I met Andrew Hibbard a couple years ago after he came to Redbird looking for resources to help him grow his agency. However, after speaking with him, I quickly realized the roles were reversed and I needed to learn more about his growth strategy, and how it was so consistent paired with what some people would say were unrealistically low customer acquisition costs. In fact, we sponsored one of his T65 trainings a couple months ago and the feedback was excellent, and we’ll probably host another one this summer.
Andrew Hibbard Interview At-A-Glance
- Independent agent writes 30 T65 policies per month, and has done so for more than 5 years.
- Built more than $500,000 of residual income to support his clients.
- Works only two sales days per week and one day for marketing.
- Replicated process’s with systems to avoid hiring a staff.
- Prioritizes time with family over work.
- Takes two week vacation every year during AEP to prove the point of how sustainable his growth strategy is.
Andrew Hibbard is the owner of Medicare Management of Western New York, an insurance agency he owns with his wife that focuses solely on helping seniors turning 65 make the right choices about their Medicare. An agency that deployed a growth strategy that allows Andrew and his wife to streamline servicing their book of business of thousands of clients while also writing 30+ new T65 leads every month.
Below is a glimpse into our conversation about his experience and why agents should take advantage of the training he offers.
What attracted you to sell Medicare?
Drew: Andrew, thanks for sitting down with me today. Your journey in the insurance industry, especially with T65 sales, is something many of our readers are eager to learn more about. Can you start by telling us a bit about what initially drew you to the Medicare market?
Andrew Hibbard: Absolutely, Drew, and thanks for having me. I got started back in 2015 as captive agent with UHC, and transitioned to an independent broker in 2018. I had to give up my book, which was over $100,000 at that point, but I was handcuffed with how I could help more people in my local community.
Real quick, I realized attempting to convince consumers already on Medicare to change MAPD plans, even if in their best interest, was not a smart strategy. It was a time-consuming chore. I felt like I’d get a PTC, but always had to chase prospects, and when I would call to follow up, they forget who I was, so I’d just hope and pray they wouldn’t answer, and I’d get their voicemail. I’m sure this will resonate with a lot of agents.
It was way more work than I was willing to do, and likely a lot more work than most agents want to do. At this point, my wife and I were expecting our first baby, and I’m struggling to make money. I’m supposed to be the main money-maker, she was staying home and not working, so I’m questioning if staying in the Medicare game was even gonna be an option because even when I did make an MAPD sale, I was being paid pennies on the dollar with the low paying, prorated commissions. I probably could have survived cross selling, but I didn’t have the support or access to that information at the time. In short, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
What I did know was that Medicare renewals were how to meet my income goals in the long-term, but I needed to cover the cost of living today, so that’s when I made the choice to go all in on the T65 market, and I haven’t regretted it for a single moment.
T65 is all I do now. Nothing else, only T65 year round. In fact, I take a two week vacation every year during AEP to continually prove to myself that my focus on T65 is sustainable long-term.
Why Focus on T65 Leads?
Drew: In your experience, what sets selling T65 apart from other types of insurance marketing?
Andrew Hibbard: T65 prospects are unique because a lot of them are planning on working past 65 these days, waiting for their Social Security full retirement age, and they are confused. They are blind to what they have to do with Medicare, if they even should do anything, depending on what their work coverage is, is it credible, should they keep it, or move to Medicare?
There’s a real stress about this unknown, this uncertainty, and most normal people have a lot of anxiety around being uncertain and lacking confidence in what they should do and how to make an informed decision.
This alone should be motivating enough for an agent reading this interview to take action and change their trajectory.
Biggest Misconception About T65 Marketing
Drew: I agree. Given the uniqueness of and competition of the T65 market, what would you say is the biggest misconception agents might have about this niche?
Andrew Hibbard: Many believe that success in T65 comes from marketing themselves and the service they provide, which is selling insurance by sending postcards and running Facebook ads about comparing companies and choosing coverage. But in my experience, that’s not the most efficient way to build a book of business in Medicare.
