State of the Union for Individual Agent Marketing
David Dundee, Individual Agent Marketing, Consumer and Retail Markets
Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s Consumer and Retail Markets division continues to be impressed by the tireless work of our sales, service and general operations teams. Without question, our collective health insurance community has faced challenges. However, navigating the changing systems and regulations have yet to prove more than you can endure and overcome.
In 2016, our external agent community contributed 53% of all new individual sales* and exceeded sales goals by channel. For individual metallic products, external brokers produced 147% above projection. Here are some more metrics based on 2016 sales goals.
- Limited duration = 2% above
- Dental/vision = 176% above
- Medi-Pak Supplement = 22% above
- Medi-Pak Advantage = 40% above
- Medi-Pak Rx = 13% below
2017 is off to a great start, too. Through January, the external agent/broker community is at 55% of projected total sales for 2017.
We know much work remains to finalize your 2017 OEP/AEP selling season, and the work continues for the rest of year. You have Medicare age-ins and special election periods, under-65 qualifying life events and special election periods and don’t forget ancillary products! This, of course, is on top of the service work you do that makes you so successful.
The vision of Consumer and Retail Markets is to improve your return on investment with each sale. We have engaged with several of you to get your thoughts on improvements, and we’ll be reaching out to even more of you over the coming weeks and months to solicit feedback. We are constantly reviewing how our processes can be more customer and agent friendly, including ways to reduce your time and labor for each sales and service event. Additional work is underway to improve the functionality of Blueprint for Agents.
This is not all we are doing. We want the Arkansas Blue Cross products you sell — whether it is our Metallic Major Medical, Medi-Pak Advantage, etc. — to reflect what you’ve come to expect: the best. We are working tirelessly to provide the best insurance products and experience for our friends, neighbors and every Arkansan we proudly get the opportunity to offer protection, security and peace of mind in a personal and innovative way.
Thank goodness for insurance and thank goodness for insurance agents like you!
* Does not include Arkansas Works auto-assigned contracts.