Whether you’re part of a Medicare FMO, or an independent agent, one thing is certain – the only dependable constant within our industry is change. This is especially true when it comes to legislation, and in the wake of the global pandemic, this factor has increasingly been thrown into the spotlight.

When it comes to adapting and responding to legislative changes, there is, of course, an increased burden upon our profession. But with legislation adapting to help increase protection – be that for customers, from predatory behavior in the market, or to improve the operation of businesses themselves – it’s necessary to accommodate this additional change.

One of the biggest changes that Medicare FMOs have needed to be cognisant of in recent years, from an accounting standpoint, came in the form of ASC 606.

What exactly is ASC 606 and what is its potential impact upon the Medicare insurance industry? In this article, we’ll explain all…

 

What is ASC 606?

When Accounting Today referred to ASC 606 as the “biggest change to the accounting standards in the last 100 years” they could hardly be accused of hyperbole. The result of collaborative development on the part of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the ASC 606 underwent a somewhat complicated birth, with multiple Accounting Standards Updates (ASU) issued as it closed in on its goal – the ability to recognize revenue more consistently.

At its core, the ASC 606 represents a standardization framework for financial reporting that delivers clarity for investors and customers alike. The ASC 606 aims to transform business for the better by creating a standardized reporting framework that works across all industries and industry incumbents.

Who’s impacted by the changes? All public businesses and organizations that entered into contracts or sales agreements with customers from the fiscal year after December 15, 2017 onwards are affected by ASC 606. As of 2019, this applies to both private and public sector business, as well as profitable and non-profit institutions. Essentially, if you sell goods or services, the ASC 606 framework applies to you.

The ASC is especially important to businesses that run on a subscription basis, as it takes into account the full lifecycle of a customer. This means that costs incurred by them at each of these stages such as add ons, upgrades and downgrades etc can all be factored in.

 

The 5-Step ASC 606 Model

1.  The 5-Step ASC 606 Model

This initial step outlines the criteria that must be met when a contract is entered into between a company and a customer. This doesn’t necessarily need to be a signed contract – any contract with enforceable rights and obligations can be counted. The essential parts of any contract are:

  • All parties have approved the agreement
  • All parties are committed to fulfilling their obligations
  • Each party’s rights are identifiable
  • Payment terms are identified
  • The contract has commercial substance
  • Collectibility is probable

2. Identify the performance obligations in the contract.

The second step determines the expected performance requirements within the contract. Again, performance obligation merely denoted a promise to transfer goods or services to the customer. In order to determine this, distinct services need to be identified as having been promised to the customer. A good or service is distinct when

  • The customer can benefit from the actual good or service
  • It can be transferred independently of other performance obligations in the contract

3. Determine the transaction price.

Next, the price associated with the business supplying products or services to the customer must be determined. This transaction price relates to the cash and non-cash consideration that an entity is entitled to receive from the customer. It also factors in any variable considerations such as price concession, volume discount, and rebates to be estimated upfront.

4. Allocate the transaction price.

This step outlines how the price is allocated across the various obligations of the contract. If the product or service delivery is recurring in nature, then a continuous performance obligation can be said to be in place. To accommodate this, the seller can split the total amount of consideration to be recognized as revenue for each performance obligation.

5. Recognize revenue when or as the entity satisfies a performance obligation.

Finally, this step specifies how revenues will be recognised, as well as when they will be recognized (i.e when the performance obligation is fulfilled!)

 

The Impact of ASC 606 Legislation

Although pushed through with the intention of simplifying revenue recognition, the new ASC 606 standard poses a particularly difficult challenge for subscription based companies, such as FMOs within the Medicare sales industry, as they can encounter challenges at each step.

Typically the most common challenges encountered related to the following two factors:

  1. Subscriptions change often
    Occurrences like upgrades, downgrades and early cancellations all have impacts on the business’s revenue and therefore can have considerable implications in the reporting process.
  2. Contracts are complex and occur over time
    Because these services are billed on a recurring monthly, or annual basis, the revenues can’t be reported at once as the business has not yet delivered the specified service, and must be deferred over the length of the contract.

Taking telecoms giant Verizon as an example, we can see how subscription based businesses can run into difficulties in their quest for compliance. Although the company began working towards ASC 606 compliance several years in advance of its full impact, it still needed to entirely reprogame its software to accommodate new ways of accounting for revenue. While a compliant solution was accomplished, it was costly – in terms of investment and time spent by their tech and finance teams. Many other businesses found themselves in a similar situation.

 

What does ASC 606 mean for FMOs?

ASC 606 is about more than recognizing revenue. ASC 340-40, a subtopic of ASC 606, sets out standards related to the costs incurred in order to obtain and fulfill signed contracts. Commissions are one such cost.

Previously, commission costs were recognised within the period that the contract was executed (i.e. in the period in which they were incurred.) This allowed the company to offset any revenues. Under the new legislation, all commissions and compensation have to be tracked at the level outlined by the law.

This means that error-prone spreadsheets and complex macros place a great strain on the time and resources of the company due to their inefficiencies. Additionally, it is very difficult to track the flow of data from the required level of detail to the commission expense.

That is why a commission tracking tool such as Commissionly is the perfect partner to help create efficiency within the operation and streamline the new reporting process. In order to stay compliant with the updated ASC 606 requirements, your accounting department needs to be able to depend on data that is accurate and current.

Formulas and manual processes have the capacity to get a lot more complicated, and as a result, the benefits of automation and improved collaboration that Commissionly offers represent a real lifeline, rescuing your team from burnout.

 

ASC 606: Smooth Future Sailing For FMOs

The demands of ASC 606 hold a number of serious implications and ramifications for all contract based businesses, however due to their nature, subscription-based businesses balancing commission-based payment structures, such as Medicare sales, have a greater challenge on their hands.

Nothing in financial legislation stays the same for long – and as compliance requirements change, so too do the solutions available to help assist businesses with meeting their obligations. Software such as Commissionly’s commission calculation tool offers an opportunity to navigate challenges with greater ease, today and in the future, however the demands around compliance evolve.

Looking to make life easier for your sales compensation team? Book a demo today.

 

 

When it comes to success in the crowded payment processing space, scale is everything. By working with more agents, your growth is exponentially enhanced. But more individuals active within a commission-based business model necessitates a calculation system that can scale alongside your own success and expansion.

Agent mapping is the process of accurately mapping your agents to the customers MID number, Name or Code for the deals that they are responsible for, as you import transaction data into your systems. It goes without saying that within this process efficiency and accuracy are of paramount importance.

In this article, we’ll explore agent mapping (one of the more tedious and time consuming aspects of working with agents!) in more detail, and suggest a modern and reliable solution that can help payment processors and larger ISOs to solve this nagging problem – for good, and no matter how rapidly they scale.

 

The State Of Modern Payment Processing

Let’s start by examining the stakes. Payment processing is rapidly growing as we hurtle towards a cashless society, accelerated by advances and behavioural changes brought about by the recent global pandemic. Demand is increasing, and opportunities are expanding. In fact, the payment processing sector is predicted to grow at a fairly staggering compound annual rate of 10.2% between 2021 and 2026.

What does this mean for providers? With luck, an increase in interest within the sector from aspiring agents. With money to be made, we can reasonably expect an uptick in new agents seeking processors to partner with. This will be paired with a higher demand for the more experienced veteran agents working within the space. In short, it’s an excellent time to review your appeal from an agent perspective.

In order to excel, payment processors need to be more competitive and more efficient than they’ve ever been. This is especially true when it comes to the way that they work with their agents.

Happily, benefits here tend to cut both ways – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. When processors operate more agent-friendly practices, as well as winning their approval and loyalty, they also start to see better results from their workforce. By providing agents with an infrastructure that sets them up for success – prioritising their convenience, efficiency and power to earn – payment processors set everyone up for increased success.

