Selling Medicare Advantage and Final Expense – Cross Selling

Selling Medicare Advantage and Final Expense is a great way to earn an amazing living. You’re both helping your clients protect their family, and you’re helping them with their senior health insurance needs. This is a win-win for you and the client. The key is to do both for all your clients in a way that is compliant with CMS. “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services”! In this brief article you’re going to learn how some of the highest producing agents in the country are killing it, selling senior insurance products. Step by step! We’ll also be going over the following.

Where to start

Getting the Right Licenses

Where to get training

Startup Costs

Selling MAPD to FE Clients

Selling Medicare Advantage – Income Potential

Key tips from Top Producers

Making the most of each client

Realistic Expectations

Cross selling myths

Licensing and AHIP

One of the biggest mistakes that new insurance agents make is to get the wrong license. I started with a Life insurance license. Then I realized that I should have gotten the Life, Health, and Variable Annuities license. I was told to just cancel my Life license and get the new license. That meant I went months without a license. Big mistake! Pro Tip – Get the License that covers Life, Health, and Annuities so you’re prepared to deal with market and career changes. You might start out selling Medicare Advantage and/or Medicare Supplements for example. Then something might direct you to sell life insurance or final expense insurance. FYI, I think it was harder to prepare for the Life test than the Life, Health, and Annuities test. Either way, just don’t make the same mistake that most agents make. Get the right license.

Another mistake I made was not offering Medicare advantage to my clients. Don’t get me wrong. I tried to get licensed to sell MAPD or Medicare prescription drug plans. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I stepped away from it. Twice! I just couldn’t get through the AHIP testing. Thankfully, you’ll never have to go through the struggles that I had back then. Our training platform will practically guarantee that you can take the test within 30 days of starting the AHIP studying process. AHIP is the test that you’ll need to take every year, while selling Medicare Advantage and Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plans. The strict compliance of CMS is why most insurance agents are not selling Medicare Advantage. It’s a must have for most seniors and there’s no monthly premium added for most Medicare recipients.

Original Medicare vs Private Insurance

When we turn 65 years old, we automatically get access to Medicare. Medicare is government run health insurance for seniors. Medicare Advantage is privatized insurance that is accepted and paid for by Medicare. In most cases, you can get additional benefits not offered by Medicare like vision and dental for example. Most seniors either have a Medicare Supplement or a Medicare Advantage plan. The Medicare supplement (medigap) covers some of the things that are not covered by Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans can cover a lot more including long term care, vision and dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses. In most cases you can get a Medicare advantage plan without paying an out-of-pocket premium. Medicare supplements have a cost to them. This is another reason that most people just go with MAPD or Medicare Advantage plans. It’s also why you should be selling Medicare Advantage to our seniors.

Cross-selling Medicare Advantage

Due to CMS regulations, you are not allowed to take a Medicare Advantage lead and make a final expense presentation at the same time as your Medicare presentation. The compliant way to do this is to make your Medicare presentation and after your client is enrolled, just make an appointment to come back for the Final Expense presentation. In my opinion, this is very silly as there is no time restriction. You can literally make your appointment for 5 minutes after the first presentation, go drive around the block a couple time, then go back for your final expense presentation. Yes, I know that sounds a little fishy, but this would be a compliant way to make both presentations. Now you can sell a final expense policy after selling Medicare Advantage in a compliant way that meets CMS regulations.

Let’s talk about selling Medicare Advantage to your existing clients in a compliant manner. If you have a book of final expense clients, you can literally call them and easily set up Medicare Advantage appointments. Call your clients up. Once you have them on the phone, remind them of who you are and let them know that you are able to help people to get additional benefits that they may not know they have access to. Set the appointment and get over there. Once you’re with the client, make sure to have them sign the Scope of Appointment form, just like you would if you were working any type of Medicare lead. As long as they check the box for “Medicare Advantage” you are good to go. Just ask your client to grab their Red White and Blue card, Medicare insurance card, and their Medicaid card is applicable.