Selling an insurance policy is really solving the agent problem, which is needing to make money.
But every agent anywhere, all say the same thing, the same way, and in the same places, so nobody stands out. Why would you want to blend in?
If I’m being honest, the T65 problem is NOT which insurance plan should I pick. Prospects are not lying awake at night asking themselves this question. The T65 problem in today’s Medicare market is something totally different, because they don’t even know where they should start with the Medicare process, or what to do, or how to do it right, and at the right time.
The plan they choose has a price tag, the peace of mind they get from working with me is priceless, and it’s what I double down on.
What’s Unique About Focusing on T65 Only?
Drew: Building on that, your training promotes unique T65 selling systems. Without giving too much away, can you share a bit about what makes your approach different?
Andrew Hibbard: Sure thing, Drew. What I’ve found over the last decade of doing T65 sales and now helping hundreds of agents personally in my coaching community, and thousands of agents virtually, through interviews like this, podcasts, and speaking at seminars, is we are living in an information economy. I would suggest writing that phrase down and not forgetting it.
Everybody likes to review and research everything, all the time, before they know what they want to buy. I don’t care if it’s buying a new car, new clothes, even where to go out to dinner, and Medicare is no different. 99% of agents get this wrong with their marketing and they are basically asking for marriage before dating when it comes to trying to set more sales appointments.
You can’t just ask prospects to give you call, or commit to an appointment, when there is no trust built yet. That’s the key that agents need to know, which isn’t really told or taught, and it’s why so many agents struggle with generating enough leads, especially in the T65 market.
Lead generation is the number one problem why so many agents fail. And, I was there once too, living commission to commission, charging credit cards to pay basic bills and get groceries, I get it. But I knew the only way to sell more, was to get smarter with my marketing.
I always tell my students, when you control your marketing message, you control your money, and the big key I would ask any agent right now, is how can you build trust before you ask for an appointment?
A lot of what I teach is exactly that, how to build trust in an untrusting model
We help agents learn to do that in many unconventional ways, because I firmly believe that following the old, outdated advice of sitting out in the field at events, or buying lead lists and sending postcards will never get you to level of consistency you need.
The common denominator is that we’re all playing in the same pool of cold prospects who don’t know or trust any of us yet.
My personal approach was based around the efficiency of my time with my family, and sitting at community events all day was not meeting what I needed for my life. It’s exactly what motivated me to think differently and take action in growing my book of business. Fast forward to today, I’m teaching agents how to work less, and make more. And yes, it’s possible, because I personally perform in this manner with my agency every month.
Let’s not forget the basics.
- T65 pay more.
- T65 can be sold year round
- T65 has a specific need of education, not just switching plans.
- Sell half as many policies per year and make the same amount of money, freeing up my time.
Every marketing tactic I deploy must meet my criteria that protects my work life balance. If it doesn’t, I refuse to deploy it. My agency and life changed dramatically when I reframed my mindset years ago. Make yourself invaluable to your prospects and you’ll magnetically attract leads and fill your calendar like clockwork. And, what’s unique is that you can fill a pipeline of people who aren’t even considering your competition as an alternative.
How do you stay productive?
Drew: Speaking of efficiency, you’ve managed to achieve impressive results while working just 15ish hours a week. How do you maintain such productivity?
Andrew Hibbard: I don’t have secrets, I have systems. My training at this point isn’t just about selling; it’s about creating a business model that allows for significant income with a work-life balance, and never deviating from my non-negotiables.
My non-negotiables?
- Being a present father and husband to my 3 kids and wife.
- Maintaining our family farm and the various projects that come with it.
I will not miss life’s moments, so I do things different than what most agents do. This goes back to reframing my mindset.
I sort of defy all the industry norms with how I’ve been able to build my book of business.
My Work week Fly By:
- Two dedicated sales days with 5-6 appointments each day.
- One dedicated reviewing and monitoring my marketing systems.
- Total is roughly 15 hours a week.
