The Philosophy Behind the Wedge (And Why This Podcast Is Back)

After several years away from the mic, Agency Growth Machine is back.

But the silence didn’t mean the work stopped.

During that time, Randy Schwantz was deep inside agencies, working with owners and producers trying to grow in a market that has shifted dramatically. Private equity consolidation, new technology, changing expectations from buyers — and yet many producers are still struggling to win deals they should be winning.

So Randy went looking for answers.

In this episode, he explains what he discovered in the trenches and lays out the core philosophy behind the Wedge — the framework that has helped thousands of producers and hundreds of agencies change the way they compete and grow.

You’ll hear:

• Why the podcast went quiet after 2021
• What Randy learned working directly with agencies during that time
• The surprising data pattern behind producer performance
• Why so many producers end up stuck in what Randy calls “small account prison”
• The core beliefs that drive the Wedge philosophy
• The overlooked third player present in every sales conversation

You’ll also hear what to expect going forward.

From here on out, the podcast will deliver one idea each week — one insight, one framework, or one play you can apply immediately in your agency or book of business.

If you're an agency owner trying to unlock growth…
 or a producer doing the work but still losing deals you thought you had won…

This episode lays the foundation for everything that follows.

Learn more about The Wedge:
 https://thewedge.net

Get the book The Wedge:
https://shop.thewedge.net/collections/books

Questions or feedback:
 info@thewedge.net

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, where it's all about transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy [00:00:10] Schwantz.

Hey, let me ask you something, and I want you to be honest with yourself. When's the last time you sat down at the end of a quarter, looked at the number [00:00:20] and felt sick, not confused, not curious.

Sick because the effort was there. Your pipeline was there, the early [00:00:30] mornings and the late follow ups and the windchill time. All of it was there, but the revenue wasn't. And somewhere in that moment a thought crept in you [00:00:40] that you probably didn't say out loud. And here's what it is. Maybe I'm the problem, and I'm gonna tell you right now, you're not the problem, but something in your system [00:00:50] is, and by the end of this episode.

You're gonna know exactly what it is. Now, if you've been around for a while, if you were listening back when we were putting out [00:01:00] episodes in 2021 and before, stay with me. I owe you an explanation. And more than that, I owe you something better than what we were doing [00:01:10] before. And I'll get to that in a minute.

And if you're brand new, if somebody texted you this link or the algorithm dropped it in your lap, well, you just got lucky. [00:01:20] Because what I'm about to lay out today is the foundation that has changed the trajectory of thousands of producers and hundreds of agencies. And I almost never [00:01:30] do this in a single episode, but here's what's coming my story, including the one data point that made me rethink everything I thought I knew about [00:01:40] sales, the philosophy that drives all of this.

And I'm gonna give you a taste of the one concept that once it clicks, you'll never sell the same way [00:01:50] again. I've watched happen too many times to count. But I need to warn you about something first. Once you hear it, you can't unhear it. [00:02:00] You'll start seeing it everywhere. In every deal you've lost, every renewal that walked, every last look that went sideways, and you'll wonder how you [00:02:10] ever missed it.

So let's go.

Let me talk to my returning listeners for a second, and I'm gonna be straight with you because you deserve it. [00:02:20] Two weeks ago, the last consistent stream of episodes came out in 2021, and that's a long gap, and I'm not gonna spin it or gloss over [00:02:30] it. I mean, you showed up for me and then I went quiet. Well, here's the truth about what happened.

I went to work, I spent those years in the trenches, not [00:02:40] behind a microphone. But inside agencies sitting across the table from owners who were watching the ground shift under their feet, private equity buying up [00:02:50] independent agencies at a pace nobody predicted. Producers armed with better technology than ever, and yet somehow getting worse [00:03:00] results.

And I needed to understand why. And I needed to build something that actually worked in this market, not the market from five years ago. So the [00:03:10] podcast went quiet. The work didn't. Not for a single day. And here's what I need you to hear. What's coming now is not a rerun. It's not warmed over content [00:03:20] from 2021.

What I've learned in the last few years has fundamentally sharpened everything, the strategies, the frameworks, the way I think about this business. [00:03:30] And you're getting the best version of this work starting today. And here's a commitment. We're weekly now, every single week. One episode, one [00:03:40] idea. One play you can actually run in your agency or in your book of business that week.

No fluff, no filler, no motivation monday nonsense. [00:03:50] Just the work. And I'll tell you something else. By the end of this month, I'm gonna share a framework on this podcast that I've only ever taught inside our paid [00:04:00] programs. I'm putting it out here because I think the market needs it that badly right now, so don't miss a week.

