The 5-Step Wedge System: Close More Deals Without Quoting

Most producers lose before they even realize it.

They think they got beat on price…
 but in reality, they were just used to give the incumbent leverage.

In this episode, The Wedge creator Randy Schwantz breaks down the exact 5-step system that flips that dynamic completely.

This is a field-tested process that’s been used for 30+ years to:

•  Eliminate price competition 
•  Create real differentiation (not “better service” fluff) 
•  Get prospects to ask YOU for the proposal
•  And close deals without chasing or convincing 

You’ll learn:

•  The “Picture Perfect” question that exposes gaps instantly 
•  Why most producers accidentally help the incumbent win 
•  The Vision Box technique that makes prospects sell themselves 
•  How to shift control so the buyer pulls you in 
•  The final move that prevents your proposal from dying in a drawer 

If you’re tired of losing deals you should have won…
this is the system that changes that.

Get the full process with the book here: https://shop.thewedge.net/collections/books

If this episode was helpful, share it with a producer or agency leader who needs it. 

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Transcript

 [00:00:00] Hey, it was March, 1994. A manufacturing company in the Midwest is shopping their insurance. Two producers, I'll call them john and Jim are competing for the account. [00:00:10] Both from strong agencies, both with competitive quotes, and there's an incumbent agent, I'll call her Nancy.
She's held the account for years. [00:00:20] John and Jim both lost and Nancy kept the business when they found out. They both told the same stories. We got beat on price, but here's what [00:00:30] actually happened. Nancy's price was not the lowest. John and Jim had both beaten her quote [00:00:40] significantly, but the prospect had taken their numbers straight to Nancy.
Nancy called her underwriter. The underwriter matched the price and the relationship held, [00:00:50] and John and Jim never knew they'd been used. They thought they were selling. They were actually just helping the incumbent with the leverage [00:01:00] she needed to get a better deal from her underwriter. And that story changed the way I thought about selling insurance forever, [00:01:10] and it's a story that gave birth to the wedge.
And today I'm gonna give you the five step system that makes sure you are never playing Nancy's game again. [00:01:20] And before we're done, I'm gonna give you word for word, the single most powerful question in commercial insurance sales, the one that gets your prospect to fire their [00:01:30] incumbent in their own words as if it were their own idea.
Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, where it's all about [00:01:40] transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy Schwants.
So welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast. I'm Randy Schwants. [00:01:50] Episode one we covered the zero sum truth, episode two, the pre-call strategy that gets you ready before you ever walk in the door. [00:02:00] And today we go into the meeting. This is the five step system i've spent 30 years teaching. The most elegant, effective sales process in [00:02:10] commercial insurance.
This is the wedge.
So we're gonna talk about why everything you were ever taught is half wrong. [00:02:20] See, if you've been in commercial insurance for more than a year, you've heard the pitch. Here's how you win accounts. Number one, build a relationship. Number two, find a coverage gap. [00:02:30] Number three, get a better price. And number four, present and hope.
And that's the old game. The model has been around since the [00:02:40] 1950s, and it's slowly destroying the confidence of every producer who relies on it, and here's why. When you compete on price, the incumbent gets the [00:02:50] last look. Almost every time. They call the underwriter, they get the price matched and the relationship holds.
When you compete on [00:03:00] coverage, the incumbent takes your ideas, presents them as their own, and keeps the business. And when you compete on service, reactive service, every agency in the [00:03:10] country claims great service. Your prospects heard it so many times, it means nothing. And we surveyed agencies around the country ask them how they differentiated [00:03:20] themselves, and here's what they said.
It's our service, our people, our knowledge, our value, our products, our integrity. [00:03:30] Does that sound familiar? Because that's what's every other agency says too. Nine outta 10 agencies have the exact same value proposition, [00:03:40] and from the buyer's perspective, everybody looks the same. So what actually works? [00:03:50] well, the answer is sitting in the gap between two kinds of service that almost no one talks about clearly. Reactive service, which is responding when the client [00:04:00] has a problem.