Although frequently overlooked, agent mapping is an area in which investment can make a real impact – to an agent’s experience, and by extension, to a processor’s bottom line.

 

Agent Mapping: What Needs To Change?

Agent mapping refers to the practice of correctly identifying the work that each agent has done, tracking sales and transactions that can be attributed to their accounts. Commissions due are calculated based on the outcomes of agent mapping so it isn’t hard to see why a reliable agent mapping process is an essential element to any commission-based business model.

Historically, this has been a complex and error-prone process. Working manually, relying on spreadsheets and lacking all the advantages of advanced automation, agent mapping is wide open to a high level of discrepancy. These issues become particularly pertinent when there are ambitions to significantly scale an operation – adding more agents, more sales, more transactions – or (with luck) all three to the equation.

Why does investing in a more solid procedure for agent mapping matter? Firstly – internal efficiency. High frequency data input with very little tolerance for error makes agent mapping the perfect candidate for a more automated process. Instantly eliminate the margin for human error and make it easier to track successful agents versus those who are struggling.

Secondly, an asset that’s hard to win, easy to lose and impossible to buy – trust.  Agents will rapidly lose faith in a processor if they’re seeing inconsistencies in their commission payouts, at best, perhaps becoming a little demotivated – at worst, switching their allegiance to a competitor and damaging your reputation by retelling their experience.

 

How A Commission Calculator Helps With Agent Mapping

With so much at stake, turning to technology is the obvious solution. Amongst a wide range of other features customised to meet the specific needs of the payment processing industry, Commissionly offers automated agent mapping. This ensures that every sale and transaction is faithfully mapped to the responsible agent – giving them accurate remuneration, and processors a process that offers more clarity, efficiency and ultimately revenue.

Saving time, money and (potentially!) your reputation, automated agent mapping comes  in addition to a whole range of additional features that help achieve similar results – such as the ability to consolidate data from multiple acquirers, access to custom reports and the ability to automate your commission calculations.

Another significant advantage of working with Commissionly for agent mapping is that multiple features can be accessed from one platform – no switching tools or juggling permissions, log ins and forgotten passwords. Just a simple, intuitive “one stop shop” for all your payment processor commission calculation needs. Our team works with your business to personalise the experience to your exact requirements, to get you up and running in as little as four weeks.

 

Payment processors – it’s time to automated your agent mapping

Payment processing is experiencing rapid growth. The opportunity to scale alongside the sector’s acceleration is significant – but those who try to do so without the backup of a dependable technological stack, designed to support their trajectory, run the risk of rapidly overextending their operational capacity.

Now is the time to double down on your digital toolbelt, automating as many time-sucking processes as possible and ensuring a more profitable future, for happier agents and healthier margins.

 

Book a call with Commissionly to discuss our agent mapping feature and more

In the competitive world of medicare FMOs, advantage is everything. When it comes to seeing real traction and success, often it’s the finer details that count – small improvements to process and practice that ultimately add up to a sum total of significant competitive advantage.

Staffing shortages and challenges within ongoing recruitment represent a very real concern for many FMOs currently operating. The difficulty of attracting (and then retaining) talented sales staff is increasing. A shift in expectations of employment and rapid technological innovation (accelerated by the Covid pandemic’s shift to home working) has somewhat leveled the playing field, making it possible for smaller agencies to compete with the larger, well-established FMOs.

As a result, FMOs of all sizes are focused on improving their offering. If this is something that your own FMO has been working on – and, in particular, if you’ve been chasing down ways to become more operationally efficient – then it’s time to consider the benefits that a commission calculator could bring to your setup.

In this article, we’ll cover ten of the most advantageous benefits a commission calculator can bring to your Medicare FMO. From quickly calculating varied commission splits, to easily enabling drawbacks and facilitating multi-currency sales – read on to learn more about the edge you can bring to your operation.

 

1.   Minimizes human error

While automation is typically viewed through the lens of winning time back for your busy team, another of its key advantages is often overlooked. Busy teams make mistakes. By working with an automated commission calculator, you remove this inconvenient (and often costly) risk factor.

By doing away with complicated manual spreadsheets will do more than free up your team, you’ll also ensure that the inevitable occurrence of incorrect data entry or calculation errors. Manually calculation and tracking your commissions opens the door for human error – even the most meticulous attention to detail is statistically prone to error sooner or later.

Commission calculators such as Commissionly have been created to cater specifically to the insurance sales market. This means that they’re precision engineered to provide all the dexterity of manual calculations, with none of the accidental error. So you can work faster and sleep easier.

 

2.   Frees up team time

The old adage rings ever true – time is money. In the age of automation, your team’s time and experience no longer needs to be squandered on repetitive tasks, and is much better applied to creative problem solving and revenue generation.

When your agents and managers are tasked with the admin of tracking and calculating their commissions (or, in some cases, spending vast quantities of time simply trying to understand complicated splits and calculations) their time and attention is compromised.

Your business’s foundations are firmly placed upon a commission based sales model – and as a result, commission rates, calculations and accrual are, of course, a primary concern of your agents. By leveraging a commission calculator tool to improve transparency and comprehension, you can give your team a much clearer picture of the state of play, freeing their focus and giving them the incentive to work efficiently.

 

3.   Enhances sales commission models

Commision models are frequently in a state of flux. As FMOs adapt to become more appealing and competitive to the most successful and talented agents, they need to constantly adjust and fine tune their commission rates and individual agent incentives.

Working with a commission calculator helps bring much more clarity to this decision making process, by facilitating more effective financial management, reducing uncertainty around ongoing business models. Forecasting becomes easier, and there are positive knock on effects to your agents, as you’re able to calculate the very best offers, retaining talent to strengthen your business in the short and longer term.

 

4.   Allows you to set effective goals

In addition to giving you clarity over your commission structures, working with a commission calculator will also allow you to get a better understanding of your team’s ongoing performance at a glance. Setting realistic targets for agents (that walk the line between motivation and possibility!) can be difficult, but when you’re running commission calculator software, you’ll be able to recognise patterns in performance with much more ease and confidence.

In addition to setting clear goals, a commission calculator enables a greater degree of clarity and transparency to your agents, both in terms of business’s financial position and the kind of  revenues expected of agents.

When the business, managers and agents all have a solid comprehension of the current state of play, it becomes easier to set goals that make sense for that time period, are likely to achieve buy-in, and are ultimately more achievable.

 

5.   Encourages transparency

The best disinfectant is sunlight. By working with a commission calculator your business is able to offer true transparency to your agents, removing gray areas that can rapidly become friction points – damaging to your agent relationships and time-consuming to rectify.

Commission calculators deliver transparency to the most important part of the business from the perspective of the sales agent – their earned income (both received and projected.) Through a commission calculator, every agent can see exactly what they will earn from each of their sales, delivering clarity to both the agent and the FMO.

 

6.   Opens communication channels

With so many agents working independently, communication is of utmost importance to any Medicare FMO. Without clear communication, delivered via open and accessible channels, efficiency within a business is hard to establish and maintain.

The basis of the most impactful communication? Trust. By investing in commission calculator software, an FMO demonstrates its commitment to its agents’ experience, showing a firm resolve to provide a fair, open and opportunity-rich environment where agents are supported to achieve their best results.

 

7.   Improves personalization

Personalization makes the professional world go round, and isn’t something that should be reserved for customer experience alone – your agents also care about the nature of the investment and attention that they receive. While a commission calculator can, in a slightly roundabout way, help you to develop more personalized experiences for your customers (based on the insight it sheds on highly successful agent approaches) it also enables personalized programmes and experiences for sales agents.

If managers know how their staff are performing, then are better equipped to understand where they need help and improvements. This then in turn allows the FMO to deliver the right kind of support and mentorship needed in order to more effectively drive business objectives. High performing agents can be paired into mentoring programmes, and commission structures can be tweaked depending on the kind of motivations that are being demonstrated.

