As part of Florida Blue’s transformation from a health insurance to a health solutions company, its sales force needed to become trusted advisors and adopt a consultative approach in working with current and future customers. The annual Curtain Call Program provides an opportunity for sales representatives to demonstrate their ability to conduct strategic and consultative sales discussions with agents, brokers, and clients.
Both knowledge and skills training is incorporated into the Curtain Call Program. The program has proven successful in helping Florida Blue’s sales teams prepare for changes in the health-care industry and improve their consultative skills in working with agents and group customers/prospects.
Program Details
The format for the Curtain Call includes a scored role-play with a three-person panel, using a real-life scenario that has been developed by sales directors from each area with support from Commercial Markets Training.
Each sales representative’s Curtain Call performance is assessed using a scoring rubric, broken out by focus areas, performance indicators, and behavioral competencies. The sales rep receives a score for each competency, rated on a scale of 1-5 (highest) by a panel consisting of members of the Commercial Markets Training team and statewide sales directors. The final score is calculated as an average of all ratings. Performance is tracked on a year-to-year basis to determine performance improvements, both individually and on a team basis. Following completion of the Curtain Calls, each sales rep/sales director is provided with a video of his or her presentation to review and utilize for coaching and development.
Curtain Call Program goals include:
- Drive transformation from transactional to consultative selling
- Provide a significant learning opportunity to help develop sales skills
- Identify and understand knowledge and skill gaps
- Deliver actionable feedback to both sales reps and their management
- Measure improvement on a year-over-year basis
Results
In 2013, Curtains Calls were conducted for 53 individuals from the Local Market Sales Team and 29 from the National/Public Sector team. The final average score for the National team was 3.77 (first year of participation). The Local Market team showed considerable improvement, with final average scores increasing from 3.44 in 2012 to 4.27 in 2013 (19 percent improvement). Twelve of Blue Director’s top-performing agents (based on sales performance for the current year) were invited to participate. Final average scores for this team also improved from 4.0 in 2012 to 4.35 in 2013 (8 percent improvement).
For the Local Market team, the topic of health-care reform (HCR) came to the forefront for the 2013 scenario, which consisted of five primary questions and 25 additional HCR questions that sales reps needed to be able to confidently address with agents and group representatives. A pre-assessment was administered to evaluate current topic knowledge and drive engagement. This was followed by a Webinar discussion of these key health-care reform questions. Following the Webinar and prior to the actual Curtain Call, a post-assessment was administered to evaluate the sales reps’ HCR knowledge level after the Webinar training. The score from the post-assessment was integrated into the final Curtain Call score. The average score on the assessment was 96.6 percent.
