Telemarketing Software Featured Article

Concerns about a potential reduction in Medicare Advantage enrollments due to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 appear to be unfounded if you look at Kaiser Family Foundation data made public in June. In fact, the foundation points out that it’s actually seen a 50 percent increase in Medicare Advantage enrollment since the ACA was enacted.

That’s the good news.

The not so good news is that only around 10 percent of Part D enrollees switch plans during open enrollment.

A prevalent reason why is because making a change can be a hassle, according to a 2014 Kaiser Family Foundation focus group. Senior citizens polled indicated that marketing materials, and the information and tools available on medicare.gov, are confusing and frustrating to use.

As Genie Parker of VanillaSoft points out in a blog posted this week, this situation opens an opportunity for sales people, who can offer these individuals education and guidance in evaluating whether making a change is right for them.

“Find a way to break through the clutter to reach your target audience,” writes Parker. “They are drowning in information; you need to reach them with education and guidance.”

To connect with individuals who are prospects for new health care insurance plans, Parker suggests that sales people do some research to locate quality lists, run ads on community websites or in local newspapers, and consider leveraging social media by running Facebook (News - Alert) display ads. (More than half of online adults 65 or older are on Facebook.)

Having a good lead management solution, which can help streamline the sales process, can help with this as well. It can do that enabling inbound lead capture so reps get Web leads immediately and doing queue-based automatic lead distribution that allows you to set criteria and automate workflow. Other beneficial features of a good lead management solution include lead nurturing by sending the appropriate emails to prospects at the right time during the customer lifecycle; logical branch scripting, which helps salespeople to stay on message; preview and progressive dialing, which can increase call activity between 35 and 100 percent; and message drop, which allows sales people to click once to leave pre-prepared messages on prospects’ answering machines or voicemail.