Sell Med Supps $$ to Get Started Break Even Point.

[entrep1776]

Wowsers! alot to process.

Thank you for everyone's advice.

----------

I suggest someone other than Kellogg. They are local to me and from what I understand, all talk and no action. There are a few on the forum that are pretty helpful and I am sure others will chime in. Good luck either way.

Thanks. Seems like hard to pick who to go with. Someone said good things about Kellogg.....but now little different opinion.

----------

(I am not an agent)

Electronic equipment-Tablet, laptop, phone and phone plan.

Answering machine.

Call recording software?

Call dialing software?

Mobile scanning and printing equipment?

Desktop computer? Fax? Copier? Scanner? Printer?

Internet access.

Education on how to use that stuff.

Office equipment. For a home workspace and for car.

Filing and organization. Organize and monitor lead cards. File and find customer apps. Track and file business costs for taxes.

Dependable car.

If you choose to do any doorknocking from lists-cost of lists.

Travel money for a ridealong with someone.

The following may come farther out than you are looking for:

Continuing education hours for state.

Medicare training, sales training, motivational training -Books-courses-site memberships.

Certifications. I have not carefully worked out the answers to this yet so I may have some inaccurate information here.
I believe to sell Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plans you have to have an annual certification called the AHIP. I also think it has to be done for each carrier you use. Posts I have read suggest that this can run into a significant time requirement-have not gotten a good read on the financial cost.

It doesn't sound like there are any certification requirements to sell Med Supps, but I am not absolutely sure about that.

As far as IMO's are concerned-I have no experience-only reading of posts and some opinions.

My short list of two is:
Todd King
SMS (Senior Market Specialists) Columbia, MO.
(does an annual seminar and is close enough to me I could go.)
(do not confuse this one with another SMS in NE.)
Which one I would choose depends on the week I think about it and at the moment it is purely academic because I have not got a license.

There is a 3rd possibility-If you go to top posters and click on goillini52, you will see a link in his signature for one called Senior Market Design. He was very excited about the quality of their leads when he first posted about them. Goillini has not posted for some time so I do not know if his ongoing experience has continued the way it started.

Others will present other options, those are just the ones that I thought would make the most sense for me personally, starting completely from scratch and needing help.

=======
edit-another thing which I missed is a quote engine to let you easily see comparative rates and company characteristics when you have a specific age, gender and zip code potential client identified.

Thank you Lost Dollar for taking the time. Phew lot to process. Little overwhelming.

Already have:
Desktop
Printer/scanner
2005 Prius 40 mpg costs about 15 cents/mile! Can sleep in it if need be.


Questions:
Will my personal cell phone work for answering machine or do I need separate line?

Do I need tablet or laptop with internet access if I go to someone's home?

How much paper will I have to file? How long do I have to keep it?

----------

Great points by LostDollar, and also thank you for the shout out on the short list.

Not wanting advances is great but, I believe that you might need them in the beginning to get started. Also, who are you taking your L&H courses through? There are discounts everywhere for these types of classes.

There are also tons of training sites to get ready to sell as well. A lot of the IMOs and training sites have many discounts on stuff like this.

I believe in the beginning you should take advancing on Medicare, then as you build, dial it back until you make it to as earned. The rule is always, if you get 1000 leads (for medicare) with direct mailers expect about a 2% return. So, let's say you get 20 leads, expect to get in touch with about half, 10, then expect to sell about half, which is 5. These are good goals on the law of average numbers.

Somedays, you may not hit this number, and some days you may crush it.

Thanks Matt. I should be able to fund without any advances. $400 times 40 weeks = $16,000 in leads. Then should be self sustaining (fingers crossed). What interest typically charged for advances?

If I don't take advances any chance/risk I wouldn't get paid?

re discounted classes. In Illinois, I have requirement to have a in classroom 8 hours for life and 8 hours for health. So found provider within 20 minutes. No hotel. I typically learn best in classroom.

----------

So.... be prepared to use a lot of gas. Maybe not as much as you used with Uber - but every mile you drive estimate about $.50 in total costs.

Keep that in mind as you market - you may want to keep the radius tight.

Thanks. I was able to get my car costs down around 15 cents a mile. 2005 Prius still looks decent to pull up to prospects' houses. Have vanity Air Force plates! 40 mpg. paid $3,575. Already made almost double the car cost back driving Uber. Made as much as car cost in 3 months. Very little depreciation racking up miles. Way better than 6 or 7 year loans on vehicles.

