For each new lead, EIP's sales team devoted considerable time to discovery calls—gathering data and guiding prospects through suitable Medicare plans. They also spent extra time qualifying and nurturing leads before conversion. This labor-intensive approach limited their capacity to engage with both existing and new leads effectively.

The process was clearly not scalable to accommodate new leads, due to the significant time investment required for one-on-one lead interactions. Consequently, the team likely missed opportunities with potentially convertible leads due to limited bandwidth.

After our team conducted a thorough audit of the sales pipeline from inbound traffic to EIP’s website, we realized three important things:

• Sales reps were spending a considerable amount of their time on discovery and qualification of their leads
• Most leads were problem-aware and not solution-aware, which meant sales reps also had to spend some time on customer education
• The overall process wasn’t scalable, largely because it relied on too many 1-on-1 interactions between leads and someone from the company (which meant leads couldn’t progress down the funnel quick enough).

That’s when we realized that the solution to EIP’s challenge required a two-pronged approach. The team needed a sales funnel that was scalable to accommodate new leads without increasing team size, while also providing a self-serve engagement process to eliminate time spent on discovery, qualification, and education. With these points in mind, we built two game-changing tools.

Medicare 101: A self-served and exhaustive LMS (Learning Management System) that covers all the basics on selecting the right Medicare plan. Medicare 101 records and stores relevant data from a lead, and presents a comprehensive resource center for a lead to make an informed choice about their plans.

Next-gen AI Quoting Tool: Once a lead goes through the resources under Medicare 101, they get access to a proprietary quoting tool that we built specifically for EIP. Using artificial intelligence, the tool can produce a list of relevant Medicare plans for a lead, depending on the data they submitted and the filters they selected. Leads can view everything that’s covered under a particular plan, along with their star rating and monthly premium. This is also a central hub for them to compare several plans at once, without ever having to pick up their phone.

Significant reduction in time spent on discovery

With the new platform, the sales team saw a significant reduction in the time spent on discovery calls with leads. Previously, they manually obtained data from leads over phone calls. Now, sales reps can access lead data from form submissions before the call, allowing them to spend less time on discovery and more time selling relevant Medicare plans. This new approach eliminated the need for "cold" calls, as reps now have substantial information about leads before making contact. As a result, they saved over 50% of their time on each call and reduced the overall number of calls needed to nurture leads. What’s more, all the data collected from the form flowed back into the team’s CRM (Salesforce), keeping data centralized.

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Over 70% increase in lead engagement

Educating leads on Medicare plan basics was another significant time drain for the sales team. While some leads were already knowledgeable about choosing the right plan, most required extensive guidance—a task that typically fell to sales representatives. The introduction of Medicare 101 changed this dynamic. This comprehensive resource center allowed leads to learn everything they required about selecting the appropriate Medicare plan independently. As a result, the number of leads engaged within the sales funnel increased by 70%, without requiring additional staff or time investment from the team.

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Improved conversion rates by 20%

With the power of Medicare 101 and our AI Quoting Tool, not only were the team at EIP able to engage with more leads, but they also managed to improve conversion rates (i.e., the percentage of leads that converted to customers). The AI Quoting tool was also useful for leads to compare and evaluate multiple Medicare plans at the click of a button, which meant that more leads were flowing through the sales funnel without having the need to talk to a sales rep. An improved conversion rate also meant that EIP were able to increase their revenue through sales, through a fully automated sales pipeline that didn’t require additional resources.