Running events is one of the best ways to grow your business. They capitalize on your advantage as a local, independent agent who can meet and educate people face-to-face, and they are an efficient way to build a relationship with many people at once. Many of the most successful agents we work with built their books off of a consistent schedule of sales and educational events. What does success running events look like?
3-5 community partners that can host and help market your events (restaurants, diners, community centers, churches) on at least a quarterly basis.
1-2 sales or marketing events each month, each with 10-20 attendees, 3-4 enrollments immediately, and the rest of the attendees agreeing to stay in touch with you.
This means 6-8 enrollments per month from running events while building a steady rolodex of prospects for the future!
It's worth giving both Sales and Educational events a try. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Sales Events: Formal sales presentation going into plan details for a specific carrier. These events are more regulated and need to be cleared in advance by your local carrier rep, but the benefit is you're more likely to do many enrollments on the spot, though you'll be limited to a specific carrier.
When planning formal sales events, be sure you give yourself enough time to get the carrier approval.
Educational Events: This is the typical the "Medicare 101" presentation, where you can represent all plans (and your own value prop as a local independent agent). These events are simpler to pull off and a great way to build up your prospect rolodex, even if they lead to less immediate sales.
We break the event process into the following steps. You should view Spark as your back-office team that manages all the marketing, logistics, compliance, and follow-ups for your events, while you focus on building relationships with community partners and prospects. Your Sales Director or Agent Manager will help you strategize each event, and our Agent Services team will help with end-to-end execution.
See below for our events playbook (click the arrow at the left side of each bullet for more information):
Community Partner Development
Community Partner Development
All activities you do should have an eye toward the long-term: more important than just running one successful event is finding a partner that can help host and market consistent events for you. The first step is developing good community partners who'll work with you.
You probably know which venues would work best in your community. We see the most success in libraries, senior centers, community centers, churches, restaurants, malls, and even employers.
If you don’t have one in mind, we can propose some venues near you based off of the local marketing research our Agent Services team has made for you (example link).
You should aim to build a relationship with the community partner so that you can keep coming back and so that the partner invites their existing customers to your events)
Once some venues are selected, you should make contact to establish a relationship. This is best done in person. You can view our scripts & playbooks for building community partners here, and your Sales Director or Agent Manager is available for coaching or strategy. If possible, they can even go with you on in-person visits.
Marketing
Marketing
After developing a community partnership, the next step is getting people to show up! You, your Sales Director or Agent Manager, and the community partner should agree on a date and a rough attendance size. Then Spark's Agent Services team will help you fill the room. We market events through internal marketing and partner marketing.
Internal marketing: Our Agent Services team can run mailer and digital campaigns to market your event and yourself (we'll invoice you for these expenses at cost, or you can apply your marketing co-op here). We can work collaboratively on marketing creative, but all the logistical work of marketing should be put on our team. We will typically need 5 weeks of lead time to market a event, and you should expect ~$2,000 in marketing investment to get 20 - 30 people (includes couples).
Partner marketing: In addition to our own marketing, it’s best if your community partner will help you get the word out as well. We've seen agents build 2K client books by doing monthly Medicare 101s at the local library, where the local library does all the marketing. Your Sales Director or Agent Manager will help you make the marketing ask of your community partner, and we have templates for emails, social media posts, or physical fliers you can give the community partner to share with their customer base.
Event Logistics
Event Logistics
Once a date is set and marketing is out, we still need to handle all the logistics to make the event successful! Your Sales Director or Account Manager is responsible for helping you anticipate all you'll need for the event (giveaways, business cards, marketing materials, AV equipment) and will coordinate with Agent Services to make sure you have all you need. Logistics make or break events, but you should never have to worry it yourself!
Our Agent Services team handles all communications with the community partner, getting all the physical materials you need in place, managing RSVPs, and more.
Your Sales Director or Agent Manager will run through a go-live checklist with you before each event, making sure you're fully prepared and have all the support you need.
When possible, your Sales Director or Agent Manager can accompany you on events.
Post Event Follow-up
Post Event Follow-up
You'll meet a lot of people at your event, some of whom will enroll immediately, others who'll need more time but will have valued the education you provided them. For those prospects who need more time, follow-up is key. We know that each event creates a potentially overwhelming set of follow-ups. Our team and Agent Platform help you manage all your prospect information and send warm follow-ups to keep everyone you met engaged.
Capturing consent to contact
Once your prospect information is your in CRM, we'll send an automated thank you follow-up to your prospects with email and mail in your name (how should we handle prospect follow-up?).