Why One Product Businesses are in Trouble!

If your agency lives on Medicare Supplement commissions, this is the warning you don’t want to ignore. I’m Mike Sorensen, and I’ve watched more Medigap-only businesses get squeezed not because they’re bad at sales, but because the Medicare market is shifting in ways a single-product model can’t absorb.

We talk through what I call the one product trap: Medicare Advantage enrollment keeps climbing, the share of beneficiaries choosing a supplement plan is smaller each year, and affordability is getting tougher as everyday costs rise faster than many clients’ budgets. Then we get real about commission compression. Carriers are pulling back on bonuses, adjusting payouts, paying little on many birthday rule moves, and cutting compensation on business they don’t want. Even the old “extra” revenue from PDP reviews isn’t what it used to be, which makes a Medigap-only revenue model feel tighter every season.

From there, we hit the problem most agents don’t see until it’s too late: client poaching. Your clients can love you and still leave when another agent offers options you can’t discuss, especially during AEP when phones are hot and marketing is everywhere. I share why getting properly certified (including AHIP if you plan to speak to Medicare Advantage) matters, how expanding into complementary products can protect your book of business, and how a more holistic process creates more referrals and a stronger retention engine.

If you want a simple next step, pull your book and count how many clients only have a Medicare supplement plan. That number is your opportunity. Subscribe for weekly tactics, share this with an agent who needs it, and leave a review so more Medicare agents can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Warning

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast, the show for insurance agents ready to go from unknown to unstoppable, where visibility, strategy, and real-world execution meet. Hosted by Dave Cheatham and Mike Sorensen.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hello and welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast. My name is Mike Sorensen, and on this show, we teach you how to go from unknown to unstoppable and talk about strategies to help you grow your insurance business. Also talk about news and other fun stuff. But today I have a topic that I want to talk about really quick because it's something that just happened to me this week, and I see more and more people going to this model. And I want to give a forewarn. But for those of you listening, what if I told you that the product you built your entire business on is quietly in trouble and maybe being phased out? Not because of one bad year or not by one bad quarter, but a shift that's already been happening literally for years, that most Medicare supplement agents are now starting to feel. If you are running your agency or running your practice and you just live on Medicare supplement commissions alone, please stay with me because this is going to be an episode literally just for you, because what I'm about to share with you could literally save your business tomorrow. Now, again, I'm Mike Sorensen. I work with a company called Family Financial Solutions Group, where we work with Medicare agencies and agents across the country. And our whole job is to help you find more clients, make them more valuable, and to retain them and build something that actually lasts. Now, I've seen a lot of agencies that are good at one thing. They found MedSup, they built a nice system on just selling MedSup. Maybe they hired agents. And for years, it has worked successfully. Even in the past couple of years, as Medicare Advantage has become a little, there's been going through some market changes. A lot of people have moved away from Medicare Advantage and started selling more Medicare supplement, some selling only Medicare supplement. But here's what I start to see more in 2026. The agencies that are only selling Medicare supplement are starting to get squeezed. Now, not because they're bad at sales, not at all. Not because they're not even like working as hard. It's because the market is literally shifting under their feet and they don't have anything else to stand on. So if this is you, this episode is literally for you if you're in this boat. Or if you want to make sure you never end up in this boat, uh, let's dive into it.

