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11 minute read
Bob Hurley, a Healthtech Advisor, and past Senior Executive with eHealth Inc., discusses the significance of testing products, processes and assets to help you stay current with market trends and consumer product reception. Bob sat down with Alan Edgin at the annual Medicarians Conference to discuss why ongoing testing is key to distributors staying current with new consumer trends, and dives into the specifics of what should be tested to maintain success:
This episode covers:
- The importance of Incremental Testing
- Marketer Testing
- Product Market Testing
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Episode Transcript:
Alan Edgin
Welcome to the Do's and Don'ts, our series that builds on best practices for insurance marketers carriers and marketing organizations based on white papers from leading thinkers on the future of insurance distribution. Today I've got Bob Hurley. Thank you for joining us. Bob was kind enough to be a panelist [ in our discussion earlier today at Medicarians]. Bob, can you just tell us a little about you and what's been going on in your life and why you were excited to be a panelist?
Bob Hurley
Yeah, happy to. So for the last couple of years, I've been an advisor to a number of health tech early stage companies. So companies in the remote patient monitoring digital DME cancer oncology communities, helping those companies navigate frankly the carrier space, the payer space, getting to understand how they can penetrate the carriers, get their products available, some visibility with the carriers. So I've been doing that for the last few years. Prior to that I was an executive with eHealth for actually 24 years. I was with eHealth in the early stages, prior to the series A financing, and of one of the early employees into the company, I think I was number three into the company. So I was able to actually be a part of an organization that really went through the entire business cycle of early stage raising money, public offering in 2007 to finally leaving eHealth, finally the last time in February of this year after helping the new CEO there do a fairly significant business transformation for eHealth.
Alan Edgin
Well, I've known I need help for a number of years as being part of a carrier. You guys called on us in 1999, which I think is when you started. It is. And to watch you guys basically start from infancy and go through all of those processes and steps and it's been an amazing journey that you guys have had over the, you know, whatever that is, 27 years or so. But eHealth to me, is one of the leading best practices companies out there in regards to how they approach, how they sell, how they retain. So it's great. Congratulations.
Hurley
Well, thank you.
Alan Edgin
Let's pick up on what was discussed in the Medicarians panel and add some more detail and thought for our listeners. In the session earlier, you were pretty energized about the area of testing. Brendan McLaughlin, our President, brought up a quote from the white paper. One of the most powerful tools in the transformational toolkit is the pilot. Test, fast test, cheap test, often measure results. What about that energizes you? What makes that work for you without testing?
Hurley
I think a company fairly quickly and easily can fall into a state of staleness. They can lose touch, I think, with the marketplace, because what happens with a lot of companies is they develop some data and some history. They tend to fall into a rut of trying to relive the history, of doing the same things over and over again because they worked before. I would argue that companies that fall into that rut can absolutely lose touch with the consumer. And I would argue that by testing new technology, new processes, I would even argue new people, by testing new assets into the marketplace, you can stay current with new trends that are occurring, new attitudes that are happening, new adoption of technology that may be taking place. And if you're not testing the market for those and kind of pushing the edges on the market for some of that, new technology, new people, new everything, new process, then you may lose touch of the marketplace and fall away from it.
Alan Edgin
Yeah, it's kind of that. Not an adage. But I'll make it an adage. If you're not testing, you're not growing. Exactly. Because you're just dwindling. And a lot of big marketing companies, once they think they've got their mousetrap figured out, they just said they let it be content. And I think that's a death spiral because if you're not constantly challenging your model and saying, hey, how can I make this a better mousetrap? How can I tweak it to enhance it for the next quarter, the next year, the next five years? So I agree totally.
Are there specific tests that you've run in the past with your life, with eHealth or even with the consulting companies that worked? And if so, why do they work? Or what was some of the major
Hurley
When I saw testing done and I've seen the product people come in and want to do. Extreme. The gentleman that came in, I'm not going to disparage him, of course, but he did what was called the extreme makeover. And I would argue that extreme maker overs are very dangerous. I would argue that the best testing and iteration that I saw was testing and change that was done on a very incremental basis. So do it quickly, try it, have it very incremental, and then if it works, of course you embed that, and then you go on to the next incremental change. I think that some of the folks that come in and want to do an extreme makeover is very dangerous.
Bob Hurley
I haven't seen one work yet.
Alan Edgin
Yeah, me either.
