Do You Produce or Do You Practice?

My question for you today is do you produce or you just practice? That’s the topic of today’s post.

I hear it all the time from agency owners and sales leaders across the country, how do I get my people to produce? Well, the fact of the matter is you’ve got to teach them how to sell value and sell a relationship. Right now, we’ve got agents running rampant, doing their best to compete on price, and I hate to tell you, that’s like building your house on a foundation full of sinking sand. People want value. They may not realize it at the beginning of a meeting, but that’s your job to show them precisely what you can do that they’re currently not getting. People who sell on price will also lose on price, and people who sell on value will take that business every time.

We have equations that we’ve used over the years. Call 100 people, get 50 people to answer the phone, get 20 people to meet with you, ten will let you quote, and two will end up being your client. That’s insane. Work so much smarter than that. You have to know who your audience is. You have to know the motivating factors behind what drives them to give you the order, and then you have the leverage that every time you meet with them. We don’t need people to be in our organizations that only quote, “trying to earn business.” There’s no value in that at all.

Figure out a way to differentiate yourself. Create a unique process and approach and brand that, with its brand separate from your agency’s. Then go out and define your ideal prospects, put those people in your pipeline, and call on those people and nobody else. Those couple of steps will be one of the things that help you keep from practicing more than producing. If you fill your pipeline with the right people, if you remain relevant by staying in front of them, if you have a value proposition instead of a quoting machine, that is exactly what’s going to allow you to kill it in commercial insurance.

Remote

Building High-Performing Remote Insurance Teams: Core Values, Hiring, Onboarding & KPI Strategies

The insurance industry is undergoing a profound transformation as middle-market agencies recognize the benefits and challenges of embracing a fully remote workforce. No longer viewed as a temporary workaround, remote models offer the potential to tap into nationwide and offshore talent pools, reduce overhead, and increase flexibility in an increasingly digital world. Yet, flipping the switch to virtual operations can expose gaps in documentation, dilute corporate culture, and strain traditional oversight mechanisms. In this post, we’ll explore the four pillars essential to building a high-performing remote insurance team—core values, hiring practices, onboarding processes, and KPI strategies—while also delving into best practices for managing domestic versus offshore employees, ensuring data security, leveraging productivity tools, and fostering trust and autonomy.

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Captive

Captive Insurance Strategies for Middle Market Success: Empowering Independent Agents with Risk Control and Profitability

In today’s hard commercial insurance market, middle market business owners are more open than ever to solutions that give them greater control over their insurance costs. While guaranteed cost programs remain the default option, they often lack the flexibility and long-term savings that high-performing businesses crave. That’s where captive insurance comes in—a powerful but often misunderstood tool that enables clients to turn insurance from a sunk cost into a strategic asset.

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Financing

Streamlining Agency Billing and Premium Financing: Leveraging FedNow, 3-D Secure, and Integrated AMS for Faster Funding

Middle-market insurance agencies have long wrestled with the legacy “buy-bill-collect” model, in which carriers invoice agencies, agencies collect premiums from clients, and only then remit payment to carriers. This antiquated workflow creates operational friction, delayed cash flow, and elevated chargeback risks—all of which can erode profitability and client satisfaction. Today, however, powerful innovations in digital payments and agency management systems are enabling a modern “bill-collect-buy” paradigm that dramatically accelerates fund availability, minimizes disputes, and unlocks new revenue streams through premium financing.

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Sales

Why Most Salespeople Fail: Mastering the Mindset, Process, and Power Dynamics of Professional Selling

The truth about professional sales isn’t flashy, and it certainly isn’t about charisma. If you think selling is about having the “gift of gab,” winging it on calls, or leaning on your likability to win deals, you’re doing it wrong—and that’s why you’re struggling. In this post, we’re breaking down lessons from a brutally honest conversation with Benjamin Dennehy, the UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer®, about why so many producers in commercial insurance and other industries fall short—and what the top performers do differently.

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Risk

From Policies to Profitability: How Strategic Risk Consulting Can Transform Middle Market Insurance Production – A Conversation with Doug Benz

Middle market producers often believe that bigger accounts come from quoting better, faster, or cheaper. But in reality, the leap from writing $5,000 policies to closing $1.2 million in premium starts with a different mindset. It starts with consulting over quoting. That’s exactly the story that unfolded at Producers in Paradise when Doug Benz shared how he landed the largest account of his career—not by selling insurance, but by solving problems no one else could.

This post breaks down the step-by-step strategy Doug and his mentor David Carothers used to win a high-stakes, complex account through total cost of risk analysis, claims data visibility, and certificate compliance solutions. If you’re a commercial producer trying to break into the middle market, this blueprint is for you.

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Market

Mastering Complex Risks in a Hard Market

The commercial insurance landscape is evolving—fast. As the market hardens across many lines, producers are learning that generalist approaches no longer cut it. Wholesale partners who specialize, who truly live and breathe their niche, are not just valuable—they’re essential.

That’s where professionals like Dylan Jordan and his team at Amwins come in. With a laser focus on medical malpractice, human services, and life sciences, they’ve become go-to problem solvers for agents navigating the most difficult-to-place risks. If you’re a retail agent walking away from complex accounts—or worse, mishandling them—it might be time to rethink your strategy.

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