What belongs on an AEP lead buying checklist?

Medicare’s annual Open Enrollment period runs October 15–December 7. Do not confuse it with the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period, January 1–March 31, which is for eligible people already enrolled in Medicare Advantage. A lead’s arrival date does not establish eligibility for a particular transaction.

Build eligibility confirmation into agent workflow. Outside these windows, turning-65 and Special Enrollment Period opportunities are year-round but eligibility-specific. Never use a seasonal campaign label as evidence that every caller can enroll.

Approve collection pages, advertisements, call scripts, routing specifications, and buyer identities before scheduling delivery. Identify who can sign off on material changes. During a busy season, an informal message about a new traffic partner should not bypass the same review applied to the original source.

Require separate source identifiers and version records so your team can isolate defects. Avoid pooled reporting that prevents you from distinguishing approved inventory from newly introduced traffic.

Before launch, ask a supervisor and an agent to walk through this step using a realistic sample. Record the decision they would make, the information they would need, and the condition that would stop the workflow. Resolve conflicting interpretations in the written procedure rather than leaving each agent to improvise during a consumer conversation.

Base caps on available licensed agents and the work required after each conversation. Include breaks, follow-up appointments, documentation, and supervisor review. An occupied phone line does not necessarily mean the team has room for another lead.

Test pause controls with the vendor before launch. Establish who can stop delivery, how quickly the instruction is acknowledged, and how disputed deliveries after a pause are handled.

Run test records and calls through state, language, product, and schedule rules. Confirm that overflow does not reach an unlicensed destination. Check whether transferred context appears accurately in the agent workspace instead of forcing the consumer to repeat every preliminary answer.

Rehearse a vendor outage and an internal outage separately. Agree on who contacts whom, how evidence is preserved, and whether traffic is stopped or redirected to an approved destination.

Inspect source evidence and a selection of recorded conversations throughout delivery. Watch for misleading benefit promises, incorrect agency identification, or callers expecting a government service. Address those issues at the source instead of asking agents to repair the misunderstanding through persuasion.

Keep qualification defects separate from a consumer’s reasonable decision not to proceed. Credit requests should reflect the agreement, not dissatisfaction that a suitable conversation did not produce a sale.

Use a clearly named disposition for unresolved information. Do not force uncertain records into either a successful or defective category merely to simplify reporting. An unresolved item should have an owner, a next action, and a documented reason for any later change. This makes source feedback more useful and prevents assumptions from becoming permanent consumer facts.

Manage deadlines through eligibility review and honest scheduling, not artificial urgency. Stop taking volume your team cannot appropriately handle. Ensure callback promises reflect actual capacity and do not imply that a lead purchase reserves coverage or an enrollment opportunity.

After the campaign, reconcile invoices, unresolved claims, opt-outs, and source changes. Preserve the evidence and lessons needed for future buying rather than deleting the operational record when the seasonal dashboard is closed.

Require consent record text, timestamp, page URL, and IP address when applicable to the collection method. Keep source identifiers and version history so the delivered record can be traced to the actual consumer experience. These evidence fields support review; they are not a guarantee that every proposed use is lawful.

For call-based inventory, require accessible recordings with practices reviewed against applicable recording, privacy, and program requirements. Verify state-licensed buyers before routing. Keep opt-outs and incident handling operationally separate from commercial credit requests. This guide is not legal advice and does not imply government affiliation or endorsement.