Your Best Client Just Asked to Go Out for Bid. Now What?

Your best client just said they want to go out for bid. No complaints, no service problems, no price issue.... they just want to know if there's something better out there. Here's the brutal truth: your value is real, but it's invisible, and a client who can't see your value can't defend you when a competitor shows up with a document. In this episode, Randy Schwantz breaks down the proactive service model, an account-level service calendar that turns everything you already do into something clients can see, expect, and miss if it's gone. One Charlotte agency built it and pushed retention from 91% to over 94.5%, keeping more than a million dollars a year that used to walk out the door. Listen now and find the 10 things you do for every client that you've never put in writing, before the incumbent's next renewal becomes your open door. 

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Transcript

 [00:00:00] One of the best agency owners I know got a phone call from one of his best clients. It was a 10-year relationship. It was a great account, no complaints, [00:00:10] nothing unusual at renewal. And his client said to him, "Hey, we decided we're gonna go out for bid this year." And the agency owner said, "Well, did something [00:00:20] happen?"
The client paused, and then he said something the owner was not expecting. He didn't say anything negative. He didn't say the service was bad. [00:00:30] He didn't say the price was too high. Here's what he said: "We just wanna know if there's something better out there." And the agency [00:00:40] owner told me later he almost said the wrong thing.
His instinct was to defend himself, to list everything they'd done for his client over 10 years. [00:00:50] But he didn't say that. He said this: "Can I ask you, what would better look like?" And what the client described in the next two [00:01:00] minutes changed how that owner ran his agency from that day forward.
Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine podcast, where it's [00:01:10] all about transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy Schwantz.
Hey, welcome to the Agency Growth Machine.
I'm [00:01:20] Randy Schwantz, author of The Wedge, founder of The Wedge Group, and creator of Bignition, the only sales operating system built specifically for commercial insurance [00:01:30] agencies. And today, we're talking about building something your competitors can't easily take away, a proactive service model, documented, [00:01:40] delivered, and so visible that your clients would miss it if it was gone.
So let's go. Look, here's the [00:01:50] deal. Most agencies provide real value. I mean, you do things for your clients. You answer questions, you handle claims, you navigate the market when things get [00:02:00] tight. You look out for them. But here's the problem. That value is invisible. Your client doesn't see [00:02:10] it. It's not because it isn't real, but because nobody has ever put it on paper.
Nobody's ever said, "Here is a list of the specific things you're gonna receive [00:02:20] from us this year," with dates, with names, with deliverables. And when your client can't see the [00:02:30] value, they can't defend you. I mean, think about that. Your best clients, do they know how to tell their CFO why they [00:02:40] don't need to go out to bid?
Do they know what to say when the board asks, "Are we getting the best deal on insurance?" And most of the time, the answer is no, [00:02:50] because you've never given them the language. You've never given them a list of reasons to stay that they can actually articulate. And so what happens? Somebody else [00:03:00] gets in front of them, somebody with a document, and suddenly you're in a competition you didn't have to be in.
But this is fixable. So what [00:03:10] does this document actually look like? And I, I know some of you are picturing like a fancy brochure, a marketing piece, but that's not what I'm talking about. [00:03:20] What I'm talking about is a specific account level service calendar, not a general promise, a commitment. Month by month [00:03:30] for the next twelve months, this account, this client, here's what they're gonna get from us.
January, probably a pre-renewal strategy. February, a loss run analysis. [00:03:40] March, a market update. April, exposure analysis. And you know how this goes. You're doing a lot of these things already. The difference [00:03:50] is you haven't been writing them down, and here's why writing them down matters. When you put it on paper, [00:04:00] you commit to it.
When you commit to it, your client expects it. When your client expects it, you deliver it. And when you deliver it, they see you [00:04:10] doing something that the incumbent never did. I know an agency in Charlotte, had twenty producers. They built this model four years ago, called it their Client Success Plan. [00:04:20] Every new account got one in the first thirty days, and within two years, their retention went from like ninety-one percent to just over [00:04:30] ninety-four and a half. That's three and a half points on a fifteen million dollar book of revenue. That's just, that's a lot of [00:04:40] money that used to walk out of the door every year, and now it's staying. Well over a million dollars just from documenting what they were already [00:04:50] doing and then showing it to clients.
