Health insurance sales training for Marketplace (under 65) teams has two halves: the current registration and product prep, and supervised practice of real customer conversations. Agents need to check plan details, explain them clearly and close every open question. Finishing a training module does not prove an agent can answer a doctor, prescription or cost question correctly.
For a manager, the goal is readiness you can see: the agent knows where to look, when to stop and say "let me check", and how to tell the customer what happens next. This guide covers Marketplace team prep, not Medicare training or advice on which coverage a consumer should buy.
23.1 million people picked or renewed a Marketplace plan for 2026. On HealthCare.gov, 76% of active plan selections involved an agent or broker, so agent accuracy is where most of these conversations are decided.
- 23.1M
- Marketplace plan selections, 2026
- 15.8M
- through HealthCare.gov
- 7.4M
- through state-based exchanges
Source: CMS, Health Insurance Exchanges 2026 Open Enrollment Report
Know which training path applies
Start with the agent's role, state, exchange and plan year. HealthCare.gov (the federal Marketplace, or FFM) and the state-run exchanges have different onboarding routes. Do not treat them as one.
CMS keeps the Marketplace agent and broker registration and training steps on one page. The page separates new and returning agents and links the current-year steps. Use it, not last year's onboarding deck.
The registration route matters because agents now sit inside most HealthCare.gov enrollments.
HealthCare.gov states only. CMS links the 2025 dip to system changes that stop agents changing an enrollment without the consumer's involvement.
Source: CMS, Health Insurance Exchanges 2026 Open Enrollment Report, Figure 3
As of the September 24, 2026 check, the CMS page announced Plan Year 2027 training for returning agents and said information for new agents would be available soon. That was true on the day of the check. Open the live page again before you assign the next cohort.
For a state-run exchange, confirm the process with that exchange and your compliance reviewer. State licensing, carrier prep and agency steps each need their own owner and record.
A public agent forum thread on ACA certification shows the usual confusion: individual accounts, state differences, which year's course. Use the official instructions and each person's own credentials, not another agent's memory.
Teams that also sell Medicare need a separate Medicare readiness process. Sharing the word "health" does not make the two trainings interchangeable.
Keep a readiness matrix, not a pile of completion emails
Keep one sheet that shows what was checked, who owns it and what the agent still has to show you. Official completion records stay in the systems your organization requires.
| Readiness area | Source and owner | Evidence | Conversation test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Role and registration | Current official route, confirmed by operations | Applicable completion record | Knows the limits of the assigned role |
| Plan information | Approved current plan sources, kept by the product owner | Correct source and version | Finds the information before answering |
| Customer discovery | Approved agency process, reviewed by the manager | Questions asked and a short summary | Learns what matters without assuming |
| Explanation | Checked plan material, assessed by a product reviewer | Faithful, easy-to-follow answer | Adds no benefits the source does not support |
| Follow-up | Agency handoff process, owned by named staff | Action and status record | Confirms who will close the open item |
This is a manager's worksheet for Marketplace readiness. Add your own review and escalation steps before you use it.
Keep uncertain items visible. "Training done, network check not shown yet" tells a manager what to assign. A single overall completion badge does not.
Before a seasonal cohort starts, have operations test the login path and the product owner confirm the active materials. Nobody should be fixing a broken link while a customer waits on the line. Equipment, access and general setup belong in the broader agent onboarding checklist.
A readiness matrix pays off when it shortens the road to "ready". United Insurance Pros defined its own baseline, then tracked how fast new agents reached it with Kendo:
Insurance case study: time to baseline cut from 45+ days to 14
United Insurance Pros is a 500+ agent organization. New agents now reach its defined baseline in 14 days instead of 45+.
“If you've got more than five agents, it's a no-brainer.”
Practice four conversations agents need to handle carefully
Use made-up customer details and approved plan material. The examples below are practice prompts, not call scripts or plan advice. Have your compliance reviewer adjust them to your channel.
1. A customer asks about a physician
Scenario: A self-employed customer says keeping one particular doctor matters more than anything else in a new plan.
The agent should first pin down which doctor and which plan. Then they check the approved current source and follow the agency's verification steps.
"It says so in the directory" is not a check. In one state's Marketplace, about 2 in 3 phone-verified counselor listings had at least one error.
Pennsylvania ACA Marketplace, mental health counselors: 8,306 sampled, 2,152 verified by phone. One state and one specialty, peer reviewed.
