Marketing Plan to Sell 40 Med Supps a Month?

[Glen Shelton]

Group retirement health plans are also increasingly going away. See AT&T, ALCOA and many others who have gone to defined contribution instead of defined benefit.

As someone else noted earlier, in many of the southern states, a lot of the people are going to be Dual Eligible (i.e. on Medicaid.) While in larger metros many of those on Medicaid will be on Dual SNPs, (leading to higher penetration) in many less populated areas those plans are not available or may not be worth getting due to a limited network. Even some that aren't duals will not be able to afford a Medigap. I just checked your list, (which is very helpful btw) and many of the parishes (counties) in my state with the lowest penetration are also the poorest ones, with some being among the poorest counties in the USA. It is the same with some other states with which I am familiar.

Low penetration is also generally an indication that MA plans are not very good or are non-existent, especially in the rural counties. That's likely even moreso the case now with the demise of PFFS plans. So that's definitely a plus.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, (and I haven't marketed with phone sales in mind, admittedly) but I think some additional screening would be advisable. You wouldn't want to burn through a lot of leads calling people who can't buy your product and never will be able to.

In some rural areas especially, people are also leery of doing business over the phone, don't have a computer and so on. But today this is moreso with the 70+ crowd or even 75+ crowd than with T65. And in some very rural areas, they'd have a hard time getting anyone to come to their home regardless due to the windshield time involved. (I've written a lot of business in the past because I was the one guy willing to make the trip.) Some of the current high producers over the phone seem to focus largely on T65 (I think) as well as those who likely have a computer. I'm thinking of someone who was featured at the Med Supp summit, but the name escapes me. (IIRC a big part of his m.o. for building credibility was to give them his license number and show them how to look him up on the DOI website. He'd be upfront and tell them he was calling from Fla and would be calling Montana or whatever.)

What kind of screening for income do those of you do who are selling over the phone?

You are absolutely right about some group plans changing to a defined contribution (I have a feeling many agents miss opportunities because they "quit" as soon as they hear "group plan").

Typically the lower MA% counties will coincide with the more rural areas (in my opinion this is a "win-win" scenario because it is always beneficial to market to the folks who do not get marketed to as much - rural vs city).

We filter the data for our Medicare Supplement Leads at $20,000+.

I know some may think that is too low but keep in mind that the income filter is really a "best guess" (If it were me, depending on the area I might even lower it to 15K or 10K). We do some screening on the phone call to avoid any of those who aren't paying for their plan or they tell us they have an advantage plan. it's not a perfect process (Seniors will be confused about what they actually have for their coverage inevitably), but it works well.

 

[Cenla Agent]

You are absolutely right about some group plans changing to a defined contribution (I have a feeling many agents miss opportunities because they "quit" as soon as they hear "group plan").

Typically the lower MA% counties will coincide with the more rural areas (in my opinion this is a "win-win" scenario because it is always beneficial to market to the folks who do not get marketed to as much - rural vs city).

We filter the data for our Medicare Supplement Leads at $20,000+.

I know some may think that is too low but keep in mind that the income filter is really a "best guess". We do some screening on the phone call to avoid any of those who aren't paying for their plan or they tell us they have an advantage plan. it's not a perfect process (Seniors will be confused about what they actually have for their coverage inevitably), but it works well.

Depending on the circumstances, $20,000 probably isn't too low. There are probably people who make a bit less than that who can probably afford a supp (at least for a while) so long as other expenses are relatively low.

Even though this state wouldn't be considered "urban" by those in other parts of the country, relatively rural areas are basically the only areas in which it is worth it to market supps. But the more urban counties are the ones that aren't on your list either, for the most part. Supps tend to be higher in those areas as well. One could maybe catch some of the Supp prospects in those areas with internet marketing.

UW is also going to be more of a problem in LA, MS, AR and other states that are both sicker and poorer. (Typically it goes hand in hand.) But it is what it is.

 

[somarco]

Are there paper copies of Medicare guides or all on line?

https://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/10116.pdf

https://www.medicare.gov/pubs/pdf/10050-Medicare-and-You.pdf

https://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/11034.pdf

https://www.medicare.gov/pubs/pdf/02110-medicare-medigap.guide.pdf

LMGTFY

 

[goillini52]

Check out Seniorplicity.com. They have a system called Right Now that displays a senior community's decision makers, that can get you in-front of 40-100 people at a time.