The One Product Trap Explained

SPEAKER_01 2:53

So this is what I call the one product trap. And I'm gonna explain uh this not theory, but what I've seen across this industry, one being one myself years ago, but also seeing where it is now in 2026. So my first point is Medicare Advantage, that problem isn't necessarily going away right away, but it's also not the reason not to write it. Let's start there because Medicare Advantage enrollment has been climbing for years and is going to continue to climb, even through these, for some may say turbulent changes. They have still grown exponentially faster than Medicare Settlement has. And I think for most of you, you already know that. But more than half Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled in MA plans, and that number was just around 25% 10 years ago. So it's it's grown exponentially. It's a structural shift in the landscape that's happened over the last couple of years, and it's put a lot of stress on people who've only sold Medicare supplement only. So it means if your whole universe of eligible prospects that just want a Medicare supplement plan and can afford the premium, that number is getting smaller every single year. Not because, and you know, obviously there's structural changes, what's happening with Medicare Advantage, the structural changes happening with Medicare Saltman, but just the cost of living is higher. Things are more expensive than they have ever been before. COLAS have not, the cost of living adjustments have not gone up exponentially with the rest of the cost. So like Social Security isn't even as worth as much anymore. And if your milk and eggs and gas costs a lot more, you have all your subscriptions are going up, your mortgages are going up, your insurances are going up, like makes Medicare settlement premiums pretty tough to afford. So I like to think of it as a restaurant that only serves, if you were to get a kind of analogy, but if you're a restaurant and you only serve steak, for a long time, steak is what everybody wants because the business was great when that happens. But then maybe the market changes, the neighborhood you're in is changes, and more people want chicken. And more, now more people want plant-based stuff. But your menu is still just steak. Now, doesn't mean you're a bad restaurant because your steak is still great, but you're you're fighting over a shrinking slice of the market. Now, there are businesses, you know, like a Chick-fil-A or like uh a Raisin Canes that have like a specific set menu. They're not going to deviate from it, but it kind of makes them niche but also attractive just because they find us a few things, they do exponentially well. But a lot of that's within their control, mind you. Us Medicare agents and agencies, we have no control over what Medicare supplement carriers do. Plan changes, commission changes, we have no control over that, which makes it exponentially even harder. And that's where Medicare agencies are at right now. The people who want Medicare supplement plans are still out there, but there are fewer of them as they turn 65 who will choose a supplement over Medicare Advantage plan channel, especially when the benefits of Medicare Advantage obviously have gone have shrunk, but they're still exponentially better than what a Medicare supplement can offer. So if your entire revenue model depends on that one product, these are points you need to hear. And I'm not promoting that you should just like now just write all Medicare Advantage. We teach agents to be Medicare agents. So you need to know both sides of the fence. Again, Medicare supplement ain't for everybody, Medicare Advantage ain't for everybody. The only way you find that out is through education and conversation.

Medicare Advantage Growth And Affordability

SPEAKER_01 6:12

So that's where things sit. Point number two, commission compression is real and it's not gonna get better. And what do I mean by that? A lot of agents don't really want to necessarily, I don't think, not so much talk about it, but it's something it's like they don't want to really worry about unless it happens. Because Medicare supplement commissions have been on under extreme pressure over the coming years. When I when I first got into Medicare, there were bonuses structures, there were bonus structures with commission plan, uh, Medicare supplement plans. There were, every carrier had a yearly trip, they had huge incentives. Jeez, there were carriers that were incentivizing bonuses based on if you retained your customers or not. They would pay a bonus if like you had enough retention. It's crazy. But in 2026, things, carriers have adjusted significantly because rates and markets, they're seeing claims not creep up, like waterfall over the bucket, essentially. Claim ratios for Medicare summits are extremely out of whack all over the country. And the old renewal, uh a lot of renewal commission structures are are on older plans, can vary and it depends on how old the plan is, or the book's still open, how many changes they've actually made. But the agents who are writing this volume are in competitive markets where price shopping is constant. If you put all that together, the math gets super hard because if there's all these adjustments, all the very all the varying commission levels, it gets kind of difficult to one, keep track of and also continuously write business in. So a Medicare supplement-only agency is not only just fighting potentially a shrinking market, it's also dealing with like margin pressure on the business it does actually write because carriers are pulling back on commissions, they're pulling back on bonuses. And if you're really, really paying attention over the past about five years, you have seen birthday rules come out. And unless you're in a state that by law has to pay birthday rule commissions the same as open enrollment commissions, all the other states, carriers aren't paying you much, like pennies on the dollar. They're not incentivizing it for bonuses, they're not paying you much commission at all. Any guaranteed issue business, you're not getting paid on. Five years ago, they're paying out on all of it. So not only are they lowering commissions for business they actually do genuinely want, like open enrollment business or underwritten business, but they're not going to pay you on the business that or pay you very little on the business that's bad for them. So meanwhile, the agents who have added like Medicare Advantage to their portfolio, or maybe final expense, dental vision hearing, life, annuity products, hospital demnity, they're finding more ways to monetize the same client relationship because they're seeing the market change. Again, these agents are probably selling Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement. So they're changing because both sides of the fence are changing. But what I believe is the one product business, whether that's Medicare Supplement specifically or just selling Medicare Advantage, you're limiting yourself and also placing a lot of the business risk inside of potentially one carrier and one product line, which can get risky fast. So you're looking at this from a business perspective. If you have one client with multiple products and multiple commission streams, when you have turbulence in that main product line, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, at least you have something to a hill to die on and you can still get paid in other avenues. Because what's also happened over the past couple of years on the Medicare supplement side is you're not getting paid on the PDP anymore. So that kind of helped justify maybe a little bit on the med supp side when you did the PDP, because it was an added commission, but now that gets pulled off the table. So things are getting complicated pretty quickly for Medicare supplement-only writing agents. And when you look down to just a business aspect, things need to grow, things need to expand, you need to grow, you need to expand in order to keep your business alive and well. It's uh it's kind of like a grocery store, you know, getting back to the kind of like the food analogy, it's kind of like a grocery store that only sells bread. You can survive on bread, absolutely. You can maybe survive on those sales alone,

