Maximizing Revenue: Cross-Selling & Diversifying for Health Insurance with Emily Hollingsworth

Join Emily Hollingsworth, Operations Manager at Hilb Group Medicare, and Allison Babberl, Content Marketing Manager at AgencyBloc, for a discussion about the critical importance of diversification in the health insurance space. They explore effective methods for agents to diversify their offerings, manage their commissions, and prepare for future disruptions in the industry. The conversation emphasizes the need for education, strategic planning, and the importance of nurturing client relationships to ensure business growth and retention.

Inside the Industry is a recurring video series hosted by AgencyBloc to take an insider's look at the health, group benefits, and senior insurance industry. Learn more about what's happening right now, what it means for your agency, and how your team can stay ahead of these changes.

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Transcript

0:01

Awesome. Welcome everyone. have another edition of our uh monthly podcast Inside the Industry. As always, I'm Allison Babberl, Content Marketing Manager here at AgencyBloc. And I am joined by one of my long-time partners, Emily Hollingsworth, Operations Manager of Hilb Group Medicare. We've worked together off and on many times over the years now. I want to say what? Five years now maybe? Yeah. Yeah, great to have you on. Long-time client of AgencyBloc, but also just long-time partner in the industry and just being a great industry advocate and helping us better understand what our clients need. So I'm really excited to have you on today. And I think today's a really important topic, Emily, especially after such a rough Open Enrollment/Annual Election Period. Nearly everyone I've talked to, including you, has said it was, it was tough. And even for people like Hilb Group is not a new agency. You are very well-established, been around a long time. And it was still a really tough season on getting changes into place, navigating the changes. Regardless of if you're on Medicare, group, ACA, there are changes all around the board. And so I'm really excited to talk to you today because you have an awesome conversation, a session coming up at BlocBuilder 2026 about commissions processing and diversification. And I kind of want to just talk to you about some of that today. I know you and I met the other day to discuss a little bit of this, but I want to start with that diversification side. So what does diversification mean to you? Let's start there, Emily. Yeah, so diversification, I think, especially in the Medicare space is something that's kind of a hot topic right now. I think it's something that people really should be talking about because with the disruptions we've had in Medicare, especially on the commissions side, it's important to try to get the most out of all of your leads, all of your referrals, everything that you're getting in, you need to get the most out of those and the most meaning that you can diversify in different products that you're getting from those clients. You can have a hospital indemnity along with those Medicare Advantage clients. You can sell a cancer policy along with those Medicare Supplements or a dental policy. There's also other markets that you can go into, which is the individual ACA market. We don't do much in that, but we do a lot in the group side. So the group Medicare, ICHRAs, there's some MSAs out there that are great. So it's looking into those. I don't really advise going way too wide in your diversification to start with, because I've definitely seen that kind of blow up in people's faces. Starting with one thing, diving into it, knowing everything you can about those products before you get them out to your clients, as well as, what the commissions means on those, because they're very different from Medicare. The two Medicare sides, Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage, those are very different from each other, and so are the commissions schedules for your hospital indemnities, your dental, and your group Medicare. All of those are so very different. So learning those before you really dive into that and get them out to your clients and start selling is you need to understand those things and those implications before you dive into it. Yeah, I think diversification, especially in the Medicare space, but even in other lines of business, it is really becoming more and more of a conversation as commissions change, carrier representation, plan representation changes, especially even on the group side types of plans. You've mentioned ICHRAs, the growth in ICHRAs, the growth in level-funded, self-funded for different levels of group sizes, there are more things coming out for even those small to mid-sized groups that has been quite a bit of change for the industry and knowing where your revenue streams are and how you're future-proofing your business I think is really, really critical. I know from conversations I've had, a lot of diversification is talking about going into those other revenue streams. I've heard a lot with life. Life insurance is becoming a really more prominent coverage option for many insurance agents. I've also heard even into the financial side, financial products, taxes, and we all got to do our taxes every year. I don't know about you, Emily, but I dread doing my taxes every year. I'm really bad at them. They take me a long time. I should probably just hire a tax professional at this point. do advice We do that, but yeah I completely get it. It's daunting even just getting the stuff together to take it to the tax professional, so I totally get it. Do I have it all? I don't even know. Looking into that diversification, you mentioned commissions processing a little bit. I think with diversification comes a few different things. There's a lot of people saying, okay, we need to do this. Looking at that revenue, looking at the potential revenue for 2026, 2027, even beyond, the likelihood that things are gonna change again is very high. Now we don't know what those changes are. We haven't seen what the carriers are launching this year. We haven't seen what the commission structures are going to be. We still have a few months out until that. We're in that nice post-enrollment buffer. But with diversification, it is definitely a must do. But what would you recommend to people on how to do it well? You said maybe choose one or two. Don't go for everything right away. Kind of like Mm-hmm. options, but maybe don't get every piece. But what other ideas do you have for people to really navigate in diversification well? So like I said, just diving into one at a time. So look at each one and see where you think and looking at your book of business. So a lot of people, they may have focused up until now 60%/40% maybe leaning towards Medicare Supplement, 40% MedAdvantage or the other way around. So it's kind of looking at those products and seeing what pairs well with them because where you really want to start with this diversification is looking at that book of business and see what you could cross-sell your current clients with. Which there are great CRMs out there that can help you with that. AgencyBloc is one of them. They have a great report called Cross-Sell that I love that you can put in, give me anybody that has a Medicare advantage but doesn't have a hospital indemnity, or give me everybody that has a Medigap but doesn't have a cancer policy. So you can easily find that data of who you can cross-sell those products to, but looking at your book of business is a great place to start to figure out what piece you want to start with because if you have mostly Medicare Advantage, then you want to look at probably hospital indemnity as being that diversification you start with. If you've got Medicare Supplement, then you may want to look at cancer, dental, life insurance. Those are all good options to put with those Medicare Supplement products because, typically, your Medicare Supplement clients are typically going to be the ones that are a little higher in income. Your Medicare Advantage may have a little lower income. So a hospital indemnity pairs so well with the Medicare Advantage plan because a lot of those, especially with different carriers like a GTL or an Aetna, they have tools that you can put in what the plan looks like, the Medicare Advantage plan that you're pairing it with looks like, and it can fill those holes, those coinsurance, those copays, things like that. So those are great ways to start is looking at your current, what you have currently in your book of business to see what products you may want to start with. And then you can go from there, once you've worked with your current clients, because your current clients trust you, they know you, and it's a lot easier to have that conversation about selling something else. So if you start with those current clients, then you could pivot to your new clients that you're meeting with and bringing up those in that appointment, because it is a health product. You can bring it up in that first conversation. Now that life insurance, you're going to wait. You need to wait for a second appointment. But for the hospital indemnities, your dental, you could bring that up in that first appointment. But like I said, I would start with those, original clients who know you well to start with that cross-sell. It's a little easier. I think basing it on cross-sell is one of the smartest ways to do it. Because as an insurance agent, you should be cross-selling as is. You should already be cross-selling. You should already be looking at those gaps for your clients, seeing what they have currently with you for coverage versus what they don't and where they have it elsewhere. Because you and I both know, retention is the name of the game, especially with the changes in new business. With commissions changing on how much you get paid on new sales. There are changes with leads and lead acquisition. Those prices are going up just like everything else. There is inflation there. So planning out how you're gonna pay for your new business is really critical. So bringing it back to your cross-selling seeing, okay, where can I build and keep the same clients I have so I already have that good, strong foundation of revenue? Because it always comes back to revenue, right, Emily? mean, you know this as well as I do, especially as an Operations Manager. Every conversation comes back to revenue. As a business, even when you're a business focused on helping, focused on being a service, being a partner with your clients, it comes back to revenue. So where are your clients looking for additional coverage or where are they saying, hey, I wish I could have this with you? Because the more policies you have or say it has with you, the higher likelihood they're going to stick with you, right? If they have seven policies with you, probably not gonna leave, because that's a lot of work to go find someone who has all of those policy coverage options. And I think even with the group space, I know you mentioned quite a bit in Medicare, but even in the group space with the changes, ICHRAs, that is a whole new revenue stream for some people. It does take the education though. You can't just dive into diversification. I think education has to be at the Mm-hmm. You're nodding your head. I'm assuming you're agreeing, but you were talking about those changes in leads. Can you kind of go into that a little bit more on how lead acquisition, lead generation has changed even in this last year and what that means now as an insurance agent in 2026? Yeah, so for a long, long-time, I mean, I've been in the Medicare space for 16 years. And when I started, we were definitely doing the business reply mail. That was that was the core of Medicare getting those clients in was was, I don't want to say easy, but it was just people return those cards. It was it was a lot easier than it is today. Today. rarely anybody returns those cards because why? They're getting 10 of them a day. They're still going out and there's a lot of people still trying to use them and they're just not the old faithful they