----------

Imo you might as well just take your first $400 on leads and just throw it in the trash. You're going to need to learn how to talk on the phone first. Don't waste your money on leads to start. Do some cold calling and get rejected.

Even if you do spend $400 on leads and maybe get 1 sale out of it. Now what? Did you do another lead drop as soon as your first leads came in? Or if you're doing internet leads, be prepared to go through that $400 in one week

Thanks Chazm for input. I feel more comfortable F2F, as I'm sure most do. I don't know how to answer question about buying leads/cold calling.

----------

I disagree. Trying to learn to sell Medicare (or anything else) initially on the phone is likely not going to work. While it's not rocket surgery, speaking with someone in person will teach an agent how to respond to questions without the pressure of a "5 second response."

I'm all for cold calling to set appointments. But certainly not for a new agent to sell.

Cold calling is great but only as good as the leads. Don't go for the unlimited monthly lists - they are not the quality needed.

Rick

Thanks Rick.
I feel I'm much stronger in person and don't mind knocking on doors. I don't mind spending money on quality leads.

I'm just worried /concerned that I spend lots of time/energy /money and I don't make my money back.

I'm very frugal and have worked pretty hard for my money. I'm worried, I spend $2k getting going and I'm not able to sell/prospect well enough to make my money back.

 

[FRJ]

Questions:
Will my personal cell phone work for answering machine or do I need separate line?

Do I need tablet or laptop with internet access if I go to someone's home?

How much paper will I have to file? How long do I have to keep it?

If I don't take advances any chance/risk I wouldn't get paid?

--------------------------------
Your cell phone should be good enough to get started, I use a landline when doing cold call sessions or calling a lot of leads.

F2F - you can get by with just paper applications but many carriers have e-apps which are quicker and more efficient, but you do need internet access which can be obtained with a cell phone as hotspot - DO NOT use a public wifi (security issues).

MAPD/PDP requires 10 years on file for things like Scope of Appointment. I'm not aware of medigap paper retention requirements.

Not getting paid - should be almost no risk unless you assigned commissions to someone.

 

[GreenSky]

Thanks Rick.
I feel I'm much stronger in person and don't mind knocking on doors. I don't mind spending money on quality leads.

I'm just worried /concerned that I spend lots of time/energy /money and I don't make my money back.

I'm very frugal and have worked pretty hard for my money. I'm worried, I spend $2k getting going and I'm not able to sell/prospect well enough to make my money back.

The cheap way out is to cold call for appointments. You probably only need to buy 500 names. I am not really a list broker but happy to sell some of the names I can download for a very low price. And it's really the best quality meaning it's much more accurate than unlimited lists. Send me your phone number by PM and I'll get back to you.

Rick

 

[entrep1776]

What part of Illinois are you in? As for getting started, you plan to be licensed in August or going to start the process in August?

If you are in the Chicagoland area, you should strongly consider also getting into MAPD/PDP.

What level of income do you need to sustain yourself during each of the first 6-12 months?

I'm in Peoria Illinois.

6-12 months. I don't need any income. I'm covered up to getting started costs and 10 months of leads at $400/week. About $20k to spend getting started. & my living expenses covered. So I wouldn't need advances.

But if I'm not getting success for whatever reason I don't want to "waste" my hard earned money. $1,400 is alot of money to me. I'm very frugal. I didn't get my money by spending it.

I'm going to take class on July 20th,21st. I'm guessing I will take state test shortly thereafter.

I appreciate the questions made me think about at what point do I Change direction if I'm not at least breaking even.

----------

entrep1776, Chazm is correct if you want to start out as cheap as you can, get a list and cold call. Of course, you'll need some advice on that to begin with.

I'm also going to put a plug in for MedicareTraining101.com. Since we have now become the administrators for that site, you'll have access to us via chat or phone if you need to.

Hi Todd,
What do you think my next step should be? Right now planning to sign up for july 20th class. & spend time on this forum. I will have studying to do for class. Where do you think my time/money would best be invested?

I've read How to Qualify, Present, and Sell Final Expense and Medicare Supplements to Seniors By Glen Shelton and Justin Bilyj. And skimmed it another time. Also spent some time on this forum. & spent some time watching insurance related youtube videos.

