With all of the things that we have access to on the internet, doing research on our prospects is easy, but there is a huge, huge trap that you can fall into if you’re not aware of it. That’s what I’m to talk to you about today.
In today’s digital era, we have so much information available to us at our fingertips. We can find anything out about a prospect, a client, literally anything, but one. And that one thing can create a massive trap for you as you begin a new relationship. Do you want to guess what it is? It’s your prospect’s perception of themself. See, we can tell them what we think about them. We can go and do a bunch of research and come to our conclusions and go in and offer them all kinds of things we can do to fix all of the problems we’ve uncovered. The problem is, it gets uncomfortable when they don’t see that they have a problem. We engage with the sick at Florida Risk Partners. It’s no secret. It’s what I teach you guys to do in the middle market. But we have a proven tool that allows us to know what our prospects think of themselves before we go in and tell them what we think of them.
When we bring in a new account, one of the first things we do is a baseline risk assessment. It’s a physical loss control visit on our agency side. Now there are times that I’ll outsource to a professional if it’s industry-specific and needs some help, but most of the time, this is something that we can do. And it’s relatively easy because it’s conversational, and it involves interviewing executive leadership, mid-level management, and front-line employees. We ask them a series of questions, and we ask them to grade themselves from 1 to 10. And that gives us an idea of perception. Then we can take all of the executive responses and average them out per line item to know where they see things and give an overall score. That’s the average at the bottom. Do the same thing with mid-level management and the same thing with the front-line workers. That is like taking an open book final. I know exactly what everybody in the organization thinks about that organization’s performance before I ever go in and tell them what I think about it.
My message can get tailored precisely the way it needs to be because I have powerful information. I know what they think. If I have somebody who’s a 4 out of 10 and they believe they are an 8 out of 10, that’s not going to be a comfortable conversation if I don’t know that they think they’re an 8 out of 10. There’s been plenty of times where I’ve had to deliver my message much more softly than I usually would, simply because I have a client whose self-perception has a massive separation gap from where we feel they are. In like kind, we’ve also had to go in and encourage some prospects who are a little bit harder on themselves than what they should have been. We rate them like a six or a seven, and they think they’re a two or a 3. Well, if you’re too hard on yourself, that’s not going to help the cause either.
So what I’m challenging you to do is take the extra two minutes in your agency in 2021 and create a prospect self-perception tool that you can use to get that information on the front end to know where the gap is. Because if that gap is too big and you don’t know about it, the deal’s going to fall into it, and you’re out of luck. If you can take the time to create this and then flawlessly execute it with you and your producers in 2021, you’re going to absolutely kill it in commercial insurance.
For years, commercial insurance producers could survive by being good enough across a wide range of industries. They could write a little construction, a little manufacturing, a little hospitality, and a little habitational business and still build a respectable book.
The commercial insurance industry is in the middle of a quiet evolution.
While most conversations still revolve around premiums, deductibles, limits, and carrier appetite, a different category of risk transfer has been gaining traction beneath the surface—parametric insurance. It is not new, but it is finally becoming accessible, relevant, and actionable for middle market producers who are willing to think differently about risk.
In a recent episode of the Power Producers Podcast, I sat down with Brian Thompson from Descartes Underwriting to unpack what parametric insurance actually is, what it is not, and why producers who ignore it may be leaving their clients—and themselves—exposed.
This article breaks that conversation down into practical, producer-friendly language and shows how parametric insurance fits into modern middle market risk management.
The last several years have reshaped the landscape of property insurance across the country. While most national carriers have retreated from coastal states, wildfire zones, and other catastrophe-exposed regions, a handful of disciplined players have taken the opposite path—leaning into difficult markets with a strategic, data-driven approach.
For most entrepreneurs, the decision to start a business is rooted in the promise of freedom. Freedom from a boss, freedom to control income, and freedom to build something meaningful. Yet for many business owners, particularly in service-based industries and middle-market companies, that freedom slowly erodes. What begins as ownership eventually turns into obligation, where the business demands constant attention and the owner becomes the single point of failure.
The insurance industry is full of shortcuts. Some producers look for ways to streamline the quoting process, others avoid hard conversations with clients, and many rely on endorsements or extensions because they are “easier” than diving into the details. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in the world of cyber insurance.
Too many agents assume that a cyber endorsement on a BOP or commercial package policy is “good enough.” It isn’t. In fact, treating a BOP cyber extension as a replacement for a standalone cyber policy leaves clients dangerously exposed, puts producers at risk of losing accounts, and opens the door to costly errors and omissions (E&O) claims.
Cyber threats evolve faster than any other area of risk, and endorsements simply can’t keep up. If producers want to protect their clients and themselves, it’s time to understand why standalone cyber insurance is non-negotiable.
In the middle market, producers don’t lose because the competition has better pricing.
They lose because the competition understands people better—their motivations, their fears, their priorities, and what makes them say yes.
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