Your Best Month Yet

Starting off right on day 1

RBI Sales Coordinator and Independent Agent: James Gramp

Earlier this week I talked about how to wrap-up your month and make sure you’re getting the money owed you from products sold over the month. But how did I get those sales in the first place? There’s a process to making sales, and it starts with day 1 of the new month!

Here’s how I’m going to be preparing to reach my sales goals for March, to have my best month yet!

Pro-Tip: Determine a Focus Area: The first thing that I need to do is determine a focus area. It does no good to plan marketing efforts if I haven’t first determined a focus area. I’m going to continue to focus on Dual Eligible and LIS beneficiaries for the next few months because it’s still a very underserved market and because of the pro-rated MA commissions. Here in Arizona 50% of Dual Eligible beneficiaries are actually enrolled in a Dual plan, which means there is still plenty of opportunity to write business.

Now that I know my focus area, I’m ready to look at my 5 sales strategies.

1. Set Goals: Some of you may have a yearly sales goal that you aim for each year (which is great, don’t get me wrong!), but I find it best to set smaller monthly/weekly goals. For instance, 5 sales a week is more manageable than 260 (52 x 5) enrollments for the year. Smaller weekly/monthly goals will help keep you on track and ultimately help you reach your yearly goals.
2. Research: It’s always good to refresh your knowledge of the MSP/Extra Help limits. Read up on carriers in your area, or (in my case) D-SNP products or other plans. If you’re not sure where to start with Dual Eligibles or Low-Income Subsidy, watch RBI’s recorded webinars by clicking here or here.
3. Review Marketing Strategy: Food pantries, senior housing units, HUD housing, and provider offices (dental, optometrists, etc.) are all great places to find Medicare beneficiaries.  If you’re not hitting your sales goals through community marketing, then I would suggest looking at running a Direct Mail campaign to keep a steady flow of leads coming your way.  Give RBI a call to learn how to be successful with Direct Mail!
4. Own your backyard: You want to be known as the Medicare Expert in your neighborhood. Some great ways to get this credibility are volunteering, or just taking time to chat with people you see day to day. Your next lead could be someone in the elevator, or getting gas at the next pump. Strike up a conversation and let them know what you do, you never know what you’ll get out of it. A good example of this comes from RBI’s CEO during this past AEP, when Bob Bever spent 3 minutes with a gentleman while in line at K-mart, explaining what he does, and gave him a business card. A few weeks later Bob got a call from the man’s father and was able to help him enroll.
5. Be consistent: I cannot stress enough how important consistency is.  Especially if you have a connection with a food bank or provider office, you need to have a schedule of when you go in and setup your booth in their facility.  If  you’re not consistent with your schedule the influencers at these locations won’t know when to tell their customers that have Medicare questions when you will be there next.  With educational events I recommend doing them at least once a quarter, the more consistent you are with scheduling these events the more attendance you will see.

The best single piece of advice I can give is to treat your insurance business as a full-time job.  If you plan on doing this as a career, then you have to treat it like one and show up eight hours a day, five days a week. Many agents get discouraged after a month or two of not bringing in consistent sales. Don’t fall into this trap! Instead, ask yourself: “do I have a marketing plan to generate leads?” and “am I consistently working my plan?” One of my favorite quotes is “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Let’s plan to succeed and make this our best month yet!

RBI believes your marketing plan should be Measurable, Actionable, Profitable, and Scalable. We call it the “MAPS method to success.” If you don’t have a marketing plan, give RBI a call today at 1-800-997-3107 and plan your best month yet! You can also click here to watch the “Marketing for Success” webinar and get started!