Commission Compression And Carrier Pullbacks

SPEAKER_01 9:55

potentially how big and how your store is. But are you actually going to grow? Like, would you rather grow and like thrive or just like barely survive and scrape by, right? If you're only selling one product to each client, you're leaving an extreme amount of money on the table every single time. Plus, you are at risk of losing that client because they could go right down the street and find another agent that not only can do the other side of the fence, Medicare Advantage, or, you know, vice versa, Medicare supplement, but also can sell other products. They may even be, maybe do assets under management and financial advising. And they can also do your P and C. I'm not promoting you should get your Series 65 or Series 7 and, you know, then you get your property and cashly license. I'm just saying like the competition out there is real. And, you know, in modern day, the loyalty when it comes to customers has when it comes to them being able to afford something and not be able to afford something, clients are as loyal as possible. But when it comes to them being able to afford something, if they find someone that can help them bring down their costs or find a better option, they're probably going to do that, especially if you don't do it. So expansion in your portfolio at this point cannot hurt you. And when things do stabilize for Medicare Subman or Medicare Advantage, you will only be better for it. Okay. Point number three, and it kind of alluded to this in my previous point. Your clients are being poached, and you may not know it. And this one may hit a little harder, and some of you might say, like, oh, that's not happening to me. But unless you have like a super, super high persistency, it probably has happened to you. Because clients you probably wrote three years ago, they may have loved you three years ago and they may have been with you since day one. But the competition in this market is being super fierce. There are agents calling them, knocking on their door, sending them seminar mailers, saying that they can save them money on their med sub or move them to a plan that's got better benefits. So, unless you're in constant contact, those people are finding ways to take them off Medicare Subman onto Medicare Advantage Options or onto another Medicare supplement and show them the way how'd you get potentially better coverage with other ancillary products that you don't do. And the client, the one you wrote, is now with someone else. You didn't lose them because you gave bad service. Like honestly, a lot of Medicare Subman agents I meet, they're like, they're over the moon. They're so passionate about the medic, the med supplement how it can do. And when they when they educate, they're just like, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is, it gives you the ability to give you all the freedom, all the choice. Like, don't let uh refer uh having any referral stop you. Go see that special. They're super passionate about what they do, and the clients love it. I saw it firsthand being one years ago. So it's not because they're not passionate, they don't care, they get bad advice. You lost them because sometimes customers are put into a corner. And I've had these conversations myself where a customer calls me and said, Mike, it's it's it's nothing against you. Like they just did something that you couldn't. And you know what? That's fair. I'm not gonna force them into a situation that keeping them with something they don't want to be with, or maybe forcing them to be with me when they don't want to be anymore. Because when you only sell meds up, you can only have one part of that conversation. And agents who have the whole conversation typically win the client first, just as what it is. And if you're a Medicare sub and only agent that's not taking AHIP, I definitely encourage you to not have the Medicare Advantage conversation because if you don't take AHIP and you're not certified with the carriers, understand how those carriers operate, the back end, the front end, how those plans work, you probably shouldn't talk about it. AHIP is a real certification. Getting contract with carriers is a real that's where you learn a lot of things that if you just sell Medicare Subman only through a couple carriers, you're never gonna be exposed to. Yes, you can look up a bunch of reports, you know, Kaiser and all that fun stuff to kind of look at the back end, but there are things that happen inside of Medicare Advanced, things that happen inside of Medicare Summit, you're not just gonna learn, you know, through do a certification, absolutely, but doing that certification gives you the credibility to speak on. If you're not, it's really hard to speak on it. So that's just a thing for me. So if you can't talk, I guess the genesis of this, if you can't talk to your book of business about Medicare Advantage, final expensive summon benefits, you're leaving a bunch of business on the table. You're leaving that