My Results Fly By:
- 30 written T65 policies per month
- Roughly $18,000 in monthly Medicare commissions
- Maintained this level of productivity over the last five years, resulting in over 1700 active policies and more than 500,000 in residual annual income to support my clients.
My Agency Fly By:
- My wife and I are solopreneurs
- I have no staff, no downline agents and no virtual assistants.
- I am a one-man band with a 700sf office that doesn’t use a CRM and still relies on excel spread sheet.
I say this to reinforce that I keep things as simple as I possibly can and using the systems to sell, and using processes to manage and maintain my book, so I can run my agency as lean as possible to keep my time as the priority.
What Advice Would You Offer Agents Reading This?
Drew: That sounds incredibly appealing and I agree, it sounds too good to be true. But, clearly it’s working wonders for you which is why I was so intrigued to learn more about it when we first met. For agents feeling skeptical or overwhelmed, what advice would you offer?
Andrew Hibbard: When you stay small, you keep it all, and it adds up nicely. I never believed the “guru” advice being shared that the only way to become a millionaire you have to build a big agency.
None of that is necessary, and I think that’s why I got the nickname as the renegade Medicare millionaire. 🙂
Here is a very true statement that you shouldn’t underestimate.
It is very possible as an independent agent to put a million dollars in your pocket when you have the right systems to support your efforts.
Replicating processes with systems will always scale your sales bigger and faster, and, I know, a lot of what I am saying, and what I teach will seem counterintuitive, but it works.
My Advice:
- Embrace Skepticism: I encourage agents to embrace skepticism. This means an agent is thinking critically and is at least ambitious enough and motivated to make more money, that they are looking to discover how to be better. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, my experience has shown it to be exponentially more productive.
- Test: Test the methods, see the results, and then scale up, but you’ve got to trust the process.
- Trust the Process: Trusting the process might be the hardest test of patience, but in my mind it’s the most critical.
The best part about these T65 systems and strategies I have created for my own business is that they will work for any agent, selling in any market, anywhere across the country. I’ve found that smaller cities and towns tend to work a bit better than larger cities, but that’s where the testing and refining comes in to play.
I have agents using my stuff from New York to Florida to California and everywhere in between, selling in small, rural towns, like me, to mid-sized cities, and densely saturated cities like Atlanta. Once an agent sees the effectiveness, their overwhelm and skepticism quickly turns into excitement, and really the only question to ask is how big do they want to go, and how fast to they want to get there.
Why Should an Agent Attend Your T65 Training?
Drew: Dude, I love this! As we wrap up, what’s the main reason an agent should consider attending your free T65 training?
Andrew Hibbard: The training is designed to give agents some actionable items they can use, in a step-by-step way, so they can start to sell more T65 consistently. It’s really very unfortunate when I see agents still caught in, what I call, the death cycle of selling seasonally during the AEP sales sprint and then hitting an SEP sales slump.
Targeting T65 is a much better way to increase your personal income and really be able to make more money during the 8 months before AEP begins than you can during the 8 weeks of AEP.
That’s the mindset shift agents need to make if they actually want to be successful. So, if you’re an agent, and that interests you, I offer free ‘How-To’ Sell More T65 training.
Come check it out, there’s no cost to attend, but it’s limited to the first 300 agents because of Zoom’s cap. I only do these a few times a year, and whenever do them, they always cap out, so don’t miss this, it might be the only one for a while.
For those are that curious, I typically keep the time to about 90 minutes which includes a Q&A, and the reason why I am sharing my secrets, is my faith has given me this new path and new purpose to pay this information forward and the opportunity to serve other agents at the highest level possible. I’m at a place in my career where me and my family are financially free, so I just want to do what I can to help more agents transform their lives, transform their family lives, and earn financial freedom, too.
Drew: Andrew, it’s been a pleasure learning more about you today. Thanks for opening up and giving us some unique perspective.
Andrew Hibbard: Thank you, Drew. I’m looking forward to showing more agents how to start selling more T65 with ease and hopefully they can double or triple their commissions (or more) this year with these new systems and strategies I’ll be sharing.