Bob Hurley
And so I think the Iterative change where you're constantly testing, checking with the consumer, having the focus groups, finding out from the consumer what they're seeing as being beneficial or not beneficial, is critically important. On the product development side, on the marketing side, I think that same sense of testing applies to marketing. I will say we had a very robust process most of the time testing new messaging, new content, new channels, and frankly, new marketing companies. So sometimes you get stale with the same marketing company and you need to refresh your marketing company and bring somebody else in that has new ideas, fresh ideas. Maybe that they can bring from other industries into our space. And so I would argue that it's critically important on the product side, I think it's critically important on the marketing side. But quite honestly, you can say that about every department within the organization.
The sales organization, we're constantly redeveloping the sales organization. We were at eHealth going through a process, bringing people in to consult with us on new ideas, on how to approach lead management and lead flows and frankly, incentive compensation. So I would argue that you've got to have a growth mindset when it comes to allowing people in. Inputs are always good. I say inputs are always good. Then you have to decipher those inputs and then make decisions. I get that, but I think if you shut down the inputs, you're going to shut down your company.
Alan Edgin
So what are some of the key metrics that you measure to to say, hey, this test is going to work?
Bob Hurley
It's critically important that you set what success looks like when you go into any test. And I would argue that with product marketing or with an operational process change, you have to set what success looks like and then you're implementing whatever that change is, and then you're measuring that to whatever your expectations were. And frankly, you don't always hit it. Sometimes you exceed it and then sometimes you fall a little short, but you still may be better than you were before. And so I think that's when you decide you're going to move forward. I can tell you there are tests where you do them and you go backwards, where your performance, your conversion rates, whatever it might be, actually fall back. You certainly know at that point that you have a test that's not working.
Alan Edgin
So what do you do there? You just kind of regroup and refocus and say, hey, plan A didn't work. Plan B is maybe not going to work. I got to go work on a plan C.
Bob Hurley
Yeah, I think ideally you come up with A, B and C. You come up with a few different iterations of a test. And you iterate the A you know, the A choice, the B choice, the C choice. If all of them fail, then I think you pull back, you regroup, and you rethink about what you're actually trying to accomplish. And when I think you get to that point, hopefully what you're doing is refocusing on the consumer and saying, okay, here's what the consumer was telling us. Here's what we try to address. Maybe we need to go back to those consumers because we failed at whatever this test is, and we need to hear from them again and get refinement on what exactly they wanted us to accomplish so that we can take another run at it.
Alan Edgin
Yeah, I think that's an issue for IMOs (Insurance Marketing Officer) like eHealth or even insurance companies, I think sometimes they get complacent in their model and they just say, hey, this works good, and they don't do the testing, and they don't do it. And then suddenly they're now kind of slipping, whether it's in production or whether it's in operations or whether it's in whatever metric you want to use. And so you got to test, you got to do it. You got to do it often and quick and continually tweak your model as much as you can.
Bob Hurley
I think, too, the CEO, the leadership of an organization is critical in this because the organization needs to have a culture. Of accepting failure. And I think the culture is driven by, frankly, the senior leadership team, mostly the CEO, and then it permeates down through that senior leadership team. They have to feel safe in doing that, testing, pushing the edges, hopefully creating a safe boundary around it, but driving that change and having the support of the senior leadership.
Alan Edgin
Yeah, I couldn't agree more because I've always said everything flows from the top down. And if the CEO is not buying in on it, it's not going to work. It's not going to work.
Bob Hurley
You won't have a culture of no creativity.
Alan Edgin
Yeah. Trying and saying, hey, we might fail, but as long as we don't fail more than we succeed is the key. I guess. So in the panel discussion earlier, Bob, you stressed on the idea of using data to drive long lifetime value LTV. Could we dig a little bit deeper into an example or two? What examples do you have with lead sources that gives you with eHealth being a technology company from the early stage?
Bob Hurley
We've always had a fairly decent platform to not only generate leads, but then follow those leads through the verticals, whether it be digital or direct mail or TV, whatever. We are able to bring those into our environment, follow the channels all the way through the sales organization and then obviously watch the performance measure the performance of the sales organization. I will tell you, I think what we were able to accomplish, though, is, you know how data often sits there and it goes unused? And I would argue that as we were immature in our development as a company, we were collecting a lot of data, but we were not effective at exposing that data. Ah, turning it into information and then having the leadership team, you know, decipher that information and then put it back into motion with regard to new approaches to the market, new approaches to the business and so on, I think that's the critical piece. I think a lot of companies do have the data. I think where they often fall short is in the interpretation of the data and then the application of the information from that data and making something happen with it that actually moves the business forward.