 

8.   Creatures a scalable system

The ambition of most business models is growth – but as we all know, growth can mean growing pains. The ability to scale free from the stresses of a tech stack and administrative procedures that are threatening to buckle under the weight of your success is a blessing no business can take for granted.

Commissions calculated in the traditional, spreadsheet heavy fashion are a ticking time bomb, becoming increasingly problematic as the business scales. More data entry, more to manage, more margin for error, more time needed to investigate discrepancies and challenges. The list goes on.

The irony is that, without a dependable, automated commission calculator in place, the more successful you are, the more strained your operation becomes. More time is funneled away from revenue generation, as your team dedicates their bandwidth to rectifying errors and incorrect payments. If trust is eroded when friction flares up internally, you even risk losing your best agents (the engine of your business.) Efficiency is reduced, and ultimately profitability is affected.

A commission calculator ensures an infinitely scalable, secure system that will be able to keep pace with any degree of success within your business, accurately, efficiently and transparently.

 

9.   Enhances efficiency

It’s important to remember that leveraging commission calculator software does more than simply increase the efficiency of your commission calculations! A commission calculator also functions as a “self service” buffet for your agents’ queries. Instead of time-consuming interactions with responsible team members, they can instantly access information pertaining to their earnings and progress within any given time frame.

Acting as “single source of truth” countless wasted hours spent chasing the right files, spreadsheets or data sets are also saved. Accounts can be carefully controlled to give the right levels of access to all members of the organization, meaning everyone has the ability to get eyes on the information that’s relevant to them, quickly and independently.

 

10. Drives profitability

We’ve spoken about the need for efficiency within a business, but this is only half of the story. The reason we chase efficiency is to increase profitability. A commission calculator acts as a driving force behind multiple business activities that support profitability via more impactful and effective systems and processes.

Profitability increases when efficiency increases, because wherever systems and processes are optimized and trust is enabled, revenue cannot fail to follow.

 

Is your Medicare FMO ready for a commission calculator?

As the world of Medicare gets more competitive, things are getting more complex. In order to stay competitive, improvements to the technological architecture that is underpinning your operation will be the key to staying one step ahead of the competition.

More efficient internal processes. More revenue. Enhanced profitability. This trinity of interdependent goals is the key to unlocking sustained (and sustainable) growth in a busy market.

Commissionly’s commission tracking software represents the perfect fit for any medicare FMO looking to drive efficiency through their business via automation, transparency and enhanced data control. With experienced staff, well-versed in the specific needs of Medicare FMOs and their common commissioning structures, Commissionly offers expert guidance, assisted onboarding and ongoing support that factors in the common pain points of the industry.

With the impact and benefit of commission calculators so clear cut, adoption across the Medicare market is rapidly accelerating. The sooner an FMO incorporates them into their business, the better off they will be.

 

Speak to one of Commissionly’s Medicare commission experts to discuss the benefits for your FMO: book a demo today.

 

 

How To Track And Optimize Your Medicare Commissions

 

There is a strange paradox in the world of Medicare sales. The better the agent, and the more sales that the agent is able to generate. The more sales they generate, the greater the burden placed on them to keep track of their commission payments in order to ensure that their books balance each month!

We don’t mean to make light of a serious situation – underpaid (or unpaid) commissions quickly add up – and can represent a real issue for those working in the field of Medicare sales.  For most agents, implementing a digital solution can help to transform their process here – reducing the burden of admin, and freeing them up to make more sales (ones which they know they’ll actually get paid in full for!)

In short, optimizing their efficiency when it comes to tracking their Medicare commissions, frees them to focus on what really matters… growing their business and increasing their revenue.  

In this article, we’ll shed light on these issues, helping Medicare agents to not only understand what causes them, but also to provide a solution to assist them in freeing themselves from the burden of tedious financial admin.

 

Tracking Medicare Commissions: Common Problems 

When it comes to understanding the issue of commission tracking for Medicare agents, it is important to understand the common problems associated with the issue. These will give you a greater macro perspective in order to deal with the root causes and mitigate against the implications that they hold. 

The biggest issue for agents generally revolves around payments from carriers for sales made. From this perspective, it is common for carriers to either miss payments, due to them being bogged down in large volumes of paperwork, or to make incorrect payments to agents due to a mismatch in communication and expectations. Either way, it results in an increased burden for the agent, from both a workload perspective and a frustration perspective. 

This issue is compounded when payments are of a recurring nature, and even a small discrepancy in this regard has the potential to become a large problem if not rectified quickly. Take for example, a minor discrepancy of 8% on a book of business equating to $120,000. This discrepancy will result in the agent losing $9,600 in profit. This example demonstrates the importance of catching the issue in good time, to ensure that it does not impact the agent’s bottom line drastically. 

While this issue has the potential to be cumulatively dramatic for the agent, it is important to note that it is usually not the intention on the part of the carrier, but rather due to the process involved. Traditionally, commission tracking and payments involve a taxing manual process, with multiple points of reference and sources to check that payments are made on time, and constitute the correct and expected amounts. If agent splits are involved, matters are further complicated, with the potential to become hugely time consuming and oftentimes tricky to ensure that they are correctly allocated. 

 

The Solution to Optimized Tracking of Medicare Commissions 

So, what is the solution?

This is where technology rides to the rescue. Medicare Commission Tracking Software, like the one offered by Commissionly, is proving invaluable in helping to mitigate the issues around payments and ensuring that as an agent, your time is spent doing what you do best… making sales. 

The Medicare Commission Tracking Tool is affordable, easy to set up and easy to use, and offers exponential Return on Investment due to its ability to catch and flag missed or incorrect payments automatically – saving money and time (which, as we all know, is also money!)

From a functional perspective, The Medicare Commission Tracking Tool allows you to connect to your carrier’s systems or bulk upload all your policy details via CSV with custom carrier templates. It has a carrier statement import system that matches the headings in your carrier reports to swiftly import commission payments, which means that you can convert multiple carrier reports into a standard format so that you can extract useful resorts from the data.

The system also offers One Click Discrepancy Reports, which quickly identify any Medicare commission payments that do not match the schedule or amount you expect to receive, and it also has the ability to automate agent commission splits, so that if and when you are working on a sale with other agents, you can produce commission reports that will ensure clarity around remuneration, and manage the expectations of all parties involved. 

 

Tracking Medicare Commissions: Why It’s so Important to Get it Right 

There is no doubt that Medicare commission tracking is a vital aspect to the business of any Medicare sales agent. Mitigating against this expensive, time-consuming problem sooner rather than later is vital when it comes to ensuring that your bottom line stays intact, meeting your expectations and ensuring the longevity of your position in the market. 

In addition to optimizing your efficiency, implementing a Medicare Commission Tracking Tool also holds a number of secondary benefits that go beyond simply ensuring that you are paid in full. It allows you to build better ongoing relationships with carriers, as issues can be resolved swiftly, without drawn out grievances that have the potential to sour the partnership. By removing the need for manual tracking, you are able to free up more time to focus on other, arguably more important aspects of your business, generating revenue and improving your offerings. It will also facilitate greater motivation from a productivity standpoint, as you see your commissions grow.

 

Take Control Of Your Medicare Commissions

As a Medicare sales agent, it has never been easier to ensure that the commission payments that you receive, match the expectations and work that you put into earning them. The days of inaccurate, inconsistent and missing payments are finally coming to an end. Technological, automated innovation is the key to fighting this issue with the greatest degree of efficiency and accuracy. 

However, it is up to you to take the first step on this journey. While there are other areas of your business that have a strong claim to your attention, ensuring that your hard work translates into due revenue, is the obvious and most vital first step in future-proofing your business and your bottom line. 

 

Book a demo today and find out how we can help!