Income Potential Selling Medicare Advantage

As of 2022 Medicare Advantage will pay $573 for every new Medicare advantage plan with a $287 annual renewal payment. This payment goes on each year for the life of the client. That Means after 10 years, every single enrollment can pay up to $3,156 plus an additional $287 each year for the life of your client. If you are working with a good insurance agency like ours, you’ll have access to Exclusive Direct Mail leads. We currently are only charging $25 per lead and are giving our contracted insurance agents a $75 lead credit per enrollment. Even if you are rolling the client over from one Medicare Advantage plan to a new one. If you’re working your leads correctly while getting referrals and additional prospecting, you might never pay for leads. Yes, selling Medicare Advantage from Exclusive leads is an easy way to build your book of business.

The income potential selling Medicare Advantage through leads is huge. Allow me to draw a picture for you. Since our Exclusive direct mail leads target Low Income folks, you will be able to sell Medicare Advantage all year long. Let’s say you’re working 30 leads per week. The closing rate is around 35% on average. Even if you only close 25%, you will make at least 7 enrollments per week. 7x $287 is $2,009. After 5 years, that $2,009 turns into $10,045. If you’re servicing your clients the way we teach, you will have at least 75% of these clients with you for more than 5 years. Expect around 25% of your clients to either pass away or switch insurance agents. That means in 5 years, you will be averaging around $7,500 of income every week. Someone who is not a go getter can easily do half of this.

Key Tips for Selling Medicare Advantage

I highly recommend working hard for the first few years. If you can put in the typical 50-60 hours each week, the numbers I mentioned above can easily be exceeded. We currently have several agents that are enrolling over 500 people into Medicare Advantage plans yearly. One of our top guys made 800 enrollments during his first calendar year. Hopefully the wheels are turning and you’re starting to see the insane amount of money you can make while helping a lot of people. Remember, these are mostly easy sales as there is rarely any additional premium required. If you’re already a top producing final expense agent, you won’t have any lead costs to start with. Just think about how easy it will be to get back in front of your existing clients and help them with their Medicare insurance needs. Selling Medicare Advantage to these folks is usually easy.

When I was selling Final Expense insurance, you could get away with only selling final expense. Now, the FE market is saturated, and things are different. Can you still make it by only selling final expense insurance? Sure, the right person with the right work ethic can. However, it’s going to be easier in the short term and better in the long run if you’re selling Medicare Advantage at the same time. You see, the lead for final expense sales is already targeting the exact same people that need Medicare products. As I mentioned before, you can sell Medicare Advantage all year long if you’re working our leads. We have first year agents selling final expense for the big, advanced moneys. Then they’ll go back to the same clients and sell a Medicare Advantage plan a week later! If the client doesn’t want Fe, they’ll sell them a Medicare product.

Summary for Selling Medicare Advantage, Final Expense Insurance, or cross selling between the two!

1. Make sure the agency you’re working with has an intensive training platform, just like ours.

2. Be sure the agency you’re working with has a Free Leads program with Exclusive Direct Mail leads.

3. Start off selling Final Expense Insurance while you’re learning how to sell Medicare Advantage and Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plans.

4. Get a loan or have your credit card ready. You’ll need a couple thousand dollars to get started.

5. Don’t be afraid to invest into your business both financially and physically. Success takes time and money.

About the Author

As a top producer, I (Douglas Massi) wrote over a Million Dollars of Annualized premium during my first 3 years while selling to the final expense market. The information we share is all from proven techniques based on what I have either done personally or seen accomplished by agents on our platforms. We are currently seeing Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement agents breaking records in the industry by using our Fixed Cost Direct Mail Leads program and by cross-selling their existing Final Expense clients. Today, I mainly teach agents how to effectively sell Final Expense while our Medicare trainers work with our MAPD agents. Feel free to contact me directly with any questions.

Douglas Massi

Office 888-501-1375

Email doug@ufesonline.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasmassi/