Close 3X More Deals with 7 Questions of Pre-Call Prep

Most producers don’t lose deals because of price. They lose because they walk into meetings unprepared.

In this episode, Randy breaks down the exact 7-question pre-call framework top commercial insurance producers use to dramatically increase their close rate—often in just 20 minutes of preparation.

You’ll learn:

• Why every sales meeting actually has a “third person” in the room—and how to beat them
• The simple prep strategy that turns average producers into top performers
• How to uncover hidden weaknesses in the incumbent before you ever walk in
• The real reason prospects say “your price is too high” (and how to avoid it)
• How one producer went from losing deals to winning by BOR in the first meeting

If you want to win more accounts, shorten your sales cycle, and stop competing on price, this episode gives you a practical system you can use before your very next meeting.

Interested in learning more? Visit thewedge.net

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Transcript

Hey, you've got a meeting tomorrow morning. It's a nice account. 30,000 in commission if you win it. And here's my question. What are you doing tonight? If [00:00:10] your answer is eating dinner and watching tv, I already know how tomorrow's meeting ends. You're gonna walk in, shake hands, ask the [00:00:20] prospect to tell you about their business.

Listen politely, take a few notes, and then you end up going back to the office to put together a quote. And a couple of days [00:00:30] later, after you present your pricing, they're going to tell you your price was too high. And that's not a pricing problem. That's a preparation [00:00:40] problem. See, the top producers of commercial insurance, the ones with 2 million and 3 million and $4 million books, they don't walk into a meeting cold.[00:00:50] 

They walk in knowing exactly who they're fighting against, exactly where the incumbent is weak. Exactly what question they're going to ask that no one has [00:01:00] ever asked that prospect before. And they do all of that in about 10 minutes, and that's what today's episode is [00:01:10] about.

Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, where it's all about transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy [00:01:20] Schwants.

I'm Randy Schwantz, author of The Wedge, founder of the Wedge Group, and last week we talked about the zero sum truth [00:01:30] that somebody has to lose for you to win. And today we talk about how you make sure it's not you. So let's [00:01:40] go. So I wanna start with something that has been missing from almost every sales training book ever written.

'cause I got over 200 books on selling on [00:01:50] my bookshelf, and I read most of them. And here's what almost all of them gets wrong. They tell you that there are two people in the sales call, the [00:02:00] seller and the buyer. And if you build a relationship with a buyer, find their needs, meet their needs, you'll get paid.

That's the model. [00:02:10] And it's half right, but here's half. They leave out. There's a third person in every commercial insurance that sells meeting you'll [00:02:20] ever walk into. It's the incumbent agent, and that agent isn't physically in the room, but they're absolutely in the room. They've been [00:02:30] collecting commission on that account for years.

They know the buyer's by first name. They went to the same church, their kids went to school together,

and they're not gonna let go of that [00:02:40] account without a fight. So traditional selling tells you to build a relationship with a buyer and present your value proposition. What it forgets to tell you is that you have [00:02:50] to break apart an existing relationship at the same time. And you cannot break apart a relationship.

You know nothing about. Think about it [00:03:00] this way. You're walking into a room to compete against someone, but you've never scattered them. You don't know their strengths, you don't know their weaknesses. [00:03:10] You don't know who their best carrier relationships are or whether they've been reactive or proactive.

On this account, you just show up [00:03:20] with a business card. And a big old grin. Well, that's not a sales call. That's a prayer meeting. Now, flip it. [00:03:30] What if you walked in knowing exactly who the incumbent is, what type of agent they are, and what their agency looks like, whether they're a golfer with an insurance [00:03:40] license, or a coverage geek who hides behind technical jargon, and most importantly, where the gaps are between what they've been doing and what your prospect actually [00:03:50] deserves.

Now you're not showing up, hoping you're showing up to win. And that's pre-call strategy. And it starts with one of [00:04:00] the greatest competitors who ever lived. Look, I'm gonna tell you about a rookie producer. He walked into a meeting completely unprepared and what it cost him, and [00:04:10] then I'll show you what he did differently the second time.

So let's talk about Jordan's rules. See, Michael Jordan once said something that stopped me [00:04:20] cold the first time I heard it. He said, for me to win, someone must lose. That's not a coincidence that this podcast episode follows Last week's [00:04:30] episode, we talked about the zero Some truth, and Jordan understood it better than almost any athlete who ever competed.

