In this episode we hear from Tammy Cravotta about how she leveraged her background in home health to build Medicare relationships with assisted living facilities and grow her business to 1,000 clients and 10 downline agents. Tammy shares why she started her own agency and why she eventually made the decision to bring on downline agents. She also shares about how she preps for AEP (hint: it’s a year-round process!). Sarah and Tammy talk about the ongoing nature of AEP preparations and the importance of following CMS guidelines and rules. 

The Medicare Agent Podcast is hosted by Sarah Jacobson, CEO and Co-Founder of FairStreet. In each weekly episode of this podcast, you’ll hear from experienced Medicare agents about how they built their successful medicare businesses and how they get new clients for their medicare businesses.

FairStreet is a startup FMO and CRM for Medicare agents to run and scale their businesses. You can collect prescriptions, quote & enroll, create custom intake forms, record calls and so much more. FairStreet is free to use.

Learn more at - https://www.thefairstreet.com/

Guest BIO:

Tammy Cravotta is a Medicare agent from Tampa, Florida. She has been in the insurance industry since 2014 and primarily works with Medicare insurance, but also has some ACA clients and small groups. Tammy has a downline of 10 agents and a book of business with 1,000 clients. She is known for her expertise in helping seniors in assisted living and individuals coming out of rehab. Tammy emphasizes the importance of being unafraid to try and learn, having a supportive network, and being careful with who you bring into your fold. She is also passionate about compliance and training new agents in the Medicare business.

Host Bio:

Sarah is the co-founder and CEO of FairStreet, a startup powering top independent Medicare insurance agents. FairStreet’s all-in-one platform enables agents to grow efficiently by streamlining the process of enrolling clients into Medicare and supercharging how agents interact with their clients year-round. Before FairStreet, Sarah led technology teams across insuretech and healthcare companies, including at Square and Stride Health. Sarah completed her undergrad and MBA at Stanford University.

Timestamps with key takeaways:

[03:58] Career change into insurance

[07:38] Building relationships with assisted living facilities

[11:15] Starting your own agency

[16:41] AEP prep and communication strategy

[20:40] 2024 Final Rule

[23:58] Recruiting a downline agency

[00:25:49] How to train new agents

Entities mentioned:

Medicare, agency, clients, downline agents, assisted living, small group insurance, Medicare, employees, downline agents, marketing, insurance agents, relationships, Medicare compliance

Quotes:

"No one woke up one morning and said, I want to be an insurance agent." (00:02:29-00:04:43)

"AEP prep really does begin in January for a lot of agencies…But it's a continuous process as opposed to a defined sprint." (00:18:08-00:20:35)

"I think just to believe enough in yourself to do something greater than what you ever thought possible. That is that is it's remarkable, really." (00:13:43-00:16:10)

"The buildings themselves don't like insurance agents because most insurance agencies want to put them on a Medicare Advantage plan that doesn't work with their building." (00:06:51-00:09:08)

"I got to a point in my former FMO that I wanted to do more, but I sort of didn't fit in the mold that they were looking for. And I thought, well, I'll just go make my own mold." (00:09:00-00:11:21)