Returning phone calls, processing certificates, getting policies delivered on time, and most agencies do this adequately. The ones that [00:04:10] don't, well, they're either outta business or going out of business. And then proactive service. Scheduled, specific [00:04:20] documented service delivered before problems happen.
Quarterly claims review, X mod analysis, hazard identification. MVR reviews. [00:04:30] And by the way, in Bignition, the only sales operating system for middle market commercial insurance, we provide 42 named [00:04:40] proactive services, saving hundreds of hours of time trying to figure them out so you can leverage them to win new business.
You can check that out at thewedge.net/bigintion. So when [00:04:50] we surveyed the market for proactive services, the structured, proactive kind, well, it was almost nonexistent. Proactive services are the basis for your [00:05:00] wedge. Not a better price, not a fancier brochure, a specific proactive service that the incumbent is not delivering, and a way to make that [00:05:10] prospect feel the absence of it.
That is what the wedge does, and here is exactly how it works. I am gonna show [00:05:20] you the vision box, the most powerful moment in any sales call. And when you do this right, your prospect immediately says to themselves, you're my guy. [00:05:30] Why am I putting up with my current agent? And emotionally, they fire the incumbent agent right on the spot.
It happens first in their heart and mind. And then it happens in reality only a [00:05:40] few steps later in the sales call. And you don't even have to ask for the business. And I'm gonna walk you through it step by step. [00:05:50] So let's get into the five steps of the wedge. There are five steps in sequence. Each one builds on the last skip one and the whole thing falls apart.
Do all five and you [00:06:00] walk out more to meetings with the business than any other producer in your market. So step one would call picture perfect.
Most service [00:06:10] failures in commercial insurance are invisible to the prospect. Think about that. The incumbent agents not doing a quarterly claims review. The incumbent has never walked [00:06:20] through the client's operation to identify safety exposures. The incumbent has never put their service commitments in writing, and here's the critical part.[00:06:30] 
The prospect doesn't know any of this is missing because they've never seen it before. They don't have this expectation. So your job in [00:06:40] step one is to paint the picture of what great looks like, make the prospect see a service they've never received and want it. You do this with a question, not an [00:06:50] accusation, a question that assumes they're already getting this service, even though you strongly suspect they're not.
So here's what it sounds like. Hey, [00:07:00] can I ask you a question? You know when your agent comes out about 90 days after renewal to do a claims review and they get out the loss runs, scan through the open [00:07:10] claims, locate the reserves that are set too high, and then develop a plan of action and get 'em reduced so you don't have to worry about your mod spiraling outta control cause you to overpay [00:07:20] for your workers' comp insurance.
Are you comfortable how they go through that process? Now, watch what happens. The prospect [00:07:30] looks at you and says, well, um, uh, actually, they've never done that, should we? So that is a [00:07:40] wedge, a thin edge of doubt and dissatisfaction inserted between the prospect and their incumbent. You didn't attack the incumbent.
You didn't say [00:07:50] the lazy or incompetent. You just asked a question. And the prospect discovered, on their own, that something is missing. [00:08:00] And then step two is the takeaway. Now, the prospect understands what a great proactive service looks like. They need to feel the weight of not having it.
Lemme just repeat that part [00:08:10] again. They need to feel the weight of not having it. So step two is the takeaway is where you have them own the problem. You see in [00:08:20] traditional selling, we've been taught to say, Hey, would having that be important to you? The opposite of that is to take it away. [00:08:30] Oh, okay. So then having, it's not that important.
And when you take it away, you'll find out quickly just how important it is. 'cause you'll see them grab [00:08:40] for it. Yeah, of course it is. And so they just owned the problem. And when you do it the traditional way, they just [00:08:50] acknowledge the problem. There's a big difference between acknowledging and owning the problem, and that's why the takeaway's important.[00:09:00] 
Big step number three, the vision box. This is the move that separates the wedge from every other sales methodology. This is what I've spent 30 years teaching. [00:09:10] The vision box gets the prospect to describe. In their own words exactly how they want these services delivered. [00:09:20] See rule number six of the wedge is this the best idea anyone ever heard was the one they thought of themselves.
