Considering transition from Call Center to Independent Medicare Sales

[Cdevin]

Hi guys and gals.

Been lurking this forum for a bit, and figured this would be a good place to get advice. I currently work at a call center in medicare sales with about 40 other agents. I get about 25-30 calls per day, and make anywhere from 20-100 outbound dials. As is the case with paid traffic, they vary from "Hey I lost my card" to 20somethings who don't know the difference between medicaid and medicare, to sales that would be hard to miss.

Our company sells mostly MAPD's, and a few supps. During non-aep we do primarily LIS, and about 25-30% of my sales are SNP's.

Coming from literally having 0 knowledge of medicare (I didn't even know what medicare age was half a year ago) I sold 300 policies during AEP, and have about 120 this year so far.

The reason for my post is this: I feel like I should be making more money for how many sales I have.

I have compiled a list of what of what I feel like are Pros vs Cons of my employer.

PROS
1. No costs. Company pays all leads, all licenses( I have 30 states currently), E &O, and has gotten me appointed with 20+ carriers.

2. No chargebacks.

3. In house compliance/underwriting. If there is an issue, I don't have to do anything. Someone does it for me and alerts me on the issue.

4. Base pay of $20+ per hour. Benefits, pto, etc.

5. Not working from home

CONS

1. We don't get paid per policy, really. We get paid small bonuses based on the amount of policies we write per month, and a good months bonus is about 1k. They may pay a small bonus based on policies that are still on the books a few months later, since the dropout rate is huge since most clients are dual eligible.

2. We don't really get residuals. After a couple years you get some sort of legacy clause where you get $1-3 per policy, per month.

3. Bonuses are based on monthly production, so taking any sort of vacation guarantees you are going to not get a bonus that month.

4. Do not really see a very good opportunity for advancement. In 5 months of being licensed I am routinely in the top 3 in the entire company (some 10 year vets)


Basically I am asking for advice. Does this sound like a good place to work? What are my other options? How much do people tend to get per policy sold? I have 0 intention of being a field agent, but if I could sell by phone/internet and make more than I am currently I am all ears.

 

[kgmom219]

You have zero intention of being independent? Or zero intention of doing face to face sales?

There are plenty of people on here who sell O65 via phone only.

If you'll answer that, I'll try to help.

 

[Cdevin]

Sorry, meant 0 intention of doing face to face.

 

[Devin01]

So you will get a variety of answers from the forum members.

What is comes down to is....

You always have greater upside opportunity working for yourself and with that comes the challenge of creating a steady flow of leads when someone is calling into you, you know know this is easy pz.

Do you have the stomach to get out on your own and struggle for a while until you start implementing a system?

My agency is fairly established and have transitioned to the majority our sales over the phone now and we are, mostly med sup which comes with a 6 year residual.

My personal opinion, no residual is a bad deal for an agent. You can try and renegotiate with your boss for residual.. the worst he can say is no. And trust me trying to find agents that can sell is very hard. I always have adds on indeed recruiting agents.

I'm surprised you sell so much mapd over the phone.

 

[Chazm]

Not working from home is a “Pro”?

 

[Cdevin]

Meant to add not working from home in the con column also, with a quick explanation on both sides. I.e working from home with two young children is tough/motivation etc, but include it in the pros column also with how it gives me freedom to travel, etc. I was a nomad the last decade or so, so staying in one place makes me a little stir crazy.

Our training was based on selling as fast as possible during aep, which I guess is why we sell so much mapd over the phone. During aep I'd get an inbound call, and have the skeleton of benefits read and app done within 10-20 minutes. Think, "Hi you have reached the XYZ enrollment line. Do you have your red white and blue card? " We also get a lot of carrier overflow (UHC, Aetna) and are the first line of business for a lot of regional carriers (Vibra, Scan, Global, etc). We get a few t65, but those are rare, as most our entire outbound dialing list comes from LIS lists we get directly from carriers of people who have a pdp only. Generally we are selling on the benefits of having a mapd over just original medicare+ medicaid. We also have partnerships with few school districts/hospitals where we are the number said to contact on correspondence from their benefit administrator.

We also get a lot of paid traffic of people who filled out something online, then someone calls them and turns them to us. A lot of them are people who are inquiring about dental, and our job is literally to try to flip them into a mapd. A lot of them are simply people who are filling out some type of survey about trying to get more ss benefits (who by default would be more likely to be LIS). Another common one is someone fills something out about a cheaper supp, someone (not us) dials them, gets them on the phone and we usually turn a lot of people into mapds then. Usually there is whisper in your ear as who to answer the phone as.

There isn't really a boss to negotiate for residuals with. Everyone signs this contract, then a secondary one, (which I am on) then a legacy contract when they reach a certain amount of years which they will get small residuals on.

Just based on baseline and projection I anticipate doing about 800 apps this year, and likely getting about 80k. That is 100 per app. That seems very low...right?

 

[Chazm]

How do they get around calling Medicare recipients (cold calling) from a list of LIS clients? Was there a lead card filled out by them?

As far as what you should do, you should know they are doing the hard part. Talking to potential enrollees. Getting them to sign up is the easy part.

 

[kgmom219]

Mom's (this will make sense in a moment) 2 cents...

1. Staying home with toddlers isn't on your priority list (makes sense to me!)
2. You are probably going to want more freedom when kinder starts
3. I'm guessing some sort of guaranteed income is important at this point

There are 3 parts to this gig. Knowledge of product. Check. Closing the sale. Check. The 3rd part is getting in front of enough people to share the knowledge and close the sale.

I would hold where you are (jumping isn't going to get you that much) and plan on leaving when the kids start kinder. Get your budget as lean as possible. Save enough money between now then to buy leads for the AEP and be able to pay the bills until you start getting paid in January. Plus, you won't be paying childcare at that point. And they will be gone most of the day, so you can work from home.

 

[Cdevin]

Chazm, I am not sure. We are calling on behalf of the carrier, so maybe that is how it is allowed? The rest of the people we contact directly are filling out something out online. Sometimes I've called people who said they filled something out less than 5 seconds before, which is a pretty cool deal.

I am not saying I do not like the job...I do. I just am curious what else is out there in terms of phone selling.

 

[Todd King]

FYI. MA Plans pay about $433 and Med Supps will pay out at about 20%. If you do the math you will want to quit your job immediately, but hold the phone! It's the acquisition of clients that will kill the deal for you. Getting clients is the hard part.