Alan Edgin
Yeah I think I've been in the insurance business for a long long time and insurance companies and insurance people are typically the last to change. You know, there's a lot of other companies that are much more quick to change and more innovative but I think that now they're figuring out the importance of data and what it can do and especially with the lifetime value of a contract and whether it's trying to reach out more to the people. Anything you can do to trigger that extension of that persistency of that product is good for everybody. It's good obviously for the company, it's good for the consumer so it's good for everybody.
Bob Hurley
I agree.
Alan Edgin
So agent performance in that whole. The LTV thing. What do you think? We kind of just touched on it a little bit about how everybody needs to pull and embrace the data. But what do you think about agent performance in regards to the lifetime value of a contract?
Bob Hurley
Well, it's critical, as you know. A few points lost on the conversion rate can significantly impact your LTV to CAC ratios. Right. Profitability of the business. So the output of the agents is critically important. And I would argue that the tech enablement of that agent to give them the tools that make it fairly simple for them to assess the consumer's needs and wants, but then turn that around and be able to use the tools on their desktop to quickly identify which plans meet those needs and wants of that particular beneficiary. In this case. It’s critical to be able to reduce the time that the agent has to take with each consumer. The beneficiaries in most Medicare shops that I talk to, the sales agent, are spending 40, 50, 60 minutes, sometimes longer, with a beneficiary trying to get them into the right plan. And that is important because if you don't get them into the right plan, they will leave you quickly, and so I would argue that the tools that we put on the desktop of the agent are critical in helping them get that beneficiary receive the information and turn that information into a product selection for the beneficiary that is meeting the right needs, getting them into what they need and want.
Alan Edgin
I think you mentioned earlier on the Medicarians panel discussion, I think it was you that said if you sell a policy to an insured that for the first year they're still a prospect, yes? And it's not until they renew that they become a client. And I think that's so important, and I think the more again that agents can embrace data and figure out how that's going to help them with the LTV of the front, I think that's so critical. And you're spot on, because I've always said the same thing when I started my career with MetLife, 40 actually, 40 years ago, they said, always try to get two or three products with that insured, and that's going to enhance your persistency. But it's the fact that the carrier knew that that metric was important and that just don't sell them one policy and to be done with it, try to get them a second or third policy and so that you can get them synced in with this.
Bob Hurley
I think when you are able to get a Beneficiary, a consumer, a prospect. To buy multiple products, they've moved past the trust factor. So I would argue that until they buy multiple products for you, they probably still don't completely trust you, and that you still have to approach that topic of the reasons why you can trust me. And I think until you cross that boundary, so to speak, that you haven't earned them as a customer. Once they've bought multiple products from you, I think now you've crossed the bridge of I trust you. And now I think you have to convey to them, and now I care about you. And I think that's critically important for a customer to feel that, hey, you care about me. You care about my self interest. We crossed the trust bridge, but now how much do you care about me? And I think that interaction then once you've become a customer of mine, fostering that sense of caring for that customer becomes kind of the next great. The objective in that interaction.
Alan Edgin
And it's interesting because it's all interrelated. Because if you're caring about the needs, and if you're doing a true needs analysis on a prospect and you sell them the right products, you're going to hopefully gain that trust. And if they can use those metrics, it's nothing unlike with you and the FMO (Field Marketing Officer). When you're at eHealth trying to test and retest, well, the agent has to do the same thing. It's just their level of how they're having to figure out, what's the best mousetrap for me? I've got to sell this, and I've got to sell multiple products and this and that. eHealth has to do the same thing. A large insurance carrier has to do the same thing. They're different levels and different matters, but it's pretty much the same logic that falls through that. Well, listen, Bob, thank you very much for being a panelist today. It was a great panel discussion, and thank you for stopping by and spending a few minutes with us.
Bob Hurley
You bet.
Alan Edgin
Good to be here. All right, take care.
Narrator
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Insurance Innovation, brought to you by e123. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please provide feedback and let us know topics that would inspire you on the website at e123insurtech.com, home of the premier life and health insurance distribution management system.
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