 

Digitally Transforming Your Medicare Sales

 

The Medicare sales industry in the United States is a highly technical and extremely competitive landscape. As a result, Medicare-focused insurance agents operating within this space need to constantly keep themselves abreast of changes that can influence their position in the market.

Digital transformation is one such change – exerting an ever increasing effect on how businesses operate, especially in a post pandemic world. A new benchmark of customer experience has drastically shifted the goalposts for anyone trying to remain relevant, let alone competitive, in this industry. 

As a Medicare-focussed agent, you’ll be no stranger to the impact of digital transformation, and taking some kind of action in this area has possibly been on your agenda for some time… However, getting up and running here can feel daunting. In this article, we’ll focus on where emerging software and digital tools offer the most advantage and opportunity for businesses exactly like yours. 

 

Digital Transformation And The Insurance Industry 

It is estimated that over 90% of insurance executives today have a coherent, long-term plan for technology innovation in place

The reason for this is simple: technological innovation has completely transformed the world in which we live, and holds serious ramifications for any industry or business that fails to adapt in time. Beginning in the early 2000’s and accelerating with the rise of social media, digital technologies have come to shape the way consumers engage and interact with brands. Additionally, consumer expectations have shifted and they now expect the companies that they procure services from to meet them where they are, and be available to them exactly when they need them.  

Think for a moment about offerings like digitally signing documents, cloud-based access to documentation, intelligent chatbot assistance, enhanced digital security, and instant claim handling. Tools like these were beginning to show up in the industry a few years ago, however the impact of the pandemic has made these services a point of parity rather than a competitive advantage.

Add to this, the emerging generation that has never had to deal with long lead times, delayed customer service or even submitting physical claim documentation, and it becomes evident how much the parameters have shifted and how critical this paradigm shift is to the longevity of insurance companies operating in the market today. 

 

What Are The Core Advantages of Digital Transformation For Medicare Sales Agents?

Digital transformation should not be seen as a thorn in the side of those operating in the market today, but rather as a way of adding exponential value to both the business from an internal perspective, and externally from a customer satisfaction perspective. 

Digital tools offer a number of benefits, including:

  1. Enhanced Efficiency

Through Artificial Intelligence and the associated technologies of Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics, every aspect of the insurance business is being optimized for speed. 

Policy writing can be processed and completed in a matter of minutes due to machine learning capabilities, claims can be handled efficiently through app based technology, and even customer service can be delivered through AI-fueled chatbots, live chat and virtual assistants to ensure that the customer has contact with the business exactly when they need it, wherever they need it. 

  1. Improved Personalization

Servicing the individual needs of each customer has become more important than ever, and the implementation of fields like big data and data analytics is paving the way for a personalized experience that is unparalleled in history. Through digital technologies, insurance companies can truly create a one-to-one experience through the ecosystem and customer journey, creating greater satisfaction for clients, and greater efficiency for brokers and businesses. 

  1. Scalable, Future-Proof Systems

Technology such as self-service dashboards, apps and IoT enabled devices and wearables allow insurance companies to build and offer services to clients that both future-proof the business for longevity, and is simultaneously scalable according to customer and market trends. 

  1. Enhanced Profitability 

Due to the ability of digital tools and technology to increase efficiency and efficacy across the value chain, it therefore also allows for enhanced profitability by removing friction points in the system  and contributing to greater Return on Investment. 

 

Key Areas of Focus For Digital Transformation of Medicare Sales 

When it comes to getting started with digital tools and technology, there are a few areas of focus that produce the greatest outcomes and return on investment for companies. These areas are detailed below: 

  1. Personalization

It is estimated that 80% of customers are more willing to deal with companies that offer a personalized experience, and 90% of customers are willing to share behavioral data in order to ensure a seamless brand experience.

While the above statistics relate to consumer markets in general, they are especially true for services such as Medicare sales, due to the importance of healthcare in the lives of individuals. This therefore lends credence to the call for the implementation of digital technologies in the Medicare sales domain, and highlights the value and benefits of software such as CRM, due to its ability to optimize for impact in the sales funnel process. 

  1. Operational Efficiency

From a Medicare perspective, back office operations such as commission tracking can become a huge obstacle when handled ineffectively. The complicated nature of deals, the amount of time and resources needed, and the expectations of individual agents can all remove efficiency from the process. That is why commission tracking software such as Commissionly can prove vital to ensuring operational efficiency.

  1. Internal Integration

Lastly, the integration of digital tools is imperative to the smooth function of day-to-day business processes, as they remove individual silo’s within the operations and contribute to greater efficiency across the value chain. The Insurance Commission Tracker Tool is one such example, as it offers the ability to connect directly to your carrier’s systems. It enables the bulk upload of all policy details via CSV with custom carrier templates, and automates agent commission splits. This mitigates against the need for manual spreadsheet juggling and ensures a smooth and efficient process through the entire sales funnel.

 

Digitally transform your Medicare sales.

Medicare sales is a competitive environment that is only set to become more crowded as new entrants and technologies enter the domain. It is therefore imperative that incumbents get ahead of the competition now, in order to ensure the long-term survival (and success) of their business. By putting in place the systems to automate and optimize your processes, you not only meet increasing client expectations, but also free yourself and your agents up to maximize  the potential in the market and ensure that you actually get paid what you are owed.

 

Should Medicare Agents partner with FMOs?

 

Becoming an Independent Medicare Agent in the United States can represent an appealing prospect to motivated individuals ready to take their careers to the next level. And yet even the most ambitious aspiring agents will have questions and concerns.

How do you grow your business?
How can you add additional revenue streams?
How can you add more value to your clients?

If you are contemplating any of the above questions, then you are probably also weighing up whether partnering with an FMO might be a wise early move. But is it worth bringing in a middleman, and what might it mean for your bottom line?

This article offers a deep dive into the partnerships that exist between Field Marketing Agencies (FMO’s) and independent Medicare agents. Get a good understanding of how the relationship works, what is on offer in terms of advantages and benefits, and explore some guidelines designed to help you find, vet and select the right Medicare business partner.

 

What Is An Insurance FMO – And Why Should Medicare Agents Care?

The insurance industry loves an acronym. Scratch the surface of the sector and you’ll quickly find yourself in the company of FMO’s, IMO’s, NMO’s, and MGA’s. To create clarity around these acronyms, let’s look at each one independently.

FMO’s (Field Marketing Organizations) are typically top-level organizations that are licensed to sell health insurance products in most, if not all states. Due to their size, FMO’s generally work with hundreds, if not thousands, of agents, as well as both big-name and small-name carriers all across the US. From an agent’s perspective, FMO’s generally tend to offer higher than street-level commissions, and many perks that aren’t available elsewhere. 

IMO stands for Independent Marketing Organization, and these generally tend to be slightly smaller than FMO’s, and life insurance is commonly included in their product offerings.

NMO’s or National Marketing Offices are no different to FMO’s or IMO’s in size of capability, but lean towards use the term NMO, as it is more neutral in its nature. Finally, MGA’s (Managing General Agents) usually exist downline to FMO’s, IMO’s, and MNO’s, and act as partners to these top-of-hierarchy organizations. For more help in detangling the industry’s acronyms, we recommend this helpful breakdown

From the perspective of Medicare, FMO’s form an important link within the sales ecosystem, bridging the gap between insurance carrier and consumer in a way that ensures maximum value-exchange on both sides of the equation. 

 

What Are The Key Benefits Of Working With An Insurance FMO? 

Working with an FMO holds a number of benefits for independent Medicare agents, from access to contracts, to pathways to career progress. In this section, we will look at each of these key benefits in more detail.

 

Better Access To Contracts 

Due to their size and position at the top of the hierarchy, FMO’s generally hold strong and established relationships with their partnered insurance carriers, and have the ability to leverage these connections to command access to contracts that would otherwise be inaccessible to individual agents. 