 

[Josh]

The cheap way out is to cold call for appointments. You probably only need to buy 500 names. I am not really a list broker but happy to sell some of the names I can download for a very low price. And it's really the best quality meaning it's much more accurate than unlimited lists. Send me your phone number by PM and I'll get back to you.

Rick

I'm sure you have information to support your claim. Perhaps some companies that sell data inexpensively or unlimited are poor quality, but surely you're not putting ListShack.com in that bucket. As I understand it you're reselling the LRG data (which is actually Natimark data). I resell for with them as well and we've found it to be a mixed bag. Of course I appreciate that you readily admit that you're not a list broker so I wouldn't expect you to realize that data quality is always a moving target. Recently a number of my customers on the Natimark/LRG data had significant data quality problems which happens from time to time. Literally around a 40% disconnect rate. Of course I always honor my 100% accuracy guarantee I put on that which means I either refund or replace it, but it's still a challenge for someone when they're getting that type of a disconnect rate on what is allegedly the most accurate data available. It's not usually that bad, but ultimately the quality of a list, even from the same provider, can end up having a pretty big swing in quality.

To add more context, with the ListShack.com product I offer, instead of pulling it from other sources as it's ordered, we buy it in bulk which let's us be very competitive on price. Just this week we loaded a new consumer file which we believe is possibly more accurate than most other providers currently for a very specific reason, it's recently had a NCOA scrub on it.

For those not familiar with what NCOA is, it's an update you do with the USPS to verify the validity of an address and it's current resident. We did a sample of about 1,000,000 records and of those less than 7,000 came back "bad". I was thrilled about it. Of course data ages with time, but if you have a data set that's had some recent NCOA scrubbing done on it that helps clean up a lot of bad data. The reality is because of the time and expense involved companies aren't always doing it as frequently as customers might like so us having a recent NCOA right now is pretty great.

To shade in a little more context, every year we literally work with thousands of people doing their marketing lists which gives us a much better sample size to determine which sources are more accurate and what the differences are between them.

 

[GreenSky]

My information comes from our resident list broker who always stated that lists from LRG were the best available. And well worth the $69/K he was (and maybe still is) charging.

If unlimited lists float your boat then go for them. I don't make my living promoting lists, or as a well know list broker called them, cold leads.

I won't get into an argument with an insurance agent who found it more profitable to sell lists than to learn to sell insurance.

Rick

 

[Chazm]

I disagree. Trying to learn to sell Medicare (or anything else) initially on the phone is likely not going to work. While it's not rocket surgery, speaking with someone in person will teach an agent how to respond to questions without the pressure of a "5 second response."

I'm all for cold calling to set appointments. But certainly not for a new agent to sell.

Cold calling is great but only as good as the leads. Don't go for the unlimited monthly lists - they are not the quality needed.

Rick

Sorry yeah I was referring to cold calling to set appointments. It's how I learned. Not saying it's the best but I wouldn't have trusted myself back then with leads.

 

[Todd King]

Hi Todd,
What do you think my next step should be? Right now planning to sign up for july 20th class. & spend time on this forum. I will have studying to do for class. Where do you think my time/money would best be invested?

I've read How to Qualify, Present, and Sell Final Expense and Medicare Supplements to Seniors By Glen Shelton and Justin Bilyj. And skimmed it another time. Also spent some time on this forum. & spent some time watching insurance related youtube videos.

Spending time on this forum will be great. Since you're not getting into class until July, I still suggest looking into MedicareTraining101.com now. My reason is so you will be closer to hitting the pavement as soon as you get your license in hand.

I wouldn't suggest cold calling to begin with if you can afford to do lead drops. Once you get selling Medicare down, then move to the phones to cold call if you like. The only reason you should be using the phone to begin with is simply setting appointments. If you are better f2f, then I would door knock those lead cards instead of calling to set the appointment. I think you'll have better success with that in the beginning.

 

[Mike Siegal]

Why not take a job with a local company and learn the biz?

Learn from your mistakes and then branch out on your own...

Would that work (anyone)?

 

[LostDollar]

Why not take a job with a local company and learn the biz?

Learn from your mistakes and then branch out on your own...

Would that work (anyone)?

I don't know about MA and PDP, but I believe I would do some serious visiting with some IMO's before I took that course of action for Medicare Supplements.

Not an agent, but the approach I believe I would personally take were I to become one. I think the Med Supp market is different enough from MA, PDP, Life or P&C to allow that to work. I would, however, try to have some travel money to do one or two ridealongs with experienced agents.