The better we can [00:09:30] help them describe how they want these services delivered, the more they own the process and that becomes theirs instead of yours. [00:09:40] You do it by telling a brief story about another client who went through this process successfully, and then you invite your prospect to design their own version of it.[00:09:50] 
Yeah. Uh, I had a client in your industry, similar size, similar exposures. They wanted quarterly claims reviews. That's about two years ago. They wanted a [00:10:00] plan for any reserve over $25,000. They wanted to see the adjusters notes. They wanted to know how long the employee been off work, how much they already been paid.
If a lawyer [00:10:10] got involved, tell me, does any of that make sense for you? And the buyer, in almost every case, said, yeah, of course. And then you go, which parts? [00:10:20] And now you just start to customize how big the reserve, what do they wanna see, et cetera, et cetera.
Those are the vision box questions. They are simple. And they're [00:10:30] devastatingly effective. How big of a reserve have to be before you wanted to take action? What else would you wanna know about the reserve so you feel in [00:10:40] control? How often would you want to do this? Who from your team would you want involved?
And you write every answer down. Use their exact words [00:10:50] because the words are about to become deeply embedded in your proposal. And by the time you walk through the vision box, your prospect has done something remarkable. They have built a [00:11:00] vision of how they wanna be served. Now, there are two people on the planet that knows what they want.
[00:11:10] You and them. Does the incumbent know what they want? No. Does the incumbent care what they want? [00:11:20] Well, apparently not. So that's a pretty powerful place to be, and that's the power of the vision box. It gets the [00:11:30] prospect clear on how they want the services to be delivered. And then step four, the replay.
Now you're gonna play it back to 'em. You're gonna mirror it [00:11:40] back to 'em. You take everything the prospect just told you every answer to every vision box question and play it back in their own words. And here's a critical rule for [00:11:50] replay. There's no me, my I, or us. You're not narrating what you will do.
You're narrating what they want done, [00:12:00] and the moment you say, I will do this, you've shifted into a sales role instead of a buyer facilitation mode. When you go into the sales [00:12:10] mode and make it about you, they go into the buyer mode and start protecting themselves. If you want to create resistance, make it about you.
If you wanna keep the open [00:12:20] dialogue going, make it about them. So it sounds like this. So here's what I'm hearing you say. You want, you wanna [00:12:30] quarterly claims review starting 90 days after renewal. You want your risk manager and your CFO in the room. You wanna specifically target any reserves over $25,000.[00:12:40] 
You wanna know how long the employee's been off work, if they have the potential to come back on light duty. You wanna know if a lawyer's gotten involved and your goal is to see your modifier trend down over the next three years. [00:12:50] Am I on track? And they confirm it. Now they've said it out loud twice.
Their vision for how they want the [00:13:00] service is real in writing and detailed enough to be actionable. The incumbent agents not delivering close to this and they know it. [00:13:10] And the next step, the white flag. And here's where most producers get it backwards. Most producers reach this point in the meeting and ask, okay, can I put together a proposal for [00:13:20] you?
Which is the wrong move? If you ask for the sale, you're begging and begging kills leverage. Instead, give the control to the [00:13:30] prospect. Ask them what they'd like to have happen. So here you go. Alright, well sir, there's your game plan. What would you like for me to [00:13:40] do? And you just let the silence sit there because what comes outta their mouth next is something like I, I'd like to see a proposal, [00:13:50] or I think we should explore making a change.
Or can you put this in writing? By definition, you waved the white [00:14:00] flag and they invited you in. You surrendered and they pulled you over. You didn't ask for the cell, they asked for your [00:14:10] help. And that's not a small distinction. That's everything, because now that gives you leverage to deal with the number one problem selling commercial [00:14:20] insurance, the incumbent
agent. And now we're getting into segment three, we call the palace coup.
Now there's one [00:14:30] more move that separates producers who win from producers who leave with the proposal in a drawer somewhere. After the white flag, after they've invited you in, [00:14:40] most producers say, great, I'll get something by Friday and leave, but please don't leave. Not yet. [00:14:50] You've driven the wedge. The gap between the prospect and incumbent is open.
