Tips For Hosting a Medicare AEP Walmart Retail Sales Event – Part 1
The goal of this article is to help you get ready to host a Walmart or other retail store Medicare Sales Event. My experience was with Walmart, but other retail stores will probably be similar. I was a new agent when I experienced my first sales event, so I had the idea to keep notes so I could help other agents prepare for their first retail sales event. My hope now is to give others confidence and to take away the scary aspect of being CMS compliant at a retail store Sales Event.
I’ll start in Part 1 by sharing my experience, explain what is required, and continue in Part 2 with what you need, and finish with what to expect from this experience. There are pictures at the bottom. The basic information I’ll share with you should also help for most other retail in-store Sales Events.
As a new insurance agent, when studying to enroll people in Medicare Advantage and Supplement Insurance Plans, I felt I needed a push to get my feet wet and interact with real people with real questions. To that end, I decided to ask my FMO (Field Marketing Organization) for a Walmart store for AEP (Annual Enrolling Period). I have an up-line, so my request was submitted to my up-line, who forwarded my request to our FMO (Field Marketing Organization).
So what does that mean to have a Walmart store as an insurance agent? It is a Sales Event at a Walmart store, and for the company I worked through, I was required to be there a minimum of 20 hours per week. You have a table and you stand by your table and greet people (remember to never approach anyone), but you can talk with people who stop to chat and answer their insurance questions. Since it is a Sales Event you can answer people’s questions, and even enroll people into a Plan right there in the store, or make appointments to enroll people outside the store, always getting an SOA (Scope of Appointment) when enrolling people. If you are new, just know that there are two different Events, the other type, Educational Events, are very limited as to what you can do, say, and discuss (also events are divided into formal and informal, formal generally being like a seminar type of event).
During AEP there are various types of stores available to insurance agents such as drug stores and grocery stores, these are large corporations and they contract with marketing groups, so you need to sign up with one of these marketing groups via your marketing up-line via your FMO or IMO. (FMO and IMO are Marketing Organizations and the terms are pretty much interchangeable: Field or Insurance Marketing Organizations.)
You are not limited to this type of retail store Sales Event during AEP, you can elect to have your own event at the venue of your choice, but remember that any Medicare-related event must be approved by your FMO and sponsored by an insurance company you are contracted with. Also, if you decide to have your own Sales or Educational Events, some carriers with help promote your events, but you must register your events with these carriers very early, often way back in June, in order to receive marketing help.
Honestly, I did not expect to get approved for a Walmart store, these stores are highly sought after due to their high people traffic volume. But hey, if I was going to do this whole insurance thing I needed a push, and the worst my FMO could do is say no. So I asked for a store.
Autumn assignments for AEP retail locations (Annual Election Period begins in October) are assigned in the spring. Wanting to throw my hat into the ring early I asked my FMO in February for a Walmart store. I sent a nice email to my up-line requesting to get a Walmart store and provided 3 Walmart locations close to our home that I was interested in. And my up-line forwarded my request to the appropriate person at our FMO who handles retail location events.
After a few weeks I received a surprise, there was a Walmart store in my list that was available. It was a small, low traffic Neighborhood Walmart store, groceries only, but that sounded perfect for me, as a newbie. How exciting! So I accepted the Neighborhood Walmart, and my adventure began.
Is any road without bumps? What happened next, just a couple of weeks after accepting my Walmart store, the China virus was determined to be serious and spreading. I had practically begged for the assignment, and I was concerned if I backed out it would be a mark against me. While I am an independent insurance agent, backing out of an event is not a good thing to do. What to do? It was only a momentary thought, I did not want to risk being known as a person who backs out of an agreement, so I stayed quiet and hoped that what become known as the Covid virus, I hoped the situation would improve by fall. It didn’t, of course, it got worse.
Since I had only had my license a short time, I was only RTS (Ready To Sell) with 3 insurance carriers for Medicare-related insurance products. I wanted to add another insurance carrier so I would have four carriers, to be sure I would meet the requirements of my Walmart program of having 3 insurance carriers to sponsor my Walmart Sales Event. I didn’t know how hard it might be to get “sponsored” by the carriers for my Sales Event, so I wanted to be RTS with 4 carriers. Getting another carrier would also require more studying, but I asked to contract with another carrier, what the heck, I could use more studying anyway.
Back to the process. Spring gave way to summer and the time came for the annual Medicare Advantage insurance testing period, AHIP, and the training and testing required for each insurance carrier’s Medicare and FWA (Fraud-Waste-Abuse) requirements. Even for a well-studied and seasoned insurance agent, this process is a chore, but for someone still new to the whole insurance thing it is a huge mountain to climb studying and testing during the summer. In addition, I’d added the training and testing required for the Walmart store Sales Event along with separate Sales Event training that is required by some insurance carriers. Be sure not to miss the fact that some insurance carriers require an extra “Events” training course in order to do events.
To get the insurance carriers to sponsor my Walmart event, I had to be RTS (ready to sell) with each one. I discovered that it is possible to take and pass the carriers’ test without being contacted and RTS. When one carrier did not approve my Walmart event, it turned out that I was not contracted with them, that somewhere along the line something went wrong. I had passed all their tests, but never got approved and RTS. This was the reason I wanted 4 carriers, to protect against just such a happening. So I was okay, I had the carriers I needed for my Walmart event, but I went ahead and got contracted with this last carrier in time that I was able to also get them to approve my Walmart event, giving me 4 carrier sponsors.
Now that we have discussed the basics, let’s move on to working with the company that arranges these retail store opportunities. There are various companies your FMO may contract with, but the procedures they use will probably be similar. These various companies may also be FMO/IMOs and have agents and conduct sales via their agents in-person, telephone, and online. But they may also use the down-line of other FMOs to work retail store locations around the country.
