August 6th, 2009

Reports the Central Penn Business Journal:

The store was quiet, even with a television turned on along the right wall. The relative serenity was deceptive.

Past the electronic body-mass index reader that looks like an electric toothbrush and the Nintendo Wii loaded with a sweat-beading sports game, several clients spoke to Highmark Inc. sales representatives in nearly soundproof offices.

The door to one office opened and a middle-age woman walked out, saying thank you and shaking hands with Karen Caudill, a Highmark sales associate at the Pittsburgh-based insurance company’s retail store in Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County.

Sales associates and Highmark executives said the retail store pilot program is a booming success, even after being open only four months at the Silver Spring Square Shopping Center on the Carlisle Pike.

There was a flood of people visiting when the store first opened March 21, Caudill said.

“Many people came not necessarily to buy a contract, but because they were curious,” she said.

Highmark’s stores offer a place for the company to sell health insurance policies directly to individuals.

The buzz created by Highmark’s stores — the second is in Pittsburgh — also has proven, so far, to be good for business, said Steven Nelson, Highmark’s senior vice president of corporate marketing and consumerism.

More than 7,000 people have visited the two stores and, from that, about 1,000 policies have been sold, he said. That’s about a 14 percent conversion rate. Sales and traffic have been about even at both stores, Nelson said.

Read more at the CPBJ.