used to be. there's a lot of diversification in lead acquisition and how a lot of our brokers get their leads. There's a lot of referral. Referral is a big core of a lot of people's business, either from business partners like financial planners, group brokers. Things like that, or could be referrals from your current clients. Those are big time ways to get clients because one, they're warm. Most of the time they're warm leads that are coming in because they're being referred to you, typically, by someone they already trust, either their employer or an investment advisor or something like that. And two, they're generally free unless you're paying a referral fee to someone, which I mean is a possibility, even with those referral fees, it could be a lot less per lead at the end of the day to get those referrals, especially since they're warm when they're coming in. So that's a great way to be diversifying your lead acquisition. Another way is doing educational workshops in different ways. There are a lot of companies out there that do educational workshops and help you do those. There are a lot of different ways to do those. There are community educational workshops where you send out to a mailing list or you send it through social media or something to get that word out. Or you can do it with employers. You can, if you're getting information from employers that you could meet with and you could go into there and have like a lunch and learn or something like that at the employer, that's another way to diversify your leads. There's a lot of different diversification now in the lead space. And it's important to try different things and to keep doing different things because there's just so many ways to do it now and there's so many ways that people are getting in front of these people. So if you're not doing that, too, you're gonna fall behind for sure. Definitely. And I think in that whole space, you know, with AI and automation growing in this last year, especially, and beyond, having tools in place to do automation, to do those reach outs, the more you nurture your clients, the more you nurture your leads, the higher likelihood you are going to win that opportunity, especially with referrals. I talk to a lot of people, they say, oh, I don't need to do email nurturing or anything like that. They're gonna fall behind. Yeah. Yeah, They're definitely gonna fall behind. It's very important when you get people into your pipeline and having a pipeline is very important. I would say if you're not using a CRM that tracks your pipeline of those leads, then you're also gonna fall behind. These are the things that I'm gonna be talking about at BlocBuilder, but it's really these things that are at the core of keeping track of your data and being ready to pivot if you need to change your lead. Your process for your leads of how you're going to diversify your acquisition of leads, you need to make sure that you're ready to pivot to those things. So having accurate data in your system is very important. And so using that system to reach out to those leads once you've got them. So if you do a lunch and learn, let's say with an employer, you're going to get information about these employees. Most of the time, like we work a lot with that. We do a lot at the Hilb Group Medicare with that. And I will tell you, most of the time, you're going to have like two people out of 20 that are actually ready to retire. Most of them are not. They're just there to get some information. And then in the next two, three years, they may be retiring. So if you're not dripping on those people, at least monthly, a monthly newsletter or something, then you're not top of mind. And so they may get a referral from a friend to another broker. If you're not making sure that they remember that they went to a workshop and listened to you and you had good information. You're not going to stay in their mind. They're not going to remember. So you've got to be dripping on those people to keep that. You invested time to do that lunch and learn or to do that workshop or whatever it was. So make sure you're also investing the time to keep and nurture those leads going forward, too. That's my new favorite phrase. You got to drip on your leads, right? Got to drip on your clients. Drip is always just a good, strong mainstay. It's been around for a long time, but it is solid. It performs, and it's something you should be doing. I think in general, looking at diversification, kind of what I'm getting from you, Emily, is one, look at your leads or your clients. Look at your clients. What are they asking for? What are they needing? How can you start in those areas, those parallels first? That way you already know you have your core base. Then two, make a plan for your leads. How are you getting leads? Where are you getting leads? How much are you spending on leads? Looking at your ROI, return on investment. How much are you getting from those leads? If you're paying $10 for every lead, how many of those leads are actually turning over, right? You wanna know that that's critical, again, for revenue. And I think it comes back to what you also mentioned at the beginning. The part people probably don't think about with diversification is the commission's processing side because it changes. If you have a Medicare policy that pays at a very different rate and different timetable, different amount, then... a group policy would. And now ICHRAs are moving into the Medicare space even. I've heard a lot of conversation there. So what are your recommendations, your best practices for people going, okay, how am I gonna manage these commissions? I now have different revenue streams coming in. I might have to hire another agent. What are your best practices there? Best practice for that, the first thing you definitely want to do if you're going to diversify and looking at commission is first looking at those commission schedules for those new products that you're looking at doing. That's your first step is always to make sure you understand how you're supposed to be paid. That's very important. Not