Support And Experience 

When it comes to working in a specialized field such as Medicare, FMO’s that are localized to this industry generally have comprehensive resource capabilities in place to provide support and expertise to agents that have partnered with them. These support and experience capabilities provide an advantage to the agents, from a client satisfaction perspective, and help to mitigate against numerous friction points within the sales process.  

Access To CRM 

Medicare FMO’s also generally provide their agents with access to CRM software. CRM or Customer Retention Marketing helps agents to be competitive in the marketplace by quantifying and validating sales leads. In other words, it helps agents to focus their efforts and energy on leads that are more likely to become sales. 

Compliance

The importance of compliance is cannot be overstated when it comes to the highly regulated field of medical insurance. FMO’s help to keep everything above board by providing access to CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) approved quoting tools. These tools are invaluable for their ability to ensure that the sales process runs as smoothly as possible. 

Commission and Bonuses

For an agent, commissions and bonuses can be one of the most important and profitable aspects of their career. FMO’s do not take a cut of agents’ commission, meaning that the agent will receive their full commission on the plans that they sell, but they are often also rewarded with additional bonuses and added incentives for reaching specified sales targets. 

Specialist Products 

Working with an FMO will often give agents access to specialized or exclusive products that are not openly available to independent agents. This increases the range of options available to agents, while simultaneously helping to plug any holes within their portfolio of offerings.

A Pathway For Progress

For agents looking to progress in their careers, FMO’s offer a dependable pathway forward. Through training, development, networking and mentoring, agents have the ability to take their skills and careers to the next level. 

 

Independent Agents Vs Captive Agents 

As an agent working in the insurance industry it is vital to know and understand the difference between becoming an independent agent or opting to be a captive agent. While relatively straight forward, there are pro’s and con’s to each pathway.

A captive agent is one that works primarily with one insurance carrier. They have extensive knowledge of the carrier’s product portfolio, including the discounts and coverage add-ons available.

An independent agent works across multiple carriers, and has comprehensive knowledge of the various product offerings relating to each of them. 

From the perspective of the client, working with a captive agent offers first-time insurance buyers (or clients who aren’t sure how much coverage they need) a simpler route to getting what they need without the hassle of having to weigh up multiple options. However, because the agent does only work with one parent company, captive agents can be less competitive on price, due to the extra fees that the insurance company charges.

Working with an independent agent allows for more choice across the board, and additionally the potential for lower prices, as the agent is not tied into one parent company and can provide lower cost options that would work in a more constrained client budget. 

Captive agents generally are paid a salary by their parent company, and also obtain the benefit of subsidized advertising and hiring costs. An independent agent works primarily on commissions and bonuses. 

 

Medicare Agents And FMO Medicare Commission 

One of the biggest concerns that agents have when contemplating whether to partner with an FMO or not, is in relation to how they will be paid. It is often thought that if an agent joins an FMO, that the organization would retain part of the agent’s commission as a fee for their value added services. 

However, this is not the case. FMO’s make use of a hierarchy system that allows them to offer the same commission level to general agents that the agent would receive if they worked directly with the carrier. In other words, you would receive the same commission on a sale, whether you worked with an FMO or not. 

And this is where the value of partnering with an FMO comes in – value added services. When choosing the right FMO to work with, we recommend that you look for one that makes use of software like Commissionly – a fully automated sales commission software that saves both time and money by eliminating errors and improving productivity. 

In the world of Medicare, managing commissions can be a complex, time-consuming and costly exercise. They are generally influenced by and vary according to the product being sold, the institution purchasing, the doctor utilizing the product, and the relationship with the sales person or agency. With so many variables, it can become very easy to lose track of what you should be paid, and when it should be paid. 

With software like Commissionly, you will always have full transparency over your earnings, how it relates to your targets, and where you are in the process. 

 

How To Decide If You Should Work With A Medicare FMO 

If you have made it this far, you probably are seriously thinking about  whether or not you should partner with an FMO in order to take your career and client offering to the next level. In this section, we have created four simple questions that you can use as a checklist when evaluating your position. Your answers to these questions will give you a good idea as to what your next steps should be. 

 

  1. Are you looking to specialize in a certain area of insurance?

Providing services in a specialized industry like Medicare, can be both rewarding and daunting due to the nature of the product type. Specialized FMO’s is these areas can give you access to tools, services and knowledge that can make entry, or even expansion in the market a much easier exercise. 

  • Do you feel hindered by a lack of access to specific carriers, plans or products?

Being independent might feel like you are preserving your options in the market, however by partnering with an FMO in the industry, you can actually increase the options available to you. 

You can gain greater access to carriers, plans and products through the relationships held by the FMO.

  • Are you motivated by additional perks and rewards?

Partnering with an FMO can also open up more opportunities to earn. Many of them have additional perks in place for their agents, such as added bonuses and incentives that are linked to sales targets. 

  • Are you looking for extra support and a more defined career pathway?

FMO’s offer exceptional career pathways that are linked to training, development, networking and mentoring programmes that can clear the way forward for you in a defined and structured format. 

 

What To Look For In A Good Medicare Insurance FMO 

Once you have decided that an FMO is the perfect partner for you and your career objectives, it becomes important to understand what to look for when vetting the various options open to you. In this section, we will unpack a few of the most important considerations when contemplating the perfect fit for your unique requirements and ambitions.

  1. Contract Type

There are two types of contracts available – Direct or Assignment of Commissions. From this perspective, direct is by far the most preferable, as with a direct contract you are in charge of your business and your renewals stay with you, even if you leave the FMO. With assignment of commissions contracts, they belong to the FMO when you leave, so be sure to be very clear on what contract is on offer. 

  1. Look into their Release Policies

Understanding the release policy of the FMO is imperative, as in some cases you are not permitted to sign any new business for six-months from the time of leaving. So ensure that the FMO will give you a written release should you decide to leave at a point in the future.

 

  • Assess available support

Be clear on the type and kind of support that you will require on a daily basis, and ensure that the FMO that you are in discussions with offers this to you.

 

  • Where in the hierarchy does the FMO sit? 

It is vital to understand whether the organization sits at the top of the hierarchy or not, as organizations lower down may require permission from organizations further up in order to release agents. 

  • Do they have access to national and local market co-ops? 

Understanding the access available to the organization can make all the difference to your bottom line, as FMO’s with greater access have a better flow of leads into the organization and therefore give you a greater chance of increasing your revenue.

 

  1. What quote engine will you have access to? 

Not all quote engines are created equally, and therefore having access to one that meets your desired criteria is imperative. Ask the FMO if you can do a trial run on their software before committing to a contract. 

 

  1. What training is offered?

Training is the key aspect to moving your career to the next level. It is therefore important to understand what kind of training the organization offers to its agents, and ensure that this training matches with your ambitions for your career.

 

  • What is the commission structure

Be sure to understand how the commission is structured, as well as what other perks, incentives and bonus structures are in place, as this will determine what your bottom line looks like. So be sure to find an FMO that matches with your expectations in this regard.

 

  • Talk to other agents at the organization

This will give you a good idea about the culture of the organization. Understanding whether their agents are happy, feel supported and are satisfied with their service will help ease your mind around your decision. 

 

Take Your Medicare Sales To The Next Level… 

There is no doubt that partnering with an FMO holds the potential to give you an extra boost in your career as a Medicare Sales Agent in the United States. In this article we took you for a deep dive into the most relevant aspects of the relationship, and also what to look out for when considering your options. It is however vital to stress that not all FMO’s are created equally, and it is essential that you do your due diligence when selecting the right partner for you. 

No matter what release policies are in place, or what commission structure is on offer, it’s best to save your time and resources by creating solid partnerships from the get go. This will help you to lay the foundations to develop and grow your Medicare sales business profitably and sustainably for the long-term.

 

When it comes to ensuring that your digital marketing sales team is firing on all cylinders, chances are that you’ll be looking to take a proactive approach. All too often, we assume that teams working on commission based pay structures have all the incentive they need to reach targets. However, it’s essential to keep on top of many varying factors that are motivating your sales team.

