Last Updated on: December 28, 2020

What is Your Sales Process?

If you ever hear me talk, you’re going to hear me say time and again, “It’s never the process. It’s always the person.” The problem is, your agency may not even have a process. How do you define your expectations and what you expect your producers to do for you, yet hold them accountable to revenue numbers that make no sense?           

Everybody wants more business, and the problem is, it’s not easy out there. I mean, let’s face it, competing in the middle market is not a bowl of cherries. However, it becomes oh so much easier to produce and hold your production team accountable for results if you have a defined process. As I travel all over the country, working with agencies that want to get into commercial insurance production, one of the first things that I ask them to do is complete a business plan.

Write a Business Plan

It blows my mind how many successful agencies are out there that have never gone through this exercise, and yet it’s vital; you have to be able to do that. At Florida Risk Partners, we have our producers go through the business planning process every single year. Why? Well, it’s pretty easy. I want to hold them accountable for the numbers that they have projected. Not numbers that I have forced down their throat. So by going through the business planning process, they can not only tell me what they’re going to achieve, but I can see how they think they’re going to achieve it.

Define Your Sales Process

The next thing you need to do is to make sure you have a defined sales process. I’m not talking about something that’s in the works. I’m talking about something that you have vetted and tested repeatedly and prove that it will be successful on the streets. The first thing it has to be is understandable. It can’t be some convoluted menagerie of legal pad pages that you throw in front of everybody and expect them to digest. That’s how a lot of my ideas start, but it has to be more refined than that when you roll it out.               

The second thing is, it has to be replicable. It has to be something that you can replicate across all of your producers and get the same execution from each of them. Now, producers will tweak what they want to tweak, but if you keep your process very easy to understand and replicable when they don’t hit their numbers, it’s straightforward for you to go back and find out exactly where they missed the boat in your process.               

The third thing is, it has to be a process that allows you to hold them accountable. If you don’t have accountability measures in place, you’re not managing anybody. You’re not leading anybody. You’re merely paying people to go out and not perform. So you have to have accountability measures in place.

Most importantly, you have to have set milestones where you’re going to address that accountability. Maybe you meet with your producers quarterly. Perhaps it’s every six months. Maybe it’s monthly. Maybe you have somebody on a weekly plan. I don’t know. But you need to make sure that you have accountability measures in your process and understand them. They know when they’re coming. And then it’s never an emotional discussion; it’s a business discussion.              

You either get your numbers, or you don’t. You either use my process, or you don’t. But don’t come and complain about not hitting your numbers, and we find out, well, you skipped this section, you missed this section, you forgot this section. Likewise, as an agency, if you don’t have that defined process, it’s pretty tough to hold a producer accountable when you have no idea what they’re doing out on the street. If you can get your process dialed in, if you can hold your producers accountable, and if that process is replicable, you and your team are going to kill it in commercial insurance.

Cyber

Why Standalone Cyber Insurance Beats BOP Extensions Every Time: Protecting Clients from Modern Threats

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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Cyber Insurance Risk Management: Why MFA, MDR, and BYOD Policies Can’t Wait for a Hard Market

The cyber insurance market has softened in recent years. Requirements that were once rigid — like mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) or endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools — have been relaxed by many carriers. But here’s the danger: just because carriers aren’t demanding these safeguards today doesn’t mean businesses can afford to ignore them.

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AI, Authenticity, and the Future of Elite Production: What the Insurance Industry Must Learn from Craig Bender’s InsureU2 Revolution

The insurance industry is entering one of the most transformative seasons in its history. For decades, our world has been shaped by carriers, underwriting cycles, prospecting methods, and the grit of producers willing to outwork their competition. But today, a new force is reshaping the landscape—and most producers, agency leaders, and industry professionals aren’t ready for it.

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