Are you an agency principal that’s getting frustrated with your producer’s lack of production? Well, I hate to rain on your parade, but you might be managing them wrong. That’s what I’m going to talk to you about today.
If you’re an agency principal, there’s a high likelihood you have producers that you’re frustrated with because they’re not hitting their numbers. And if you’re a producer and you’re new to the game, you might be getting frustrated with your agency principal because all they’re doing is talking to you about hitting your numbers. Here’s the problem that we have in the industry. We manage results. Now we want to tell our clients that our value proposition is highly proactive, and we do everything out in front, but we don’t do that with our staff. We don’t take the time to have our producers develop a business plan. See, when somebody comes to work at Florida Risk or a new client comes into Killing Commercial, the very first thing we have them do is develop their business plan. I don’t want somebody to tell me how much revenue they’re going to do.
I want them to tell me how they will do that revenue. That’s a big deal. The problem is that we manage that number that our producers are supposed to hit in the end, but you can’t do that until when? Until you get to the end. You can manage the number a month in, but it would be ludicrous to manage an annual production number a month into the year. It would honestly be ludicrous to manage a monthly production number a month because we should be addressing the behaviors.
We should be looking at how many phone calls get made. How many emails get sent? How many marketing drops are happening? How many new business meetings did they book? How many presentations of our work product have occurred? See if you can focus on those things, and you have a CRM system that will capture that; you can monitor the behaviors until you’re blue in the face because you know the revenue will follow. That’s a big deal as an agency principal.
I’ve had patches in my career where I’ve gone two months without a new business appointment. I have producers that have gone six to eight weeks without new business appointments, but I knew that the behaviors were there. I knew they were making their phone calls, emails, and marketing drops, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before the flywheel caught and they were off to the races in production.
The other challenge I would have for you as an agency principal is thinking big and teaching your producers to think big. You know, I think producers are often only going to produce up to the level that we expect of them, and if your goals for them in your mind, or that you have portrayed to them are too low, they’re never going to get above that. Even the most self-motivated people will find comfort in the fact that they are meeting or barely exceeding their annual goal. If you think that your producer having a book that is $200,000 or $300,000 in revenue is all you want for your agency, then that’s acceptable.
If not, tell them you want 600,000 and see what happens. A pure producer will hit it. The issue is if we’re not willing to think big, our producers aren’t inclined to think big. So if we can think big and establish stretch goals in addition to what we know, they’re going to achieve, define the behaviors that get wrapped around that, and then measure those behaviors daily. I’m willing to bet you you’re going to take a producer that’s never written more than their current average, and they will double it in a year. If you can do that, you and your agency are going to kill commercial insurance.
In the ever-evolving world of commercial insurance, marketing has become a critical lever for growth. Yet most agencies still struggle to understand what’s actually working. From websites that generate leads with no attribution to CRM systems that silo vital data, insurance agencies are often flying blind.
If you’re a commercial insurance producer trying to grow in the middle market, you’re probably aware that the old-school prospecting methods—cold calling hundreds of businesses, dropping off trinkets, hoping someone is “coming up on renewal”—are no longer enough. In today’s competitive environment, success isn’t about how many people you reach. It’s about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.
Too many agents stop learning once they’ve earned their license. The bare minimum—meeting continuing education requirements—is not enough in today’s climate. Producers often resort to online forums, asking where they can complete CE hours “as quickly as possible.” This mindset directly impacts their ability to communicate complex subjects like reinsurance or risk modeling to clients in an understandable way. As a result, they struggle to retain accounts and close new business in an increasingly competitive market.
The problem? Too many producers are pitching too soon, to the wrong people, with nothing more than a quote to offer. This article walks through how to close more business by positioning yourself as a trusted advisor, selling Total Cost of Risk (TCOR) outcomes, and using a structured approach to differentiate at every stage of the sales process.
In the modern commercial insurance landscape, trust is no longer built solely through in-person meetings, networking events, or polished brochures. It’s earned digitally—often before a prospect ever takes your call. As sales dynamics shift and competition tightens, the producers who will thrive are those who understand one thing: educational content is the new handshake.
Most commercial insurance producers think of referral networks as an afterthought—something that might generate a lead or two if they attend enough events, shake enough hands, or stay active in their BNI chapter. But the producers who consistently dominate the middle market think differently. They treat referral networks like revenue engines, built with the same discipline as a sales pipeline, and they use those relationships not only to generate appointments but to recruit the next generation of elite producers.
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