Digital marketing sales teams can be negatively impacted by a wide range of issues within their wider working environment – from the wrong behaviours being unwittingly incentivized, to issues with high staff turnover impacting motivation and the establishment of company culture.

In this article, we’ll explore five dependable ways to boost your marketing sales agents’ motivation, increasing their engagement and boosting ongoing loyalty. It’s a win-win situation for all involved – with your agents’ earned commission, your clients’ success and your ongoing agency development all experiencing a healthy upward trajectory.

 

1. Consider Your Commission Structure

First and foremost – consider your commission structure. While this isn’t the only factor motivating your sales team, it’s undoubtedly one of the most important.

Take a critical look at your current marketing sales commission structure and the behaviours that it is encouraging. Are these in true alignment with the long term success of your agency, client stratification and your company values? 

A well considered commission structure has the ability to apply much more nuance to the way your team is compensated. If you’re processing a lot of multistage deals, or deals with more than one agent involved over time, it’s important to ensure that everyone feels fairly compensated for their role – and that they’re being renumbered in a timely fashion. When it comes to the way that commission can be earnt, if you lack the ability to offer true clarity, you risk a demotivated team that’s lacking the incentive to work together collaboratively.

A key component of success here is access to software that can help to help manage complex, individual commission plans – or even multiple plans applying to one agent across the range of clients that they work with.

Commissionly features that you might find helpful when it comes to your marketing sales commission structure include variable time frames, commissions calculated based on customer (i.e. via matrices), multistage commissions and rates which cascade, reducing over time as a client is retained.

 

2. Give Better Transparency And Autonomy

If you’re looking for a high performing digital marketing sales team, you’ll want to ensure you’re  giving your agents complete clarity – in terms of expectation and targets, but also in relation to where they sit within their earnings and expected compensation. Commission plans might (by necessity) be fairly complex – especially if they’re in a constant state of flux, or if old and new schemes are running concurrently.

As a result, it’s of paramount importance to make sure you’re running a system that gives them easy access to all of the information they might need access to regarding their commission rates, bonuses and ongoing retainers. After all – you’d rather they were out selling than scratching their heads and trying to work out how profitable their next deal might be.

Solutions like Commissioned can give better access to and understanding of the current state of play when it comes to expectations and remuneration. This does more than increase the motivation of your sales team – it also reduces the burden on your billing personnel, who won’t have to field as many requests and questions.

 

3. Seek Feedback (And Take Real Action Based Upon It!)

Listening and responding to actual feedback is an essential contributing factor to a sales team that stays motivated in the long term. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of making assumptions on the part of your marketing agents – believing you have an idea of exactly what’s making them tick. However, in the absence of encouraging real feedback, you can find yourself lurching from short-term incentive to short-term incentive, with no real strategy for ongoing engagement and improving performance.

Scheduling a regular cadence for feedback and addressing the way that staff satisfaction is measured can have a transformative effect. Remember, hitting sales targets is not necessarily equal to agents feeling fulfilled and happy within their roles. Learn more about their other motivators, such as career development or the chance to mentor.

 

4. Set Clear (And Fair) Targets 

Take time to develop dependable methods of generating targets that will be challenging but achievable. This will vary so much from agency to agency – and again, a huge contributing factor to success will be the two way communication you encourage from your team via regular feedback. 

Carefully consider the pros and cons of stretch goals and bonuses – again, are these encouraging the long term behaviours and attitudes that you’d like to see from your agents? Think about other ways you can define success – reward agents on client anniversaries, package upgrades, for bringing past clients back to the business etc. 

Commissionly offers a real edge here, integrating with a wide range of CRMs, helping you connect the dots between client progression and your agents’ input. To learn a little more about what this might look like in practice, read our recent article, The Future Of RevOps For Digital Marketing Agencies. With Comissionly’s platform you’re also able to easily implement override commission, meaning all levels of your team can see clear compensation for their involvement.

 

5. Create A Culture Of Retention 

Finally, don’t underestimate the impact of placing focus on retention rather than acquisition of new agents. What keeps your sales team loyal? On balance, are you spending more time recruiting to fill positions, or investing effort into the success and culture of your existing team?

A retained team benefits your business and clients in so many ways. You’re able to offer and rely upon more in-house knowledge Resources invested in training are preserved. Your whole team has a collective working knowledge of client needs, and the way that they’ve evolved over time. 

This kind of culture serves your agents too – providing a more stable working environment, better leadership and role models, and more scope for internal training, to name just a few benefits. Remember, as your retained workforce evolves, you’ll need to be willing to evolve your marketing sales commission structure alongside them.

 

Ready For A More Motivated Digital Marketing Sales Team?

When it comes to laying the foundations for long term success, place focus beyond the top level metrics that typically define a successful marketing sales team, and instead assess the underlying factors that are driving the outcomes achieved by your digital marketing agency.

Commission structure and the management of your commission scheme lies at the heart of this – and having access to software that does the heavy lifting when it comes to delivering and automating commission plans that are (necessarily) complex, can be a real gamechanger.

 

Struggling with your digital marketing agency commission?

Avoiding Costly Commission Issues – A Guide For Marketing Agencies

 

RevOps within digital marketing is on the rise – rapidly becoming an established norm when it comes to internal operational management. What exactly is meant by RevOps? A contraction of “Revenue Optimisation” this term refers to an operational model designed to ensure that a business’s capacity for revenue generation is maximized. As ever, our integration partner HubSpot has some excellent resources to help you learn more about this model.

 

A RevOps approach seeks to instill full cooperative alignment between alignment of marketing, sales, and customer service teams. Rather than operating in isolation, before passing off a lead or established customer to the care of a separate team acting in isolation, a “flywheel” model is established. All teams work in closer collaboration, with a focus on end-to-end customer experience, seamless workflows and integrated systems. This removes friction and supercharges a business’s ability to scale.

 

In the case of digital marketing agencies, the benefits of an active RevOps strategy are twofold – better internal agency collaboration and outcomes, at the same time as improving client satisfaction and success. Within this article, we’ll outline some of the ways in which RevOps looks set to improve the landscape for digital marketing agencies today, and in the years to come.

 

RevOps For Digital Marketing Agency Internal Alignment 

RevOps can be implemented to help to bring a digital marketing agency into better internal alignment. Within the traditional RevOps model, accountability stops becoming a siloed practice. Instead, your account managers and support team gain better “full picture” insight into client success, measured across a wider range of metrics and markers.

 

The cyclical RevOps model means that this improved insight feeds back into sharper, more accurate marketing recommendations for clients. In turn, this helps to build up a more holistic understanding of the way that different agency teams collaborate and depend on each other’s outcomes.

 

For example, marketing team members learn about common pain points and blockers from the sales team, and are able to incorporate this into their own planning going forward.

 

Improved Digital Marketing Sales Attribution 

Knowing exactly where your success is coming from is essential within the setting of a digital marketing agency. By helping bring clarity to a dynamic process that relies upon the input of many different teams and individuals, RevOps can help improve attribution when it comes to sales success.

 

Everyone working towards your clients’ success will have a better idea of what’s working in the context of “the bigger picture.” This does more than simply helping you work out more productive, collaborative workflows – it can also have a really positive impact upon  team cohesion and motivation.

 

Digital marketing agencies are always on the lookout for ways to improve their marketing sales commission structure – by making it more efficient, more commercially appealing – or, most probably, all of the above! By adopting a RevOps model, you can apply the deeper insight gained into the roles that everyone played towards a closed deal, and translate this into a fairer compensation structure.

 

Multistage commission is a great way of ensuring that everyone involved in a deal is getting fair payment for their contribution, in a timely fashion. Commissionly’s multistage commission feature enables you to pay commissions at different stages of your sales and delivery process to different payees – keeping your teams motivated with well-timed, fair compensation for their input.

