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Sales & educational events

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!

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Quick Links

It's worth giving both Sales and Educational events a try. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

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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.

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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):

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.