Source: Haeder and Zhu, American Journal of Managed Care, 2025
The manager is looking for a reliable process, not a memorized "yes". If the source is unclear or two sources disagree, the right answer in practice is to say so and set up the check.
Ask the agent to explain the next step without sounding evasive. "That needs checking against the exact plan" only helps when it comes with who will check and when the customer hears back.
For the retry, change the practice details. The agent should repeat the checking habit, not carry over the last scenario's answer.
“Easy. Confident yes.”
“Which doctor, which office, which plan? I will check the approved source and call you back by 3 with the answer.”
Confident is good. Checked is better.
2. A customer asks about a prescription
Scenario: A customer wants to know how one prescription would be handled under a plan you are discussing.
Give the agent a made-up drug name and an approved reference. The agent should work out what the question needs, find it in the reference and explain only what it says. A general line about prescription coverage is not an answer to a question about one drug.
If the agent did not understand the plan, go back to product training. A smoother delivery of a wrong answer is still a wrong answer.
Keep real medication lists and medical histories out of practice. The exercise tests the checking habit, not a customer's private record.
3. A customer focuses only on the monthly premium
Scenario: The customer asks for the lowest monthly cost and wants to move fast.
The task is to accept that the monthly payment matters, then explain the other costs from the plan material. The agent must not suggest the premium is the whole cost, or make up a likely bill to make a plan look good.
A reviewer-approved response might start: "The monthly payment matters. Before we compare options, let's also check the other costs in the plan information, so the comparison answers the question you actually have."
Only about 1 in 7 insured adults understood all four core cost terms in a 2013 study. That is why the agent has to explain them in plain words rather than recite them.
- 14%
- understood deductible, copay, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum
- 11%
- could work out the cost of a four-day hospital stay
Privately insured US adults aged 25 to 64, two surveys, 2013 data.
Source: Loewenstein et al., Journal of Health Economics, via Carnegie Mellon University
Check that the explanation is easy to follow. Reciting the terms correctly can still leave the customer lost. Ask the agent to explain the difference in plain words without inventing a dollar amount.
For price concerns that keep coming up, the insurance objections guide covers listening and clarifying in more depth. Product facts still come from the current plan source.
4. An application or follow-up question is unresolved
Scenario: A customer asks whether everything is finished, but one item is still open.
The agent should say what the status actually is and what happens next, not offer comfort the facts do not support. Teach the difference between "I sent it" and "the system confirmed it".
Ask three questions in the practice review: what is complete, what remains and who owns the next action? If the agent cannot answer one, the handoff is not finished.
Kendo's action items after a call: each follow-up has an owner, an outcome and a timestamp. Feature example from an unrelated practice call, not a Marketplace status lookup.
Do not let the practice system decide eligibility, predict a subsidy or confirm enrollment. Those decisions and statuses belong to the authorized process and its source systems.
Reward accuracy, even when the call ends with follow-up work. Honest follow-up is also where keeping customers after the first sale starts.
The status reply
Customer
“So is everything done?”
Unsupported
“Yep, you’re all set!”Supported
“Application sent. One item is still open. I own it and will update you tomorrow.”
A clear pending status beats a confident guess.
The four scenarios only work if the practice customer pushes back the way a real one does. Kody Skvarla, an insurance team lead, on how real Kendo's AI prospects feel:
Insurance case study: a 5 to 20% team improvement from realistic practice
Kody's wider team reports a 5 to 20% improvement. One top performer roughly doubled his own baseline.
“Kendo matches or beats a human practice partner. The objections are the exact same as real calls.”
Prevent the same error from spreading through a cohort
When several agents make the same mistake, check the training material before you coach each person. They may all be following an old example or a shortcut that dropped a condition.
Give each active resource a named owner. Record its version or date, who it is for and where it is used. When material changes, replace the active copy and note which scenarios depend on it.
Use a short correction process:
- Find the error. Point to the exact training line internally.
- Confirm the fix. Use the approved current source and your compliance reviewer.
- Update what depends on it. Scenarios, examples and scoring criteria.
- Tell the affected cohort. Explain what changed without sharing customer data.
- Check a fresh attempt. Confirm agents can apply the fix.
In a spring 2025 agent forum thread, a new private-health agent described inconsistent scripts and openers that did not match where the lead came from. It is not ACA evidence, but it raises the right question: does the opening match the customer's actual situation? For how to structure the first thirty seconds, see these insurance cold calling scripts.
A life-lead opener, not a Marketplace script. One habit is worth copying: do not hedge the greeting.