But here's what most people miss about Jordan. [00:04:40] It wasn't just that he accepted the zero sum reality, it's what he did with it. Jordan built two rules around his competitive [00:04:50] philosophy, and number one, his best had to be superior to everyone else's best. And number two, [00:05:00] someone had to lose for him to win and to make both those things happen consistently,

he did something most players refuse to do. He studied [00:05:10] his opponents obsessively. He didn't just show up and try to outwork them. He knew their tendencies. He knew how they moved on the left versus the right. He [00:05:20] knew when they got nervous and what made them fold. He did his homework every single time, and that is a pre-call strategy.[00:05:30] 

Now, lemme tell you about a producer I've watched make the same mistake twice. First time was early in his career. He had landed a meeting with a mid-size manufacturing company, about [00:05:40] 18,000 in commission if he'd won it. Nice account for a producer at his stage. He walked in, excited, confident, he sat down, put his notepad out and [00:05:50] said, tell me about your business and the prospect spent 20 minutes talking.

The producer nodded and wrote things down, built what he thought was rapport. [00:06:00] The buyer gave him a copy of his policies and his loss runs. And then he went back to the office, filled out applications, marketed the account. Eight weeks later, he built a proposal, made a great [00:06:10] presentation. Three days later, he found out he lost it.

The incumbent kept it. The producer was told, Hey, I appreciate [00:06:20] your efforts, but sorry, your price was high. Classic answer, except when we dug into it, his price wasn't high. [00:06:30] His price was actually competitive, but he had walked in with nothing. He didn't know who the incumbent was, didn't know whether they were a service agency [00:06:40] or a transactional shop.

Didn't know which carriers they use, didn't know whether they had been claims issues or service problems. He had nothing to [00:06:50] wedge with, so the prospect fed his number to the incumbent. The incumbent matched it and called in a favor, and the producer left empty [00:07:00] handed.

Now that is what happens when you show up without a pre-call strategy. Now, here's what he did completely different the second time. Same size account, [00:07:10] similar industry, but this time before the meeting, he spent 20 minutes running through seven specific questions. And those 20 minutes [00:07:20] changed everything.

And those 20 minutes changed everything. He walked in knowing the incumbent was a transactional shop. Knew they had no formal service [00:07:30] timeline, knew they hadn't done a claims review in years, knew the prospect had a rising experience modifier and probably didn't know why. He didn't walk in hoping the [00:07:40] prospect would tell 'em something useful.

He walked in already knowing where the wound was. He just needed the prospect to confirm it, and he won that account by [00:07:50] BOR in the first meeting. So here's the framework. Seven questions, 20 minutes. Do this before every new business [00:08:00] meeting, and I promise you your close rate goes up. And this is what we use inside the wedge group.

It's what the producers and our top agencies run through before every first meeting [00:08:10] with the new prospect. Write these down so number one, who is the company? Not just the name, but the profile. How long have they been a business?

What industry? [00:08:20] How many employees? Multiple locations. Any recent growth or contraction? Five minutes of research here tells you how complex this account is, what exposures they likely [00:08:30] have, and whether this is a 5,000 account or a 50,000 revenue account. Know what you're walking into. Size, [00:08:40] industry and structure.

And then question number two, who are all the buyers? Who's gonna be in the room and who's not gonna be in the room, but influences the decision? [00:08:50] And commercial insurance you might be sitting across from the CFO, but the CEO has final say, or the HR director is there. But risk management controls the [00:09:00] budget.

If you don't know who the real buyer is before you walk in, you might be building rapport with the wrong person. So know the org chart of the decision. Who [00:09:10] votes, who vetoes. And who has to sign off. And question number three, who is the incumbent agent, agency and [00:09:20] carrier? And this is the one that most producers skip.

And it's the most important one on the list. You need to know three [00:09:30] things. Who the individual agent is, what agency they're from, and which carriers on the account, because each of those tells you something different about your opponent. The [00:09:40] individual agent, are they relationship player or a coverage nerd?

A relationship player has personal equity with the buyer, but probably under serves them on proactive services. A coverage [00:09:50] nerd is technically sharp, but probably distant and reactive. Each type has a different vulnerability. Know which one you're fighting. And the agency, [00:10:00] is it a big regional broker who assigns a new CSR every 18 months?