everybody does that. I deal with brokers all the time saying, how do know how I'm supposed to be paid? Every single carrier you work with has a commission schedule somewhere. They either send it, Typically, it is part of the contract you originally signed, but every year it can change. So you always want to be looking at those commission schedules or having someone that works for you looking at those commission schedules, analyzing how it's supposed to be paid so that you know what to expect. One main thing is if you're diversifying away from Medicare or adding other products to your Medicare book of business, anything that's ancillary, your hospital indemnities, your cancer policies, those pay a lot upfront and then residuals are going to be lower. Then with other, with group and stuff like that, that could be just a monthly rate for the whole time that they're on that policy. And it doesn't advance as we may be used to with Medicare Advantage or Medicare Supplement. So it's looking at your commission schedules, it's understanding how those are paid, but also, or how much those are paid, how much you're paid on those things, but also whether it's based on premium, whether it's a flat rate. And then also making sure you understand the cadence of that, of whether it's advanced, whether it's gonna be paid monthly as earned, because Medicare Supplement can be paid based on the premium. So can some group policies based on premium of when the client pays. So it's understanding those things. And then you can go into your CRM and put in how you're expecting to get paid. So then you can run reports off of what you might be missing. And even some pay per life, some, as you said, flat amount. And as we said, there's a lot of people looking into that life insurance space from all different angles. There are some people looking to add Medicare to keep that continuity of coverage for their under 65, aging into Medicare. All of these different policy types pay differently. And with changes in commission structures, changes in carrier and plan options, it is on the agent. It is your due diligence to ensure you're getting paid properly. Because if you are not, you're the only one that's going to know. Carriers don't intentionally pay you incorrectly, but it happens. Human, right? And if you aren't doing your due diligence, you could be leaving money on the table, which is affecting your bottom line, your revenue, which is affecting how you can future-proof your agency, affecting how you can diversify and affecting how you can grow. And I think that's really critical. it's, know, I hear a lot of clients or agents in the field say, if I'm missing commissions, it's the cost of doing business. Yeah, I don't agree with that. You definitely need to be auditing these things and also understanding that some carriers have limitations on how long you have to inquire with them on that missing commission. I believe a few of them, it's two years, some of them it's one year, it just depends on the carrier. So there is a limitation of how long you have to inquire on missing commissions. So that's important to understand as well. Anything can happen. Trust me, I've seen it. I've seen all different types of things happening. The other thing that you want to pay attention to is if they didn't get your license or you didn't get appointed, you may not get paid. Those are things to make sure of, too. Your contracting process is important, too, to make sure you're contracted with the carrier before you sell the product so then you don't miss out on that commission because they may issue the policy, but they won't pay you if you were not appointed. So those are things important to catch too as well. And I think that's really critical for agents who work with uh one upline or multiple uplines, knowing where that contract is coming from, where you're contracted with that carrier. Is it through this upline, this one? Knowing all of that. Because your upline, again, they're doing their due diligence, they're doing their best, but it does come back to the agent, to the broker. This is your livelihood, this is your business. You want to ensure you're doing the steps you need to do so that you can set yourself up for the future. Yeah, we work with three or four different uplines and we definitely do not leave it up to our upline to inform us of things because that I've definitely seen that blow up in your face, too. So definitely making sure you have the information and having it in your system, you know, having a CRM to track those things because CRMs can also track your information. People think of it as just a client relationship management, but you also can use your CRM to track your licensing. your contracting to make sure that those contracts are in place of what states you're contracted in because there are carriers that do what's called just-in-time contracting, but trusting that that's just gonna happen or trusting, even sometimes trusting what your upline is telling you is not always correct, not everything. There are times I tell my staff all the time, like you'll call the carrier and you'll get an answer and you're kind of questioning it. I will definitely call the carrier back and ask again, just so I can verify, because sometimes the answer you got the first time you knew was not right. So sometimes it's just re-verifying that those things are asking the upline and the carrier to see if you're getting the right answer, because sometimes you're not getting the right answer and it can hurt your bottom line. like you said, it is ultimately up to us as the brokers to know that we are appointed, we're certified, and that we are getting paid the right amounts. It is ultimately up to us because we are business owners. When you are a broker, my mom's a broker too, my husband's a broker, so I see this all the time and I harp this at my mother, too, all the time, but basically you are a business owner. You need to look at it as you are in charge of all of this. This is all up to you to make sure that all of this is buttoned up and you are checking these things