Client Poaching And AHIP Reality

SPEAKER_01 13:58

door wide open for someone else to come and take your business. My fourth point is the AEP window is wasted on an agency who only sells one product. Because October 15th to December 7th, that's when the phones are literally the most hot. That's when the leads are literally flowing. Every lead vendor in the world gets their A game on during that time. And that's when every Medicare eligible person in America is paying attention because they've just been conditioned to do so. And for a med-sub only agent, AAP is you PDP reviews, which, at least right now, you're probably not going to be paid on at all. So you can't help someone, you can help someone switch their Medicare sub and during AP, but you can do that year round. But that's really not the that's not really the point of that time period. So while the rest of the Medicare market is like running at full speed, calling leads, booking appointments, writing business, the meds up only agency is, you know, you're probably just doing your turning 65 thing and doing PDP reviews. You're not getting paid on anymore because you don't sell the other stuff. And you can still be good and you can still write business during AAP, absolutely, but the whole 60% of the market really is having these conversations about moving to maybe another MAPD plan or they're writing MAPD when you're missing out on a lot of that. The agencies that will win in the Medicare space have something to offer during AP that maybe you don't have. And those conversations, since you would only represent half the market, you're losing out on a good portion of business. And while other agencies are picking up new business because a lot of clients see the commercials. And as much as the commercials are bad and they advertise bad things, it does drive a lot of conversations to local businesses, local agents to be able to sell consistently. All right. So, and when those clients do need a supplemental plan because they want that flexibility, guess who they'll call? Is the agent who shows up every year, has all the products available for them to sell, and they can not be biased and funnel them into like maybe one product. And for a lot of Medicare supplement agencies and agents that I've been in contact with, they typically only have one, maybe two med subs that they they like writing. So not only are you plugging them into just one product type, but you're probably just plugging them into like one or two carriers, which again, for a business aspect, you're risking a ton off doing so. And one of my last points is what I call the referral engine. And a lot of that's half running because word of mouth for you is and for any business in the Medicare space and business in general, the growth happens through word of mouth. Like that is a huge channel when it comes to getting like client acquisition. Absolutely. But one thing that happens when you sell one product is you only get one referral stream. For a lot of agents who can be selling multiple lines, you can get multiple lines of referrals. And if you can solve with those products, you can solve a lot of problems with those R lines. You are selling a much bigger problem for the customer, which gives them an experience that goes above and beyond their expectations, which gives them a trust factor you couldn't believe. And people love that. So when you give them a rock star experience like that, not just, hey, here's your Medicare supplement, here's how original Medicare works, that if you can be a holistic planner and help them out with, you know, having that discussion between Med, Medicare Advanced, setting up their plan, but then having a holistic process to help cover the other things, man, that is a just a dynamite experience for the customer. And it's kind of like uh when you go to a movie