You've done the vision box. Now they're clear on exactly what they want and how they want it delivered. [00:15:00] But here's the reality. Your prospect still has to fire the incumbent agent, and that's uncomfortable. It [00:15:10] is a social contract. They have to break, and many buyers will avoid that discomfort, sometimes indefinitely.
So you address it directly and it sounds like [00:15:20] this, well, putting together a proposal is the easy part. Can we talk about the hard part? And the prospect says, what's that? [00:15:30] And you go, well, let's suppose it's eight weeks from now. We're back and there's your proposal. It's got all the things you said you want.
In the meantime, you've checked us out. You [00:15:40] know, we're for real. We do what we say we're gonna do. You look at the price and it's competitive, and then you say to yourself, I think I found myself a new [00:15:50] agent. Can you imagine that happening? And that's the beginning of your rehearsal technique. You rehearse them through the process of telling the incumbent [00:16:00] agent that it's over.
And if you ever come to one of our live workshops, we go through this in detail and all the psychology that just backs it up. [00:16:10] So now you've done two things. First, you've gotten them to commit mentally to making a change before you've done the work of building a proposal. That changes the [00:16:20] entire dynamic of your second meeting.
And second, you found out if this is a real prospect or just someone who wanted to use your numbers to beat up the incumbent. [00:16:30] If they hesitate, that's valuable information that tells you there's more work to do before investing time in a proposal. If they say yes, you've [00:16:40] got a BOR waiting to happen. Here's how it ended for one producer I coached.
He got through all five steps. The prospect waved the white flag. He asked the [00:16:50] palace coup question and prospect said, look. I've been with my current agent for nine years, but honestly, he's not doing any of these things we talked about today. Let's [00:17:00] move forward. He signed the BOR in the second meeting.
It wasn't a quote war. No price battle. It was just five steps and it was done. [00:17:10] So here's the thing about the wedge I want you to hold onto. It is not manipulative. It is not aggressive. You never say a [00:17:20] single negative word about the incumbent agent. What you do is ask questions that let the truth emerge.
A quality picture perfect wedge [00:17:30] raises the expectation of your prospect. The prospect discovers immediately they're being underserved by the incumbent agent. You then help 'em gain clarity about how they want to be [00:17:40] served with the vision box, and instead of trying to close them, you surrender. Well, there's your game plan.
What would you like for me to do? And then they [00:17:50] pull you in instead of you barging your way in. You're not selling, you're guiding. And that is a fundamentally different [00:18:00] posture that changes everything about how a prospect perceives you.
So here's one of the most important powerful questions I promised you at the [00:18:10] top, . We call it picture perfect. And I'll give you an example before we'll do it again. Hey, um, when your agent comes out about 90 days for [00:18:20] renewal, to develop a narrative to sell your account to the underwriter, and they get out a template that starts with, you know, your business [00:18:30] operations and then your leadership team.
And what's amazing about them your hiring process. Your financial strength, your commitment to safety and what [00:18:40] you've done to mitigate claims in the past, and have you sign off on it That way you don't have to worry about the underwriter looking at you and not wanting to [00:18:50] work on it and overcharging you, or are you're comfort how they went through that.
Because think about it, most buyers don't know how they're being sold to the underwriter. That's a powerful wedge. [00:19:00] And what I want you to think about is that this style of question is powerful and here's why. It assumes the service is happening when it almost certainly isn't. [00:19:10] It forces the prospect to reckon with the absence.
It opens the door for everything that follows. So use it, adapt it to your specific proactive [00:19:20] services. Run all five steps after it and watch your close rate change. Now, next week is keystone. [00:19:30] So you won in the meeting. The prospect has invited you in and now comes the most dangerous moment in the sales process.
The second meeting with the incumbent fights back, [00:19:40] I'll show you how to lock the deal in place so your competition can't pull it out from under you. Hey there. I'm Randy Schwantz. Here's the five steps of the wedge. Go [00:19:50] use them. I'll see you next week.