Lemme tell you who this [00:04:10] podcast is built for, and I want you to feel this, not just hear it. Look, if you're an agency owner and you've got producers, some of them are good people, [00:04:20] the best people, they show up, they grind, they care about their clients, and you look at their activity and then you look at their revenue and something doesn't add [00:04:30] up and late at night, you're wondering, is it them?

Is it me? Did I hire wrong? Did I train wrong? [00:04:40] Am I missing something? And that doubt is exhausting. And I want you to know you're not crazy. I mean, there's something missing, but it's probably not what you [00:04:50] think, and we're gonna find it together. If you're a producer, God, I know what that world feels like.

You're putting in the calls, getting the appointments, doing the needs analysis, [00:05:00] building real relationships, putting together a proposal that you're proud of. And then the phone rings and the prospect says those words. You've heard a hundred [00:05:10] times. Hey, we decided to stay with our current provider. And you hang up and you sit there and you think, I did everything [00:05:20] right.

What else was I supposed to do? And I know that feeling. I'm gonna tell you something that might sting for a second, but it will set you free. [00:05:30] You did do everything right inside a system that was rigged against you from the start. The game you were taught to [00:05:40] play has a fatal flaw in it, and almost nobody's talking about it until now.

And if any of that sounds like your world, man, you're home. [00:05:50] Keep listening. Now, here's something you should know about me. I came into this industry as an outsider. I wasn't [00:06:00] raised in insurance. Nobody handed me a book of business. I didn't have years of ingrained habits telling me this is just how it's done.

And honestly, that might [00:06:10] be the single greatest advantage I've ever had because I didn't know what I was supposed to accept, so I didn't accept any of it. And what I had [00:06:20] was curiosity, the dangerous kind, the kind that makes you ask questions that make people in the room uncomfortable, and I was willing to look stupid asking them.[00:06:30] 

And the first question I asked was embarrassingly simple. Why do good salespeople keep losing deals they should win. Not lazy [00:06:40] salespeople. Not bad salespeople, good ones, smart ones, people who cared, who prepared, who showed up and did the work and still walked away [00:06:50] empty handed. And the deeper I dug, the more something started to bother me because the answer wasn't what anyone was willing to tell me.

It wasn't the [00:07:00] salespeople, it wasn't their effort. It wasn't their character or their closing technique. It was that every single one of them was operating with a fundamentally [00:07:10] incomplete picture of the sale. And here's what I mean, and this is the thing that changed everything for me. Hey, go, go look on your [00:07:20] bookshelf right now, or scroll your LinkedIn feed.

Every sales book, every sales training, every guru, every coach. They're all talking about the [00:07:30] same two people in the sale, the buyer and the seller. Build rapport, uncover the need, present the solution, handle objections, and then [00:07:40] close. Buyer, seller. That's it. That's the whole model. But here's what nobody was saying, and when I first realized [00:07:50] this, I literally stopped in the middle of a conversation and thought, how's everybody missing this?

There aren't two people in a sale. There's three. [00:08:00] The buyer, you and the invisible third party. The incumbent agent who already has the relationship, already has the trust, and already [00:08:10] has the inside track to keep the business. That person isn't in the room, but they are in the deal. They're sitting in the buyer's head every [00:08:20] second of your presentation, and if you don't have a strategy specifically designed for that third person.

I don't care how good your proposal is, [00:08:30] you're gonna get rolled when they get their last look every single time. And that was the insight that one shift from [00:08:40] two people to three. We rewired how I thought about selling entirely, and it became the foundation of everything I've built since. Everything called the wedge [00:08:50] traces back to that single realization.

But here's the part of the story that most people don't know. And it's a part that matters most.

As I [00:09:00] started with agencies. First a handful, and then hundreds, I stumbled into a pattern that shook me. Agency owners kept telling me the same thing. Hey, Randy, I have a [00:09:10] producer Problem. Producers weren't motivated enough. They weren't disciplined enough. They needed better training, better coaching, more accountability, more hustle, and I'd nod.[00:09:20] 

Then I sat down with their numbers and I'd see something completely different. We analyzed 17,808 [00:09:30] commercial accounts across 168 producers and 91 million in revenue, and the pattern was so clear it almost hurt to look at. [00:09:40] A producer's bottom 40% of accounts averaged $518 per account. Their top 20% [00:09:50] averaged $17,774 per account.

Let that land for just a second. Same producer, same [00:10:00] person, same skills, same matters in the day, 34 times the difference. But here's the part that broke my heart. Those producers weren't spending their time on the [00:10:10] $17,000 accounts. They were drowning into $500 accounts, buried alive in certificates, endorsements, billing questions, audit worksheets, work that made them [00:10:20] feel busy, work that made them feel responsible, but work that was slowly, quietly killing their [00:10:30] careers.