AEP Becomes A Missed Opportunity

SPEAKER_01 17:12

theater and you see like a really awesome movie, and the next person, it's almost it's crazy. We had we had a team call uh about two weeks ago, and our our insurance business growth stripper, Chris, he got on the call and we asked, Well, you know, what wins we did for the, we do like wins for the week. And he said, My win for the week was I saw the new Mortal Kombat movie. And he's like, that is it was an awesome movie. If you guys have time, you guys just need to see it. It's kind of like that. After you have an experience, like, and I've had it happen myself, and I've seen other clients I've seen happen too, is like when they have a rock star experience with some product or service, it's almost like the first time they see the next person. It's like, oh, I just did this. Oh my God, the guy was awesome. He made it so easy. I mean, that's the kind of experience you want to have. And not to say you can't do that as a Medicare supplement-only agent. You can give a rockstar experience, but when you come a holistic planner, it just blows it out of the water. Now, it's not really about the product, it's about solving the problem. And the product is just the first part, the whole problem is what we want to solve for. And one product agencies that are trying to run extremely high referrals, it's harder because you're not that holistic planner. You're not solving the you're solving a small problem of a much bigger problem. When if you're a holistic planner, you can solve a much bigger problem, which gives a much bigger, better experience. When you solve more problems, you give a much better experience. You will get more referrals in the end. And when you're this one product agency and you're competing for the same clients against people who are doing more than you are, you have to be in a much higher level class to be able to consistently outperform those businesses. And yes, there are some people out there absolutely can do so. My thing is if you're in this Medicare supplement, we're only writing Medicare supplement window, be careful putting all your eggs into a carrier's basket or all your eggs into one product basket because agencies and agents all over the country are becoming more well-rounded. Not because, like, they think it's a fun idea. It's like it's a forced necessity at this point. Because Medicare supplement and Medicare Advantage commissions are shaky at the moment. So they have to find other ways to help out their clients and for the business themselves to make money. And if you want to sit on your high horse and you want to sit and just write Medicare supplement, I love that for you. Just know the risk associated because birthday rule is going to expand. Not being paid on guaranteed issue is not going away anytime soon. And carriers are actively, I mean, a couple just did this week, dropping their even open enrollment commissions to pay agents on. So it's something to forewarn about. And if this business is something of your livelihood, it's how you feed your family, maybe it's a retirement plan for you. Just think about this at a long term time horizon. That what will this be in a few years? Will this put you in a corner? Will this force you to change? Okay.

Referrals Rise With Holistic Planning

SPEAKER_01 19:57

So those are the real big five points that I wanted to kind of really dive in on because it's something that the industry itself is like talking about, but contextually, like Medicare supplement-only agents aren't really acknowledging. So I definitely wanted to put that out there because I ran into it a couple of times this week, and I want to put this together for you. So I want to bring it home. So the three things I want you to take away from this 20-ish minute podcast is one, the Medicare assault market is shrinking as a percentage of total Medicare enrollment. That is a fact. One product agency is fighting over a smaller piece of the every single year, and people's money isn't going as far as it used to. So the affordability to be able to afford a Medicare assaultment markets is becoming extremely hard. Number two, your existing book of business is your biggest untapped asset. If you're not having cross-selling conversations, you are leaving renewals, referrals, and revenue sitting there untouched. There has to be some way for you to monetize that cross-sell conversation, even monetize on the back end if you didn't do it during the existing appointment. Number three, AAP is not a sign line event, is your biggest opportunity in the Medicare calendar. And if you can't participate, you're missing real money every single year. So it's great, and you want to continue to do all those PDP reviews for people, but you want to be able to holistically help them become a have a full protection plan available. Even if you're doing it during AAP, that's what you got to do. Um, but as everyone's looking to get Medicare Advantage switches, that is your greatest opportunity, I think, to cross sell your existing clients. Plus, if plus also still actively market for the T65 as well. So if I was you, here's what I want you to do today. If you can pull up your book, count how many clients you have, and you only have a Medicare supplement plan with, that number is your opportunity. If you want to start and help them with more products and more offerings, you want to build a system, you want to have contracts that are competitive, you want to

Three Takeaways And What To Do

SPEAKER_01 21:58

be able to know that I have a system in place that knows that you can help monetize them when you do your first and second appointment and also back end. That's exactly what we do here. So if you're super interested, please reach out to us. We'd have a fun conversation. You can DM me on Instagram, you can visit our website, ffsginspartner.com. That'll take you kind of if you want to schedule a meeting, you can do so as well. But we help build and grow and scale uh Medicare insurance businesses and we teach you how to be a Medicare business and the best one possible that you uh that you can put together. So we want to help you build a bigger one together. So if that's all interesting, reach out to us. We'd love to have that conversation. Otherwise, uh, if you thought this was valuable, even in a uh even the slightest bit, share with a friend because we do zero marketing or ad spend to promote this podcast. Purely the subscribers, the view count, everything. The only way it gets bigger and bigger and bigger is because people share it. So that's the greatest compliment you can give us if you share with a friend, fan member, coworker, competitor. Well, maybe not a competitor. Um, but if you can do so, that'd be in the world to us. But thank you so much for joining the Invisible Agent Podcast. Again, we teach agents how to go from an unknown to unstoppable every single week and give you tips and tricks on how to do so. Even teach you on how we would uh operate in a one-product business as well. So thank you so much for your time. We will see you guys on the next one.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

We do not do any paid marketing to promote this podcast. It only grows if you find value in this and share it. Keep following as we show insurance business owners how to go from unknown to unstoppable. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.