- 0:00Leads go unsold because agents do not know how to work them. His rule: assume the right person answered the phone.
- 0:09"Hello, I'm looking for Betty" against "Hey, Betty". The hedged opener sounds like every telemarketer.
- 0:22People answer a hedged opener with "wrong number". A plain first-name greeting gets lied to less often.
- 0:37He expects a return on any batch of leads and tells agents to bring that same confidence to the first word.
For a Marketplace call, pair the confident greeting with the real reason for the call and your approved identity check before any plan talk.
Do not use invented prior contact, a false inquiry or fake familiarity to solve that mismatch. The approved introduction should explain the real reason for the call.
Fixing a cohort-wide error takes manager hours most agencies do not have. Jess Chang, Partner at Globe Life, on what daily practice with Kendo gave her leaders back:
Insurance case study: new-agent close rates from about 33% to 60%+
Globe Life's new agents practiced daily with Kendo over about six months, alongside targeted hiring and manager oversight.
“Kendo buys back time for my leaders”
Protect sensitive information during practice and review
Create fictional scenarios from recurring question types, not copied customer files. A useful exercise does not need a real person's date of birth, application, income or medical history.
Build the scenario from the question type, never from the file
Use in practice
- One recurring customer question (doctor, prescription, monthly cost, "is it done?")
- A made-up name, age band and plan type
- The approved current plan document
- A fictional drug name and a fictional provider name
Never use
- A real customer's date of birth, application or income
- A real medication list or medical history
- A real call recording before consent and retention are settled
- A screenshot that could pass for a real customer record
Before reviewing real calls, settle recording consent, data handling, who has access, how long you keep it and what your vendors require. A tool being useful for coaching does not make every data flow allowed.
Keep demo captures clearly apart from customer records. A practice doctor question should never look like a real customer record or a confirmed plan lookup.
An AI summary is not a plan document. Check the explanation against the original approved material.
Practice Marketplace explanations and handoffs with Kendo
The manager's job is to turn one specific thing they saw into one specific next assignment. "Be more confident" gives the agent little to work with. "Name the source and confirm who owns the follow-up when the network answer is unclear" is something they can act on.
Watch a first attempt, give one correction and run a changed scenario. Once the skill shows up in practice, check an approved real call to see whether it carried over.
Kendo's AI roleplay supports configurable practice scenarios. Its call review produces summaries, strengths, weaknesses and feedback, and custom scorecards let the team set its own coaching criteria. See how the main AI sales roleplay tools compare on scenario control.
The lowest premium can sound like the lowest total cost. Let agents practice that misunderstanding with fictional plan details, then review what they explained and what they left open. A good answer makes uncertainty clear.
Kendo supports the insurance coaching process. It does not check provider networks, decide eligibility or submit enrollments. Your agency supplies the approved plan information and the manager stays in the loop.
Kendo's security overview lists HIPAA as a roadmap item. SOC 2 is in progress, and recordings are not used to train AI models. Do not upload sensitive health information on the strength of a roadmap.
Keep training software separate from your enrollment system. The AI sales tools comparison shows where practice and coaching tools sit among the rest.
Measure readiness separately from production
Track three signals. They are related but not the same:
- Completed: the agent did the assigned practice.
- Improved: the specific miss stopped showing up in the next attempt.
- Observed later: the manager saw the behavior on an approved real call.
A higher overall score can hide an open verification problem if the rubric gives too much weight to delivery. When comparing sales coaching software, check that a critical miss can be scored on its own.
Review critical errors separately from average scores. For example, an unsupported network statement should stay visible even when the agent asked good discovery questions and ended politely.
Business results need their own source and definition. Applications and enrollments live in your agency systems. Before you credit training for a change, look at lead mix, agent experience and the time of year, the same agency KPIs that managers track.
If the evidence shows a curriculum gap rather than a practice gap, revisit the insurance sales training options. Buy for what agents still cannot do.
Common team-readiness questions
Can returning and new agents use the same onboarding schedule?
They can share conversation practice, but their official prep route can differ. Confirm the current-year instructions and give each cohort only the path that applies to it.
What should happen when two sources conflict?
Stop giving the answer and follow your escalation process. Write down what conflicts and who will sort it out. Never teach agents to pick whichever answer makes the call easier.
What should a manager prepare first?
Pick one recurring customer question, its approved information source and a qualified reviewer. Build a fictional scenario around that question, then agree on what a complete, accurate answer would show.