And that's what I call small account prison. And most producers don't even know they're in it. They think they're doing their job. They think busyness is the same [00:10:40] thing as building. The math was the problem, not the people. And here's what I discovered next, and this is something I come back to in [00:10:50] almost every conversation I have.

When you show producers their own data, when you hold up the mirror and let the numbers do the talking, they don't fight [00:11:00] you. They don't argue. They choose to change themselves. You don't have to lecture them, you don't have to threaten them. You don't have [00:11:10] to motivate them with some rah rah speech at a sales meeting.

Clarity does the work every time, and I call this principle clarity [00:11:20] enables self-selection, and it's one of the most powerful ideas I've ever encountered in sales, in leadership, in life, when people can truly see the reality of their situation. [00:11:30] They move toward the right answer on their own. And remember that phrase, you're gonna hear a lot on this podcast, and in a few weeks I'm gonna [00:11:40] show you exactly how to use it, not just with producers, but in prospect conversations.

It's devastating in the best way. [00:11:50] Now, I wanna tell you why I've spent my entire career doing this. It's not the frameworks, it's not the intellectual puzzle. Those are interesting for sure, but that's not what gets [00:12:00] me outta bed. Here's what does. I've sat across from a producer, a guy in his early forties, two kids been grinding for years and watched the moment it [00:12:10] clicked.

The moment he realized he wasn't failing because of who he was, he was failing because of the system he was running. And I watched his shoulders [00:12:20] drop about three inches, like he'd been carrying something heavy for years and something finally told him he could put it down. That's what it does. [00:12:30] I've watched producers double and triple their income, not because they suddenly became different people, because they finally had a strategy that matched [00:12:40] their effort.

I've watched people have conversations with their spouses about vacations they used to say were someday things. I've watched them write checks for the kids' [00:12:50] college that they didn't think would be feasible five years earlier. I've watched agency owners go from 3% organic growth to 15% year over year. Not by hiring an army of new [00:13:00] producers, but by building a real sales system, by giving their people something concrete, something repeatable to sell against by killing the [00:13:10] excuse that this is just how business works.

And I've watched what happens on the other side when people don't change. When they stay in small account prison, when they keep running the same playbook against [00:13:20] incumbents who have every structural advantage of watched, good people burn out and leave the industry. People who could have been great people who deserve to be [00:13:30] great.

And that's what keeps me up at night. Not the people who find this work, but the ones who don't. And when you give good people the right systems, [00:13:40] they stop just working hard and they start winning. And that's what this podcast exists to do. The work you do, whether you're a producer or an [00:13:50] agency owner, keeps the wheels of commerce turning. Every business in your community depends on what you do.

It matters. And you deserve to be [00:14:00] compensated at the level your effort actually warrants. And that's the mission it always has been, and I'm not done.

Every episode of this [00:14:10] podcast connects back to a small set of core beliefs, and I wanna walk you through them now fast so you have the lens. Because once you have the lens, everything we [00:14:20] talk about week to week is gonna make sense instantly. So first, systems beat effort every time. I've [00:14:30] never, not once in my career, met an agency that grew by simply working harder.

I've met plenty that grew by working smarter. If your growth strategy is [00:14:40] we just need to grind more, you're one bad quarter away from a crisis. Effort without a system is just exhaustion without a deadline. [00:14:50] Second, data beats opinion. Your gut is not a growth strategy. I don't care how long you've been in the business.

When the data says something, it [00:15:00] is telling you the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable. Especially when it's uncomfortable and the agencies that win are the ones willing to look at their own numbers [00:15:10] without flinching. And the third diagnose before you treat, I mean, this is the one that saves people the most pain.

Most of [00:15:20] producers I see in agencies are misdiagnosed. It, it looks like a producer problem. It's actually a math problem. It looks like a motivation problem. It's actually a [00:15:30] systems problem. It looks like a market problem. It's actually a strategy problem. Get the diagnosis wrong and you'll spend a fortune treating symptoms while the [00:15:40] disease gets worse.

Get it right and the solution's usually obvious. And then fourth, competition is always present. [00:15:50] You're never selling in a vacuum. There are three people in every deal. And if you don't have a strategy for the third one, the incumbent, then [00:16:00] you're not competing. You're just quoting and quoting is not selling.

I'll say it again. Quoting is not selling. And then fifth, [00:16:10] focus beats volume, the right accounts, the right strategy, the right conversations. Not more calls, better [00:16:20] calls, not more prospects, better prospects. I'd rather see a producer work 50 accounts for precision than 200 accounts with hope. [00:16:30] And finally, every problem is fixable.