A captive shop with limited markets, a one man operation that would fall apart if the producer got sick. [00:10:10] And the carrier, has there been rate action on this account? Are they in a hard market cycle on this risk? Have there been [00:10:20] coverage restrictions? And the incumbent is the third person in the room know them as well as you know the buyer.

And then question four, what's the [00:10:30] projected commission? This is not about being mercenary. This is about resource allocation. A $5,000 commission account gets a different level of pre-call prep than [00:10:40] a 25,000 account. That's not wrong. That's just smart. And know what you're playing for. Before you step on the field.

It determines how much of your time, your team's [00:10:50] time is worth investing in the strategy. Question five. What do you do that the incumbent does not? [00:11:00] And this is the basis for your wedges. Before you walk in, you need to be able to answer this question specifically. Not generically, not. We have great service.[00:11:10] 

Every agent says that. Not we're proactive. Everyone claims that. Specifically. What are the things you do? The process, [00:11:20] the tool, the proactive services. That you have reason to believe this incumbent is not doing, and those are what we call your named differentiators. [00:11:30] If you can't answer this question before the meeting, you really have no business being in the meeting.

That leads to question number six. Why is the prospect [00:11:40] to you a little different from question five? This is about the prospect specific situation. What do you know or suspect about the pain this particular business is [00:11:50] living with right now? Rising experience mod claims frequency problem, rapid growth, making the current program too small, new locations the incumbent hadn't kept up [00:12:00] with. This tells you what problems to uncover when you're in the room.

You're not fishing blindly, you're fishing in a pond you've already mapped. And then [00:12:10] question seven, who knows the buyer? Who in your network? Clients , COIs, LinkedIn Connections, has a relationship with someone at this company. [00:12:20] This is just levering knowledge. It's the difference between being a stranger and being a trusted advisor.

If someone your prospect already trusts can call ahead and say, this [00:12:30] producer's the real deal, your close rate triples before you ever walk in, run this question every single time, you'll be [00:12:40] surprised how often there's a connection you never thought to use. That rookie producer from earlier. Those were the seven questions he ran before his second [00:12:50] meeting.

And on question five, he landed on something specific. His prospect's ex mod had gone up three years in a row. Nobody had ever told the prospect why [00:13:00] or how to fix it. That one issue opened the door to six possible wedges, and this rookie producer was prepared to drive them. He went [00:13:10] in, found three layers of pain in the first 15 minutes.

Walked out an hour later with a BOR. [00:13:20] Look, I wanna leave you with the truth that the aviation world discovered the hard way, and here it is. Takeoffs must equal [00:13:30] landings. Now think about that. In selling, if you don't land safely, nothing else really matters. Attaboys don't [00:13:40] pay the mortgage commissions do.

And the number one reason producers don't land accounts is not because they're bad at selling. It's 'cause they showed up unprepared to fight the third [00:13:50] person in the room, the incumbent who was ready for them. 20 minutes of preparation, seven questions. That's all it takes to [00:14:00] flip the advantage. Here's your checklist.

Who's the company size, industry structure? Who are all the buyers in the room and behind the scenes? Who's the [00:14:10] incumbent agent? Their agency and carrier, what is the projected commission value of this account? What do I do that the incumbent does not? Why [00:14:20] does this prospect specifically need me right now?

And who in my network knows the buyer? Print that out, put it on your desk. Run through it before every [00:14:30] first meeting. Every single one. The producers who do this look like they have superpowers. They ask [00:14:40] questions, nobody else asks. They find pain. Nobody else finds. They close accounts that other producers walk away from shaking their heads, and it's not [00:14:50] magic, it's forethought.

Now next week on the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, we're gonna go into the meeting [00:15:00] itself. I'm gonna walk you through the five steps of the wedge. The actual end meeting process for driving a gap between your prospect and their incumbent [00:15:10] without ever saying a negative word about the competition.

It's the most elegant, powerful sales approach in commercial insurance, and you don't want to miss it. [00:15:20] So subscribe wherever you listen and share this with a producer who needs it. I'm Randy Schwartz. Go file your flight plan and we'll [00:15:30] see you next week.