Sales Force Oversight Ain’t Easy

Selling season is nearly upon us, so with that in mind, here are some thoughts to help plans prepare.  In this post, I’ll detail some sales oversight and reporting best practices we’ve seen applied with success in a number of plans.

When creating an effective agent oversight program, keep in mind that agent oversight requires a program, not a process.  There is really no single indicator that can identify all outliers.  A successful agent oversight program requires a collection of metrics that – when combined  –  paint a clear and concise picture of an agent or group of agents’ performance.

Some of the data we often see included in effective oversight programs includes:

• OEV Calls
• Secret Shopping
• SOA Audits
• Rapid Disenrollment
• Ride-alongs
• Sales Call Monitoring

One of the most challenging aspects of agent oversight is often that the data needed to execute powerful reports can originate from a number of different sources.  For larger plans, this task is even more challenging because of divisions between departments.  Therefore, don’t try to reinvent the wheel when designing these reports; plans can create and track a number of different oversight metrics from data that is readily available from enrollment.

There are quite a few potent reports that can be developed to assess agent/broker risk, (at both the plan level and individual level).  These can be created using just a monthly enrollment report (TRR & MMR) combined with various data points from the activities listed above that your sales management should be tracking.  Keep in mind – whichever reports are developed — use them in unison: tracking by one data point must become a practice of the past.

Here are some simple best practice reports we suggest:

• Percentage of Direct Oversight activities not met (combined pass/fail from secret shops, OEV calls, SOA audits, etc.)
• Rapid Disenrollment Rate (set benchmarks)
• Complaints vs. Agent Assisted Enrollments (create acceptable thresholds)

Finally, once the oversight program is in place and agents are in the field actively selling, make an effort to run two self-perpetuating oversight processes.  The first involves pulling a random selection of active oversight activities from the population to identify potential outliers.  Then, once outliers are identified from either the random sampling process, or through adverse behavior, plans can administer more focused activities.

I hope these strategies were helpful.  Stay tuned to the GHG blog for more tips for successful selling this season!