So I want you to hang on here, because here's the part that most agencies never figure out. That same document, there's a second [00:05:00] thing it does, and I've only seen a handful of agencies stumble onto this. And the ones that have, they win accounts in ways the incumbent never saw coming. And here's where this [00:05:10] gets good.
The proactive service model isn't just a retention tool, it's a sales weapon. And the agencies that figure this out, they change how winning [00:05:20] works. And here's the move. You're in a first appointment with a prospect. The incumbent has had this account for six years. They've got the relationship. They know the renewal date.
[00:05:30] They're getting last look. And you sit down across from the CFO or the owner, and you don't lead with markets or price or your company history. You put that service calendar on the [00:05:40] table and you say, "This is what our clients get every year, documented, delivered. Let me walk you through what you'd receive in the [00:05:50] first twelve months of working with us."
And you've just highlighted a gap, not a price, not with markets, but with documented predictable service. [00:06:00] And that's the game. The incumbent wasn't bad at their job. They just never made their value visible, and you just made yours visible. [00:06:10] It's in the room while they weren't there to defend themselves.
And that's a pretty powerful position to be in.
Now, what the client told that agency owner on the phone, [00:06:20] he described a service calendar almost exactly. He said, "I want to know what I'm gonna get from an agency before the renewal in writing with commitments." He didn't know that's what he [00:06:30] was describing. He just knew something was missing, and the owner built a service model the following month.
That client, the one who wanted to go out to bid, [00:06:40] stayed, and he stayed for seven more years after that. So here's what I want you to do. I mean, this week, sit down with your leadership team and ask one question, "What are the [00:06:50] 10 things we do for every client every year that we're never putting in writing?"
And then write them down, date them, assign them, [00:07:00] and then put them in a document that you can hand to your clients and your prospects, and that's the start from there. You build the habit. You deliver [00:07:10] against the calendar, and over time, that document becomes the reason clients stay and the reason prospects switch.
So build something worth defending, and then defend [00:07:20] it Look, subscribe and share this with someone on your team, but before you go, I want to leave you with something. [00:07:30] Commercial insurance selling has gone through three eras the way I see it, and right now, you and your agents here are living in one of them.
Selling 1.0. That's [00:07:40] kinda how your daddy did it. Had three-by-five cards, Yellow Pages. The strategy for the most part was build some relationship, quote it, price it, hope you win it. There was really no [00:07:50] differentiation. It's like whoever had the lowest number on renewal day probably got it or the incumbent kept it.
And then selling 2.0 came along, [00:08:00] and what they said is that we have technology, salesforce.com, HubSpot, beautiful dashboards. But do you know what it actually [00:08:10] produced? Now look, just go ask your friends if you don't believe me. Go ask your big PE companies that bought up a bunch of agencies and they installed one of these big [00:08:20] systems.
What did it actually produce? About all it really produced was a pipeline report that a manager could pull up on a Friday. Any training still lived in a [00:08:30] binder, the technology lived in a browser, the two never talked to each other, and the reality is producers weren't more motivated, they didn't win more [00:08:40] business, and the incumbents still get last look and won most of the deal.
And then we have era three, selling 3.0, and that's what I think of as Bignition, [00:08:50] and here's what that looks like. As a producer, you set your revenue goal and the system works backwards. How many appointments do you need? How many accounts do you need to close? What [00:09:00] size? It tells you. Your appointment setting is scripted.
It's in there. It's tracked. It's tied to a specific target list, not a bunch of random stuff. Every sales call starts with [00:09:10] a pre-built strategy to drive a wedge between your prospect to displace the incumbent. And then when you close that account, a documented service timeline, you just [00:09:20] drag and drop and build it in less than three or four minutes so that not only what you won you can keep.
And then every step that a producer does is measured. [00:09:30] Now, that's not a binder and a dashboard that don't talk to each other. That's one system running the whole game. That's Bignition. [00:09:40] So if you're one of those agency owners that you're looking to take this thing to a whole new level and you know that in reality it's hard to do without a system, then come find us.[00:09:50] 
We're at The Wedge Group, thewedge.net. And look, if you like this, I hope you'll leave a review. I'm Randy Schwantz. Hey man, go lock your deals in place, and I'll see you next [00:10:00] week.