 

Enhanced Client Experiences 

The RevOps model is increasingly commonplace across a wide variety of client or customer based businesses. As a result, by adopting these principals internally, you’ll be able to “speak the same language” as your clients, who are more than likely very familiar with the benefits of such a model, and putting them into practice within their own businesses.

 

This helps to build trust and increase the likelihood of cross selling and upselling, as you gain a better understanding of their pain points and business models – and, perhaps most importantly, see how your input as an agency sits within their wider business model. An active RevOps strategy also helps to demonstrate your interest and commitment to your clients’ end results, through better account expansion and improved customer-focused campaigns.

 

Once established, a RevOps model just gets better over time. Thanks to its cyclical “flywheel” structure, improvements feed back into the start of the process. Client experience is improved in a way that is consistently demonstrated over time – no quick fixes or emergency measures – just a great, holistic agency experience.

 

Eliminated Tech Silos 

The smart leverage of data is essential to success within a digital marketing agency environment. With the rise of MarTech, this is becoming increasingly essential, as a wide variety of tools give us insight into our campaign and client success metrics.

 

By combining marketing and customer success data, RevOps enables you to see which campaigns are resonating at the same time as highlighting the elements of your marketing mix that are having the greatest impact in terms of the outcomes clients are looking for.

 

As an agency, you can leverage this insight to improve post-purchase marketing experiences (i.e. offering your clients more than just lead generation or traffic.) Data can be put to use shortening purchase cycles and accelerating sales. Commissionly is a great example of a solution that can help to power a strong RevOps strategy, allowing easy integration with a huge range of CRMs to ensure that you’re able to easily join the dots between client success and team commissions.

 

Improved Agency Success Metrics

Finally, let’s not forget the tangible lift that RevOps can bring to a business in terms of success metrics. In 2020, the Boston Consulting Group found that B2B companies implementing RevOps accelerated their revenue growth and operations efficiency with a

  • 100% – 200% increase in digital marketing ROI
  • 10% – 20% increase in sales productivity
  • 10% increase in lead acceptance
  • 15% – 20% increase in customer satisfaction
  • 30% reduction in expenses

 

 

This is especially important and relevant within a digital marketing agency context, where businesses are typically looking for long-term, steady accounts that are retained with minimal effort, allowing for customer relationships that continue to grow and strengthen over time.

 

RevOps For Digital Marketing Agencies: Get Ahead

RevOps represents a real opportunity for digital marketing agencies to improve outcomes and streamline their internal processes. More effective interdepartmental communication leads to better collaboration and attribution of success.

 

By pairing a solution like Commissionly alongside the RevOps approach, you can ensure that all effort is appropriately rewarded, showing your respect and appreciation for multiple agency teams, pulling together to help bring your business great results.

 

With a focus on streamlining customer experience, and allowing for better personalisation at every stage of their journey, it’s no surprise that RevOps is increasingly being heralded as the secret to account-based business success. Digital marketing agencies have so much to gain from his model – especially when it comes to marketing sales commission structure, and motivating a commission-based workforce to see the bigger picture within an agency environment.  

Looking to kick sales up a gear? 5 Tips For A Highly Motivated Marketing Sales Team – See our next blog …


If you’re running your digital marketing agency on a commission basis, you’ll be aware of the many benefits that this kind of remuneration model can bring. Payment via commission has long been a popular option for marketing agencies, and can be a great way to ensure you’re motivating your sales team.

 

However, “commission” is a very broad term – and covers a huge variety of structures and nuanced plans that can (and should) be tailored for your business and its unique situation. Failing to pay full attention to the effectiveness of your commission structure can result a number of common issues that can cause a business to lose money or become less efficient.

 

This might be as the result of a less motivated sales team, the lack of the right incentives within their agent base, or as the result of poor back-office processes that create problems around calculation and management of commission.

 

In this article we’ll give some clear guidance on marketing agency issues to watch out for – and some advice on how to fix them within the context of your digital marketing agency commission structure.

 

1.  Too Little Flex In Your Digital Marketing Agency Commission Plans 

Don’t underestimate the importance of creating an adaptable commission framework that can flex to meet the evolving needs of your marketing agency. The typical marketing agency environment will involve many varied clients, deals, accounts opening, closing and reactivating. Similarly, you might find you have multiple agents working on accounts, with varied (or interlinked) responsibilities for success. 

 

In order to ensure that everyone on your team is rewarded in a timely manner that reflects their input and hard work, you need to find a way to appropriately scale commission payments and incentives in a way that will adapt to the changing nature of the targets, opportunities and expectations that your agents encounter.

 

This is easy to agree with – but often harder to implement. Juggling a high performing team and multiple client accounts can make the ability to apply a complex (and ever-evolving) commission structure a practical challenge.

 

Working with dedicated cloud-based commission software such as Commissionly helps makes the roll out and management of personalised, adaptive commission structures much more streamlined. Our multistage commissions feature allows you to compensate various team members for their individual contributions as a deal progresses. To make things even easier, this process can be automated with your CRM of choice, such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho and many others.

 

Similarly, our commission criteria filtering feature allows you to easily set commissions to pay only when certain criteria are met – perfect for the times when you need to pay different commission rates to your agents based on criteria, such as a different rate for new business or renewals.

 

2. Complex Commission Calculations Taking Hours To Manage

A responsive and nuanced commission structure is essential – but, as we’ve already hinted at – it needs to be manageable, and easy to deliver. Automation is your friend when it comes to taking the legwork out of hours of complicated commission calculations. Not only will you save time, you’ll also sidestep many of the issues associated with manual tracking and calculation, which can be much more prone to error, as well as a drain on resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

 

Spreadsheet based management of commission is common, but it can only get you so far. Any frustrations or issues that you experience with your current system will only scale in line with your business as you expand and your team scales up.

 

Commissionly helps by offering a range of automations that take hours out of the day to day tracking, analysis and calculation of commission. These automations go beyond the “commission wizard” (which helps you quickly set up complex commission structures – whether they are flat or tiered, revenue, profit or product based). Powerful integrations with your CRMs, ecommerce platforms and more can also save huge amounts of time in assigning attribution and tracking performance.

 

The sales splits feature is another great example of the features that Commissionly offers to help manage processes that would otherwise be tricky and time consuming. Easily set up pre-defined sales splits to ensure that everyone automatically gets allocated the right amount of commission due for their role in a sale.

 

3. Calculation Errors (And Issues Resolving These)

The management of nuanced marketing sales commission plans can be complex. If you’re tracking and calculating manually, relying on Excel, problems can occur. When something goes wrong, your agents are inconvenienced, and time is lost as you work to fix the error. You also erode the trust your team has in your commission process – meaning you run the risk that they’ll be spending more time pouring over their calculations, and less time out in the field selling!

 

What safeguards can be put in place to try to reduce the wrong calculations being made in the first instance – and what can be done to ensure that the process of putting these problems right is smooth, transparent and fair?

 

Commissionly’s clawback feature is a game changer here, and can help within the context of  marketing sales. Again, offering all the time-saving advantages of automation, this feature enables changes to your payouts to be easily and swiftly calculated and put right, minimising the negative impact of an incorrect payment as the result of incorrectly reported financials or a client who bounced before the predetermined retention period.

 

4. Unresponsive Plans Leading To Demotivated Agents 

To avoid a stagnant, demotivated atmosphere within your marketing agency sales team, it is important to learn from your data and results, adapting your commission schemes accordingly – and to show your team how things are changing. What’s serving your business, your clients and your agents best? There’s a real need to ensure open communication and lots of transparency with your agents when it comes to the “why” of their commission scheme.

 

Commissionly’s CRM integrations help to shed more light on these situations by joining the dots between performance and payment. Another benefit of the Comissionly dashboard is the ability for agents to easily access their earned commissions to see how calculations have been formulated. This helps you give complete clarity here. Again – you want your agents out selling, not trying to figure out how and what they are getting paid for!

