As we continue our series on being a five tool player, number four is you have got to have a digital presence. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. I will give you five things that you need to be doing to be a five-tool player in the digital world.
If you’re going to be a five-tool player, you have got to have a digital game, and it is so easy to do. There are so many tools and resources that make it to streamline this stuff with no issue at all. The number one thing you have to do is video, just like this. You’re watching me, so people will be willing to watch you. But it’s easy to start with video because everything else can build from that. Doing a quick video every day about a topic relevant to the questions asked by your clients and prospects is the backbone of a solid strategy for digital marketing from now on.
Number two is you’ve got to blog, period. Blogging gives those anchor text and keyword triggers for Google to crawl your website and help you rank, but more importantly, answer the questions people want to have answered. In his book, They Ask You Answer, Marcus Sheridan gives you a blueprint for a perfect playbook for creating content. Using sites like answerthepublic.com, you can find out those questions your clients and prospects are asking and then craft a strategy to answer them. More importantly, here’s a tip: put a pen and a piece of paper next to every single person’s desk in your operation that talks on the phone, and any time they hear the same question twice, write it down. I stole that from my man Bradley Flowers. Awesome idea.
You know, writing a blog, according to my friend, Ryan Hanley, is like hiring a salesperson to work for you on the internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The number one thing I hear is, “I don’t have time to write.” Well, guess what? You just shot a video. Take that video, flip it over to a transcription service, have them bring it back to you as a Word document, run it through Grammarly, clean it up, and publish it as a blog post. Now you have a blog post with a video embedded into it that you can put the video on YouTube, the blog post on your website, and people can pick and choose if they want to watch or if they’re going to listen.
The third thing you can do is you can podcast. I know it sounds crazy, but if you develop a business leaders podcast just featuring businesses in your area, it doesn’t have to be about insurance. You’re going to break down all of the walls you would typically have to climb in a first appointment. Think about how much rapport you can build by interviewing somebody about their business for 30 to 45 minutes. I can promise you, it does wonders, and it guarantees they’re going to take your call every time you call them in the future if you do it the right way. It’s not about insurance. It’s not about risk management. It’s about them, their business, how they built it, what mistakes they made, what’s made them successful, and I like to slide in a little something called, as a business owner, what keeps you awake at night? That’s the only risk management angle that I have in that.
The fourth thing you can do is webinars. Webinars are extremely powerful because you can market them to be live, you can record them, and then you can host them on your website with an exit intent pop out that will have people register to watch that content for months, if not years, down the road. When COVID hit, I did a webinar on reducing your workers’ compensation costs. And I’ve had thousands of people view that, and we have written a ton of business because we did that webinar. It wasn’t salesy, it was a hundred percent informational, but because we recorded it, we got way more mileage out of that content than if we had to keep doing it over and over and over again. Plus, people can receive that information where they want to receive it, not where I want them to hear it.
The fifth thing that you can do is use digital presentations. I have a website that Advisor Evolved powers, and we have a native quote vids platform there that we can use to do video proposals. Not only can we attach a PDF of the actual paper proposal so that they can pull it up and walk through it, but they can see me talking about it on the screen. If they have questions, they can click a button and immediately go to my calendar embedded on that page and schedule time to talk on the phone. Again, it’s about giving people the information they need but allowing them to receive it on their terms and not the terms that we dictate to them. If you can do those five things, my goodness, you’re going to kill it in 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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