There’s a common challenge across our industry where once agents hit two or three hundred clients, it becomes hard to write new business during AEP. As an agent, you’re trying to grow your book of business, while servicing existing clients that you really care about, and it’s nearly impossible to do both without some extra support. 

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Spark is the largest independent NMA offering technology and services to help brokers solve this challenge. I sat down with Brent Crawley, CEO and co-founder of The Premier Agency, and Michael Henderson, founder of Tapestry Insurance Group, to hear how the Spark platform has empowered their agents to write more business — without abandoning their current clients.  

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If we missed you at the webinar, watch the recording, or read through the conversation highlights.

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Reduce your manual data entry 

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What if you didn’t have to do any data entry? As Brent put it, entering information into multiple applications is “sort of the story of our lives for brokers.” 

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The Spark platform eliminates the need for double data entry. Clients complete intake forms that auto-populate everything from a new customer profile to an eventual Sunfire enrollment.

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“You can have the drugs entered and all the doctors entered just by sending your client a Needs Analysis,” Michael said. “The data would import into the system.”

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Brent explained that if you have clients who don’t want to fill out paperwork online, they can dial our Spark team directly, and we will collect that information over the phone and upload the client’s profile for you. He added: “And that doesn’t cost a thing.”

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Not only do these workflows save you time, but you’re also less vulnerable to data entry errors. 

Delegate client requests to Spark’s team 

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As an agent, you’re on the hook for everything — tracking down ID cards, fixing billing errors, searching for prescription coverage. At Spark, our agents and principals get access to our Client Services team that manages these requests for you. 

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As of today, we’ve done over 440,000 tickets on behalf of agents, and we’re operating at a 96% client satisfaction rate (both in English and Spanish). 

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Michael shared a story from last AEP when he spent two and a half hours sorting through a billing issue with one of his clients. Was it hard to do? No. But it did take away valuable AEP time. 

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“You could spend five minutes putting a note into the support ticket, upload the copy of the bill, the Spark team reaches out, and the results are the same,” Michael said. “Since we have adopted the Spark platform and become a partner with Spark, the number of times that people get great service is amazing. So if you’re worried about the service level, you don’t need to worry about that.” 

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Recover your lost commissions

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We’ve had a lot of instances where our partners don’t know whether they’ve been paid correctly by carriers. 

Spark can proactively audit your agency’s overrides, recover unpaid commissions, and alert you when payments have been wired. This is all automated. You don‘t have to go into every one of your carrier portals, you don’t have to export your customer list, and then import it back into Spark — this all happens automatically on the back end. You can have confidence knowing you’re going to get paid for all of the business you wrote. 

Complete contracting in one place

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Brent explained that one of his agency’s biggest challenges was figuring out how to have deep oversight into the contracting process. 

Getting onboarded with carriers has historically been a tedious process because every carrier has a different setup. “The great thing is, in Spark, producers have a step-by-step walkthrough on every single carrier — Humana, Aetna, Cigna, whatever it might be,” Brent said. 

Michael added that the contracting process for an agent that’s new to the business or somebody that’s moving over is seamless.

“The Spark team reaches out to that agent multiple times to make sure that they’re going through the process, and we just have to be there as backup, whereas before we had to be the front line of that communication,” Michael said. 

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Get personalized marketing materials (at no cost) 

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Marketing is yet another task on your ever-growing to-do list. While it’s important, your time is better spent connecting with clients and prospects. That’s why Spark supplies all of our agents with custom marketing collateral. 

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We drop a postcard (a “thank you” card) in the mail that’s whitelabeled. So it has your logos on it, it has your color palette, and it thanks them for trusting you with their Medicare choice. 

“When agents bring over a book of business of a thousand people that they wrote — that they didn’t write under Spark — Spark’s not collecting any renewal overrides on these clients,” Brent said. “But they still drop that mailer on your behalf, and they’ll eat the cost. We’ve been able to leverage this and have some serious growth.” 

Ready to see the Spark platform in action? 

The Spark platform saves agents and principals time by reducing manual data entry, automating tasks, and offloading client requests — ultimately leading to the average agent doubling their production.

If you’re an ambitious broker looking to grow your business, we want to talk to you! Book a demo today to meet with our team and see how the platform works. 

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