Let’s call this FMOR for Field Marketing Organization plus Retail.
When your FMO approves you for a retail kiosk, they either send you a contracting link or will provide your contact information to the FMOR which will contact you with a website for testing and contracting. Yes, more studying and testing.
You will begin receiving communications from the FMOR, probably by email. These emails are not optional reading, read them carefully, they are important. There is a lot of information that will be conveyed. In addition, there will probably be webinars you will be required to attend. Don’t skip them, the webinars are not only required but will also give you a chance to ask questions of the FMOR broker managers. You will probably also have a coordinator from your own FMO to help you with questions, be sure to learn who that person is, because if this is your first rodeo you will have questions.
After you complete testing and get contracted with the FMOR you will have access to your scheduling and reporting portal, along with marketing materials and kiosk information. In this website portal, you will need to list the participating insurance carriers with whom you are contracted and RTS (Ready To Sale). It is a slow process for the carriers to approve you, it can take a few weeks, so don’t delay getting started. Once approved by your carriers, sometime around the first of September, you will be asked to schedule your October hours you plan to be at your retail store, probably something like a minimum of 20 hours each week divided over a minimum of 3 days each week. Generally, agents can share a retail store and split those days and the 20 hours, but also agents may have the option to work additional days and hours if they desire, but check with your FMOR.
Note, if the weeks for either the beginning or the end of AEP are very short, like AEP ends on a Monday, so the week would only consist of Sunday and Monday, the FMOR may not require the 20 hours, rather zero to a shorter number of hours, just ask your FMOR.
Now remember this is a Sales Event and must be sponsored and approved by each insurance carrier, but with the FMOR I had, it was all done easily on their website portal, I was not required to go to each carrier to register my events. Using the FMOR’s website I was able to schedule a month of daily events, once, and each of my RTS carriers approved the whole month, it was a simple process. Nice!
Canceling any event is frowned on, but if you have to cancel you must notify the FMOR by the number of days in advance they require. Sickness or accidents still require you to contact your FMOR as quickly as possible.
Once you schedule your hours via the agent portal, you wait for your RTS carriers to approve your Sales Events. A minimum, probably 2-3 carriers, will be required, but you can mark the scheduling request for all of your carriers that the FMOR and yourself are contracted with. The FMOR will probably provide an insurance carrier list in the website to make the selection process for the carriers very easy, like a drop-down menu to select from.
Getting your “stuff” ready. Your marketing materials, enrollment books, support items, and personal things.
At this point, you have been approved by your RTS carriers to host a Sales Event, and they have approved your Sales Event days and hours.
Now things are getting real, and I have to admit getting scary, I suddenly thought of so many things to do, questions to ask, I was pretty much terrified. I did not have any helpful articles to read, and I went into panic mode, what the heck had I gotten myself into. I wasn’t ready for this, was my knowledge enough, would I know what and how to do everything. How do I report my hours, what can I say, how do I set appointments, what things do I need. The list of my doubts and concerns was long, very long. So what did I do? I plowed on. Terrified, but determined to do this Walmart thing. I had to learn, and Walmart was going to be my training course.
More scary thoughts, because like any insurance event, you are required to be there, be there on time, and not leave until the ending time. Wow, what if something happened, what if I forgot, overslept, what if I was two seconds late. Wow, what if I got sick, what if I got sick with Covid, what if I had car trouble, died in the street. You get the idea.
I like techie stuff, and I visualized that each day I had to check in and out of my event with my cell phone with a “big-brother” geo-locator tracking my every move, and if I forgot to log in it would be the end of my newly started insurance career, such a brief, short career. Oh my! I would be reported to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), the insurance carriers would cancel my contracts, and, of course, my FMO would dump me. I am exhausted just remembering my panic.
How could I know all the right answers to everyone’s questions, how would I handle those long hours, what materials and enrollment books did I need to have with me, how in the world was I going to survive this.
It turned out to not be scary at all, and a total waste of good energy getting into such a panic. But I suppose a good panic now and again wakes you up. To my surprise, everything was actually very easy. I stayed healthy, I was always on time, and I learned a lot.
The first few weeks of my Walmart Sales Event went pretty well. I did not have answers for some questions, and I am the kind of person that finds not knowing answers a shortcoming in myself, but at the end of each day at Walmart, I would run home and research the answers, or contact my up-line, or one of the insurance carrier broker managers for help. I also had my iPad with me to look things up. I started accumulating notes and knowledge. It was a bit overwhelming. I was upset that I didn’t know everything, but thankful I was learning. I wanted to help people, but obviously, I wanted to be correct in my help. So my retail experience was doing as I had hoped, showing me where my knowledge weaknesses were. And I learned and started feeling easier about speaking with people about Medicare and insurance products.
My Walmart Sales Event was hard work, I did the event alone, no one else joined me, turns out no one wants a low traffic, small store. I was new to insurance and still a bit dazed and confused, and certainly not the kind of person who normally puts themselves out there. But I learned to stop trying so hard and to stop punishing myself if I felt like I may have missed a sale. This was learning time, I was certainly not a pro.
Also, I accepted that I did not necessarily want every sale, if I couldn’t communicate and get through to someone there at the store what makes me think I could do better in a sales presentation. I gave those people the brochure provided by the FMOR with their number and asked a couple of people to please call that number. The FMOR’s phone sales agents don’t have to be in contact with the difficult people after the sale, where I would have, and my life is way too short to have people like that in it. There are very successful salespeople who might grab every sale, I don’t enjoy conflict or confrontation, I was learning that if I wanted to keep my life in harmony that I should pass some sales.
Please continue on to Part 2, which is about what you might need for your Sales Event and some tips and thoughts.
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