 

5. No Cloud-Based Commission Software 

Finally, consider the disadvantage you might be placing your agency by failing to work with a cloud-based commission system. The ability to access your management system from any device has never been more important – in fact, in the modern day workplace, this is a baseline expectation. Access to your commission dashboard at all times brings benefits to your management team, but also to your agents, as they can track progress and gain motivation at any time, from their own mobile devices.

 

With the spread of digital transformation and the accelerating impact of the pandemic, cloud-based solutions are a necessity for modern business – and especially important for something as critical as commission management, which is powering your marketing sales business’s success.

 

Ready To Take Control Of Your Digital Marketing Agency Commission Management?

Commissionly saves its users countless hours and removes endless frustration from the process of calculating, adjusting and processing commission based payments. Clients report the platform saving “huge amounts of time on calculating commissions” and allowing them to “set targets for my team that they can see at a glance.”

 

Described by one user as “a simple, stand-alone yet highly functional approach to managing commissions,” Commissionly frees you to repurpose your time and focus, meaning you can focus on optimising your commission structures and learning more about what motivates your agents etc.

 

Offering dependable ROI, the benefits of cloud-based commission software like Commissionly keep expanding over time and use – a safe investment that will revolutionise your commission management and remove barriers to your marketing agency scaling over time.

 

Ready to explore your free trial? Set up in 5 minutes – with no credit card details required.

 

Recruitment is a nuanced sector, with many variables coming into play when it comes to commission management. A smooth, streamlined recruitment commission management system is in the best interest of everyone involved – offering better operational efficiency internally, and a more motivating and consistent working environment for your recruiters.

 

Often, commission management systems are inherited – they’ve evolved overtime in the attempt to fix issues and find workable solutions “on the fly.” While these adaptations might solve problems in the short term, stepping back to take a more holistic “foundation-based” view of the way you calculate and manage recruitment commission can set your business up for a more dependable and efficient future process.

 

Getting to the bottom of your recruitment commission management problems presents the opportunity to create a more competitive offering – but it’s also wise to remember the importance of continuously reassessing to make incremental improvements as your competition evolves and the industry changes.

 

In this article, we’ll explore five key areas of recruitment commission management that can prove problematic, and suggest a few ways you can problem solve to ensure future success.

 

1. Siloed Data – No Clarity To Power Your Recruitment Commission Structure

 

Many see the management of day to day business calculations as a straightforward operational necessity. Of course, commission calculations and management are an essential part of the practical running of a recruitment business – but they offer value beyond this, in the form of the actionable insight that can be drawn from the data their handling produces.

 

For many recruitment businesses, struggling with poorly structured commission management, it can be extremely difficult (or even impossible) to gain any kind of clarity from their commission data. What trends, patterns or emerging problems are being overlooked? And by extension, what potential opportunities for improvement are being missed?

 

A carefully considered tech stack can be the answer to this problem. By linking a digital commission recruitment management system with strong integrations to your recruitment CRM, you’re able to obtain a 360 degree view of recruiter performance. Commissionly leverages strong CRM integrations to Bullhorn and Crelate, as well as your accounting software via Zapier to get rid of data silos and give you access to the fullest control and most complete view of the valuable data your operations generate day by day.

 

2. Problems With Clawbacks 

 

With so many variables impacting success and lasting suitability within the recruitment process, the need to reassess and adjust commission payments can represent a significant consideration (and often, headache) for those calculating recruitment commission. Clawback agreements are ubiquitous within the world of recruitment, and as a result, investing in a dependable, scalable process for their ongoing management makes good business sense.

 

At the heart of a strong clawback strategy lies the need for transparency and flexibility. Recruiters need to be able to see the specifics of their clawback adjustments, and requests for clarity here can become a significant drain on your operational resources overtime – especially if reliance on overly complex spreadsheets makes it hard to communicate or illustrate individual examples.

 

Working with an automated commission management system can be highly advantageous in this instance, adding accuracy and dexterity of clawback calculation, but also giving recruiters better visibility and predictability when it comes to the adjustments that they can expect to experience.

 

To learn more about ways to improve the management and outcomes of your own recruitment commission clawback procedure, read our recent article, 5 Tips For Efficient Recruitment Commission Claw Back.

 

3. Recruitment Commission Structure Setting The Wrong Incentives 

 

So often, when recruitment commission management procedure is assessed, the view taken is one of practicality and operational efficiency. While this is, of course, incredibly important, it’s also vital that businesses take time to review the underlying structure of the commission model, to ensure that the practices they’re putting in place are fully aligned with the ongoing goals and values of the business in question.

 

It’s important to design a recruitment commission structure that properly incentivises the behaviors that you’d like to see within your team, going beyond shorter sighted outcomes. Ask questions – what could this look like for the long term of your business?

 

Commissionly helps you implement more adaptive and flexible commission structures, by giving easier access to quick adjustments and changes, giving you the ability to get more from your team. Variables that would quickly become difficult to track, change or implement via spreadsheet are easily incorporated into your workflows. Meanwhile, automations free your team to focus on applying their insight to ongoing improvement, as opposed to the implementation of practical changes.

 

Looking for more information on ways to create an impactful recruitment commission structure? We’ve covered the topic here.

 

4. Time Consuming Manual Tracking, Prone To Error 

 

As previously mentioned, many commission management systems have evolved over a business’s lifespan in a reaction, as opposed to a proactive, manner. This means that adaptations are made in order to “work around” emerging issues or changing requirements, but little thought has been given into the long term efficiency of structures that have grown up over time.

 

Managing recruitment commission via spreadsheets necessitates a great deal of manual input and effort – and even with the most diligent and experienced of staff, all methods of this kind involve an inevitable degree of human error. How long can spreadsheets serve you? How costly and disruptive are the errors made through manual calculations?

 

Commissionly brings an instant solution into play, with dependable automations specifically designed to take all of the heavy lifting out of your recruitment commission management. Errors can be eliminated, freeing your team to put their experience to better and more productive use elsewhere.

 

5. Lack Of Recruiter Loyalty and Motivation

 

When we consider improvements to recruitment commission management, it’s easy to focus on the benefits that this brings to a business’s own internal operations. It’s also important to remember the positive, even transformative, experience that these kinds of improvements can have upon your recruiter experience.

 

We all know the value of keeping your recruiters engaged and motivated – how are you currently incentivizing their loyalty? Retaining experience will always trump the expense and time required to acquire new talent, but all too often, the recruitment agency relies on short-term incentives and flash bonuses, as opposed to looking at the bigger picture of their offer – the overall management and relationship building that they dedicate to their recruitment team.

 

When it comes to creating an appealing working environment for your recruiters, don’t underestimate the importance of transparency when it comes to their earnings. Giving individual recruiters access to their commission payment data, in real time, as well as a chance to see where clawbacks have come from enables them to remain engaged and self-motivated.

 

Again, ensuring that your CRM is integrated with your commission software can be a huge help in this capacity – performance is much easier to track, so you can make sure you’re acting responsively to ensure your recruiters feel recognised and rewarded. With Commissionly, it’s easy to grant user access and enhance visibility – and with the time saved via automation, you’ll be able to invest more effort in learning about their underlying frustrations.

 

Ready to solve your recruitment commission problems, once and for all?

 

The complex accelerated world of today’s recruitment sector demands modern, intelligent working practices that can match its pace. From efficiency through to competitiveness, Commissionly brings much needed clarity, dexterity and nuance to the way businesses are able to handle their recruitment commission management. With easy implementation, expansive connectivity with your existing tech solutions and intuitive ongoing use, it offers a scalable, seamless solution to error-prone tracking through manual spreadsheets.

 

Transform your recruitment commission management: book a demo to learn how Commissionly can help today.