As we continue on our five part series about the tools you need to be as successful producer, today we’re going to talk about probably the one that everybody hates the most. Still, it’s the one you need the most, telemarketing. We’re going to talk about the things you should and should not be doing to be effective in telemarketing.
As we continue our series on the five tools you have to have to be a successful producer, I’m bringing up the one everybody hates the most, second, telemarketing. I mean, some animals out there love the phones, and actually they’re some of the most successful people I know because they have zero fear. But for the rest of us, we’re not big fans. So I want to talk about some things you can do to up the phone game that’ll make things better for you going forward.
The first thing you have to realize when you get on the phone is all you’re trying to do is book an appointment in most cases. Quit trying to close the deal on an appointment setting phone call. Keep it short and sweet. Now I’m not telling you that you can’t get into some level of detail if questions get asked, but most of the time, you’re dealing with a gatekeeper who doesn’t know why you are calling. All you’re trying to do is stay in your lane.
See, people have learned how to buy insurance from our industry. There is no college course out there called how to procure insurance for your business, so they’ve learned from us, and what they’ve learned is we’re going to call 60 to 90 days before renewal. As much as I love that early entry into a middle-market account, it’s just not going to happen most of the time. If it does, my close rates are through the roof. But the fact is, if I want to get an appointment booked, I have to call when everybody else is calling, and I have to play the numbers games.
The second thing I want you to do is I want you to understand that calling is casting a wide net. Now, I am not calling every single person that’s on a list that I have. It would just not be humanly possible for me to get through that many phone calls. I focus on calling those accounts that I want to get in myself, no matter what. But that doesn’t mean we’re not calling anybody.
So I’m going to give you number 2A, and that: is if you’re not that great on the phones, or you have a massive pipeline, and you want to blanket as much as you can, get an appointment setting service, use a virtual assistant to set appointments for you like we’re doing here at Florida Risk Partners, and you can canvas a much broader area that you would be able to do on your own. Here we have our producers call those accounts that are their ideal prospects, and everything else gets shipped over to a virtual assistant to call and set appointments with them.
With COVID, we’ve been able to expand our horizons and deal with some of the smaller accounts we usually wouldn’t engage. Now, we can sell workers’ compensation over Zoom, whereas before, we may have to drive 30 or 45 minutes to get to an appointment for $2,000 worth of agency revenue, and that’s not my game. So use resources, focus on what you want to write, and everything else needs to go through the other people.
Third and last, determine what you consider a win. You’re not going to call 100 people and get 100 appointments. It’s never going to happen. But what is a success to me is getting off the phone and having more information than you had on that account before you called them. So I don’t view just a booked appointment as the only way to win in these situations. If I can get the decision-maker’s name confirmed and their contact information confirmed so that I can put it into my CRM and let it work its witchcraft in the background, that’s a win to me, that’s a massive win to me, and it should be to you too.
I think so many times we look at the phones as such a daunting task, and we’re all scared of it that really if we stop, take a deep breath. We divide the responsibilities, define who we’re calling, define who we’re outsourcing those calls to, and then define what we consider to be a win; you’re going to kill it in commercial insurance every day.
Workers’ compensation is one of the most misunderstood and underestimated lines of coverage in the middle market. Too many producers view it as a commodity, something to quote, bind, and move on from. But as the market heads toward 2026, that mindset is becoming a liability.
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.
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