And I know this wouldn't sound simple, but I need you to really hear it, especially if you're in a [00:16:40] tough spot right now. I've never walked into an agency and found a problem that couldn't be solved with the right diagnosis and the right system. [00:16:50] Never, not once the situation you're in right now. It's fixable.

The revenue gap, the producer stall, the retention bleed, all of it [00:17:00] fixable. Every episode we do is gonna connect back to one of these ideas. The philosophy is the foundation without it, tactics are just tricks that work [00:17:10] sometimes.

Alright, I'm not letting you leave this episode without something you can use. Even in a big picture episode like this one, you're walking away with [00:17:20] something practical, and that's a rule around here. I want you to think about the last deal you lost that hurt. Not the long shot, not the one [00:17:30] you knew was a reach.

I'm talking about the one that stung, the one where you did the work, you got the appointment, you built rapport. I mean, real rapport, not fake smile, [00:17:40] rapport. You ask good questions. You put together a proposal you were genuinely proud of. And then the call came, Hey man, we appreciate everything you put together, [00:17:50] but we've decided to stay with our current agent.

And then you sat there staring at the phone, replaying every [00:18:00] conversation, and you thought, man, what did I miss? What should I've done differently? I need a better pitch, better pricing, a harder [00:18:10] close. I'm gonna tell you what you actually needed. And it's none of those things.

You needed a strategy for the third person in that deal, the one who was never in the room [00:18:20] but was in the deal the entire time. And here's what happened. You played a two person game in a three person deal, you sold to the [00:18:30] buyer, but the incumbent, the current agent had something you couldn't overcome with a better proposal.

They had the relationship, they [00:18:40] had inertia, they had the last look and they used it. The wedge flips that dynamic on its head, and [00:18:50] here's the beautiful part. It does it before you ever get to the proposal, you don't have to say a single negative word about the competition, not one. [00:19:00] You just have to understand the gap, that space between what the prospect actually needs.

And what their current agent is actually delivering. And then you let [00:19:10] the prospect name that gap themselves. And when the prospect is the one saying it, when they articulate what's missing in their own words with their own frustration, [00:19:20] the incumbent can't match their way out of it. Because the issue isn't the price, it's the service, the strategy, the [00:19:30] attention, the proactive thinking.

Things the incumbent has already demonstrated they're not providing. You can't last look your [00:19:40] way out of a service failure that the client just described to your competitor in detail, and that's the wedge. That's why it's called what it's called. You're not [00:19:50] pushing the incumbent out. You're not badmouthing anyone.

You're finding the natural crack the gap that already exists and letting the truth of the situation do the work. [00:20:00] Now, I just gave you the concept. Over the coming weeks, we're going to build the full playbook, how to find the gap, how to ask the questions that [00:20:10] surface it, how to position yourself as the answer without ever throwing mud, step by step, layer by layer.

And if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to wait, [00:20:20] I respect that. I mean, use the link in the episode description to grab the book, the wedge right now, it'll give you the whole framework immediately, but either way. [00:20:30] Now you understand the idea, and I promise you, you're gonna start seeing it everywhere.

Every deal you review this week, you're gonna ask yourself, where was the [00:20:40] third person? Where was the service gap? Did anybody name it? And you can't unsee it. I told you that at the beginning. [00:20:50] So here's how this works going forward, every week, same day, same place. One episode drops, one insight, one framework.

One [00:21:00] play you can run that week short enough to finish on a commute practically enough to act on before Friday. And next week, I'm gonna take you in one of the six [00:21:10] core beliefs I just walked you through and show you what it looks like in action inside a real agency with real numbers. It's going to change how you think about your book of business.

Quick [00:21:20] asks. I don't ask lightly, so hear me out. Number one, subscribe wherever you're listening. Hit that button right now. We're weekly and the episodes build on each [00:21:30] other. So if you miss one, you're gonna feel it. Don't let that algorithm decide if you hear this. Number two, send this to just to one person.

Just one. [00:21:40] If you're an agency owner, send it to your best producer, the one you believe in the most. If you're a producer, send it to your agency principle. If you're in sales leadership, drop it to your [00:21:50] team and chat. And this stuff only works when people hear it, and somebody in your world needs to hear this today.

And then number three, leave a review. [00:22:00] I know everybody asks for reviews, but here's why it matters. There's a producer out there right now sitting in small account prison who doesn't know this [00:22:10] podcast exists. Your review helps 'em find it, and that might be the thing that changes their year. You can find us at the wedge.net.

Reach out directly at [00:22:20] info@thewedge.net. We read every one of them, and thanks for being here. Thanks for giving me another shot. Thanks for building something that matters. Keep running the play [00:22:30] and I'll see you next week.