continually because it can add up really fast if you put it off. it can add up really fast and then you're going back two years auditing your records. So it's definitely checking these things continually is what's gonna help you make sure that your bottom line is straightened out. Yeah, trying to audit two years past when you're also trying to grow. That's just a lot to take on. And tying it back to diversification, again, knowing that you are prepared and ready to take on those new lanes, making sure you are certified with the proper carriers, right? If you only sell one line of business now and you want to diversify into another, you can't just start selling their insurance policies because you want to. You have to make sure it's in your state, have to make sure you have the proper certifications, you have to make sure your licenses are up to date, all of that. That is critical. All of this wraps back into if you want to diversify, which many have to right now to keep their business going and growing, then these are the steps you need to take. Right. Yeah. And finding the right upline that will support you, because there is support out there from the right upline. And finding the right upline that will help support you in that diversification, because a lot of them do have education. And right now we have a lot of, with our company, we have what we call coaching calls. And we will have representatives from different carriers come on to that coaching call to talk about those hospital indemnities, those cancer policies, those other policies that we can sell because so many of us were so focused on Medicare for so long that the diversification right now can be daunting. So getting that education is so important and those carrier reps can definitely help with that. So your uplines, a lot of times, will have those trainings on those products and you can learn more about the products. They can also provide you with those commission schedules like we talked about so that you can educate yourself on the products and how you will be paid so you can be ready when you're ready to diversify. Yes, 100% agree with all that. I work with uplines from across the country and I always learn so much from them. Not being an agent myself, but just being in the industry, I learned so much that is critical for me to help provide the education AgencyBloc puts out to ensure that agents across the country are taking the best steps to manage their business. 100%. Amazing. Thank you so much, Emily. I think this is a really critical topic. It's a really current topic for a lot of people, especially coming out of 2025 and all of the changes and that really rough season. As we prepare for another Open Enrollment and AEP coming up. What does that look like, especially with the enrollment peak for group coming up this summer? What does that look like? How do we prepare? And how do you best set your agency up for success? Yeah. So we definitely had, like I said, a bumpy 2025. Our 2026 AEP was, we were not prepared even, and I've been doing this for 16 years, but it was, there was a lot of disruption, different kinds of disruption. I think that's what we weren't ready for last year was it was carrier disruption, was legislation disruption, it was commission disruption. Everything that could happen, all happened during one AEP. So what we did is we pivoted quickly. And that's one thing I will say about our team. We pivoted quickly and we figured out ways to fill the gaps and figure out what we could do. So getting prepared for 2027 AEP, we definitely had what I called a debrief session where we talked about everything that went wrong. You have to be ready to have those conversations and just talk about where. we were lacking and it's hard. It's hard to even think about where was I lacking? Where could I have done better? These are things you have to think about. These are things you need to document. So then during 2027 AEP, we can be ready for those things. And we also need to think about what like we've talked about where we could diversify because we don't know what's gonna happen for 2027 AEP. We don't know what more commission disruption, heaven forbid, we have. What more product disruption we could have, what more legislation we could have. We don't know what's gonna happen for 2027 AEP. So we do need to be prepared for what anything could happen. So it's important to be ready to pivot and not be so rigid in how we think about AEP and be ready to do those things that we need to do, but also looking back to last AEP to figure out where were the gaps that we can fill in for this AEP. Yeah, and I think that's critical is you are a single agent, small agency with a couple agents, growing, large, even up into an IMO, FMO, uplines, everyone in between, regardless if you sell just one product or you've already started diversifying, looking back to then look forward. Change will come, we don't know what that change will be. It probably isn't going to get better and back to normal, right? That's probably off the table at this point. So where can you set yourself up so that you can adjust and maneuver when those disruptions come and you can feel prepared. Right, so I would start now with a debrief session of how AEP happened and what happened in the last one, and then start thinking about ways you can maybe fill the gaps depending on what happens with any diversification that you can start with now. Definitely awesome. Thank you so much, Emily. This is such a great topic, great information. Probably discuss more at BlocBuilder and you know, as we share this out, I'm sure many people are going to be commenting and saying, yes, I have this experience. This is what I've been seeing. So a lot yet to come in 2026. Right now it is February. Let's see what happens. Yeah, absolutely. Can't wait to see. All right, thank you everyone. We'll see you here again next month for another edition of Inside the Industry. Thanks again to our guests today, Emily Hollingsworth, Operations Manager of Hilb Group Medicare. It's been great. Great, thanks, Allison, and this was wonderful.