Work
CASE STUDY
Taking sales
education to
new heights
WORK
Humana
PROJECT
Ascend Virtual Conference
SERVICES
PROVIDED
B2B Marketing
Strategy
Virtual Event Creation
Educational Content
Email Marketing
Print Production
The need
Humana and the agents that sell its plans have a uniquely symbiotic relationship. On the one hand, agents drive the lion’s share of Humana’s sales. On the other hand, agents want more enterprise support in cultivating leads and closing sales. Yet one thing stays true: agent-driven leads and sales are stickier. So, we created the two-day Ascend Virtual Conference to empower agents at the grassroots level.
What we did
Agents care most about two things: creating more leads and closing more sales. We centered our event strategy on this insight and collaborated with top-performing field agents and market leaders to discover practical and proven strategies. We then married this discovery with Humana enterprise business priorities to highlight the multiple levers agents can pull in expanding their lead efforts and closing more sales. Our conference presentations gave agents clear paths to more leads and sales in a motivating and engaging virtual experience.
We also brought in a keynote speaker, Amelia Rose Earhart, and incentivized agents to engage during the conference with an agent challenge. Amelia, the second youngest woman to pilot a single-engine plane around the globe after completing the attempted route of her namesake, spoke about the power of building relationships. Agents who won each day’s live challenge were mailed a Humana-branded kit of marketing materials like give-away items.
The Results
An outside keynote speaker with an inspirational message proved to be a big draw for agents and helped differentiate the conference from past virtual events. Agents clamored for information, especially on maximizing grassroots marketing through referrals and simplifying healthcare for Medicare-eligible veterans. The agent challenge proved to be a more cost-effective approach and spurred friendly competition among agents during the live virtual event.
Boasted the highest number of total registrants of any Humana virtual event.
97%
of agents felt more prepared to create relationships in their local community after the event
68%
increase in attendance over past Humana virtual events
WHY THE CLIENT SMILED
“Best field support I’ve seen from a healthcare company.”
—Conference attendee and licensed Humana sales agent
THE FULL
story
Inspired insights led to a simple yet sophisticated strategy
Humana and the agents that sell Humana plans want the same thing: to increase leads and sales. Humana depends on agents for the majority of its sales, and agents depend on Humana to give them the resources and tools they need to maximize their year-round sales efforts.
When we dug into the research, we noticed something profound. Agents believe Medicare carriers should provide them with more leads and sales opportunities. Research also showed that one-on-one relationships between agents and members drove the highest qualified leads and sales with the strongest member retention. We knew we needed to change agents’ hearts and minds to empower them to see that they have something special—which is also their secret sauce—deep, personal connections in their local community. We created the Ascend Virtual Conference to encourage agents to see relationships as the key to their sales success.
Curation, creation and competition in one conference
We took a three-pronged approach to developing Ascend: 1. curate motivational speakers and information from top-selling agents and leaders in the field; 2. create presentations rooted in practical, actionable advice agents can immediately put to work; and 3. incentivize live-day attendance with an agent challenge.
We found Amelia Rose Earhart, an accomplished speaker, pilot, artist and nonprofit leader with an impressive personal story to bring an outside perspective and motivate agents to understand the transformative power of relationships.
We interviewed many top-performing Humana agents and leaders to get their field-tested strategies for increasing leads and maximizing sales through community connections. We focused our presentations on sharing peer-to-peer advice agents would resonate with and know how to use the minute they left the conference.
Because we know salespeople love a good incentive, we added on an agent challenge to encourage agents to interact live in the virtual event with a two-day competition. Winners received Humana-branded marketing assets to use at grassroots events.
Training that scales—and transforms
The Ascend Virtual Conference created a template for nation-wide education with local-market empowerment. Agents got to learn from and interact with their peers while getting a healthy dose of inspiration. We helped Humana move the needle on agent advocacy, affinity and preference and be recognized as a best-in-class carrier who gives agents the tools and resources they need to succeed.