get you over the hump to a sustainable business.

 

[somarco]

I used to hate getting this advice as a newbie since I had no idea on what was PRODUCTIVE activity and I would spin my wheels trying to figure it out.

I understand, but each agent has to learn for themselves what works, what doesn't.

For me, sales and money goals were worthless because the result was beyond my control. What I CAN control is how many calls I make, how many letters mailed, how may blogposts, etc.

When I first went on my own I decided to use proposals as my guide. I figured if I quoted plans 5x per day I was bound to make sales. Just didn't know how many.

Some days I worked all day and didn't hit my 5.

Others, I would have 5 by 11 AM.

If you are giving proposals to 5 people per day SOMEONE will buy. Maybe 3 people one day, none the next and 1 the day after.

It plays off the "If you ask enough people to buy you will make money".

This quote "game" may not work for you or anyone else, but it did for me.

 

[sshafran]

Why? Too early in the funnel, or do you prefer a different response mechanism? Or some other reason?

The main reason is the intent of the letters to a local market can be laser-focused to generate phone calls. A reply card (in my opinion) would muddy the water.

• Nothing wrong with generating direct mail BRC, but generating them from a letter is not efficient. If you want to gather business reply cards - then use the generic BRC mailers that the big mail houses use. They're designed to generate that type of response (let's be honest - most of them look like they may be from the govt., and most prospects who fill them out and turn them in aren't sitting by their phone waiting for a call).
  
  
• If you want to send out letters as the local expert with the goal of them calling you for help - then give them some good reasons to pick up the phone and call you. Adding a reply envelope and a permission to contact form (in my opinion) makes things too cumbersome and confuses their next step. Again, just my opinion --

 

[mdlovell]

I do not purchase any leads. I used to - but now I do other forms of marketing. Specifically, I write letters to my local market and they call me asking for help.

I've had more success with this than with anything else - ever - by a long shot. It's not the cheapest way to market - but it's efficient. I can consistently write over 20 new people monthly and not kill myself chasing leads - they call me. When they call you... it's a completely different call then when you are chasing them.

In short - my marketing hits a small, targeted list, multiple times. That small list hears from me - with a local address - over and over again, beginning 8-months prior to t65.

My target is always for the First Year Commission to do just over the marketing costs. Year 2 + is pure profit -- and all referrals are profit.

You can check out what I'm doing at T65inbound.com

Would you mind sharing how many letters you are sending each month to generate 20 sales?

I'm consistently at 12 T65 sales per month right now and I'm trying to figure out how to get to 20. I figure I could:

• mail multiple letters to same people
• expand geographic reach and expect lower results but hopefully still positive
• add a completely different marketing strategy such as online