Let me take a WILD guess at who you work for..............

2 posts...2 spams.

 

[gandb9986]

Let me take a WILD guess at who you work for..............

2 posts...2 spams.

I don't work for Seniorplicity, but use it as a marketing tool. I also use Constant Contact, and partnerships with the FAHU, and the APA. If you want to work with seniors, its been a great resource. Guess I should comment more before I share lead tools.

 

[goillini52]

I don't work for Seniorplicity, but use it as a marketing tool. I also use Constant Contact, and partnerships with the FAHU, and the APA. If you want to work with seniors, its been a great resource. Guess I should comment more before I share lead tools.

Then my apologies. That's usually a sign of a new member spamming from the get go.

Welcome to the Forum.

 

[Chazm]

I haven't. Yet. I want to sell med supps but will probably try to get back to FE first when I can afford DM leads. If I can work full time, or close to it, on my programming contract I should be able to start ordering them in 3 or 4 weeks. But I might shift to supps. I'm a member of Chris Westfall's Medicare Agent Training website. And supps don't seem terribly complicated. If I'm able to do both I may ONLY do both, but thought I might do PDPs since I'm actually AHIP certified because of the job I had in the fall enrolling people in Aetna's MAPDs and PDPs. No commission. I was just an employee in a call center taking inbound calls, but of course did the necessary certs and became familiar with the products. If it weren't for that I wouldn't want to mess with the CMS monitored stuff. And frankly it would be nice not to have to worry about it. But dental insurance just seems like a simple, logical add on if it didn't slow me down. But not a big deal.

I don't want things to be complicated. Many successful people on the forum keep emphasizing that specializing usually works better than being a jack of all trades.

My health insurance ended on 11/30 and I'm just doing without until 2/1, but was able to save money on Rxs using GoodRx. You probably recommend it?

The odd thing is, dental is the one thing that will slow you down all for about $2/month in commission. I get more service calls from dental plans that I've sold than any other product. They are ALL crap. No matter what video you just watched to try to convince you otherwise.

 

[goillini52]

The odd thing is, dental is the one thing that will slow you down all for about $2/month in commission. I get more service calls from dental plans that I've sold than any other product. They are ALL crap. No matter what video you just watched to try to convince you otherwise.

I don't know what video you're referring to, but I never felt that dental plans were worth it either. I've had several available to me, but never saw the value in them. I never sold one until I picked up Central United Life. Their's is a good one, a DVH...I actually took one out for myself.

As far as the $2 a month commission, it's better than that. I understand that some agents are getting short changed at 40%/5% commision...I'm getting 55%/7% with no production requirement. 2 of these individual plans equal a Med Supp commission. You should check them out. Note, I'm not a marketer.

 

[vic120]

I don't know what video you're referring to, but I never felt that dental plans were worth it either. I've had several available to me, but never saw the value in them. I never sold one until I picked up Central United Life. Their's is a good one, a DVH...I actually took one out for myself.

As far as the $2 a month commission, it's better than that. I understand that some agents are getting short changed at 40%/5% commision...I'm getting 55%/7% with no production requirement. 2 of these individual plans equal a Med Supp commission. You should check them out. Note, I'm not a marketer.

I haven't sold dental in 2 years because I have not liked the plans, I for a while sold spirit dental till the service calls came in.

However as of this year I have added CUL and I really like the way this plan is designed out so much I think I will sign up myself and my wife. I love the fact that it is a pool of money, I can use any way it works for me Dental and glasses, I also like that they pay actual charges and have issue age

 

[goillini52]

I haven't sold dental in 2 years because I have not liked the plans, I for a while sold spirit dental till the service calls came in.

However as of this year I have added CUL and I really like the way this plan is designed out so much I think I will sign up myself and my wife. I love the fact that it is a pool of money, I can use any way it works for me Dental and glasses, I also like that they pay actual charges and have issue age

Yep, any other plan I've seen has like $300 every other year limit for glasses, or $200 for hearing aids. While $1,500 won't pay for hearing aids, it goes lot further than $200. I also like that they'll pay for dentures.

I agree with you, I think the pool of money, paying on actual charges and no network sets CUL's plan above the rest. I'm glad they also upped the issue age to 85 and now are guaranteed renewable for life.

Just like any other type of insurance, if it's explained to the policyholder how it works, there shouldn't be any problem.