455. $475K in Year One: The Exact Commercial Insurance Strategy With David Carothers

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What's in this episode:
David Carothers wrote $475,000 in commissions his first year producing commercial — zero experience, zero prior clients. In this episode, David Carothers joins Michael and Courtney Weaver on The Insurance Buzz to reveal the niche strategy, underwriter playbook, and qualifying framework that made it happen.

Michael Weaver and David Carothers cover the three-to-five prospect niche method, how to build an organic lead pipeline from free public data, and the mindset that separates producers who build massive commercial books from the ones who stay stuck. If you're serious about commercial, this is the episode.

[00:00] The number one rule of commercial insurance
[02:00] How to identify your three to five ideal commercial prospects
[04:00] What you actually need to know before your first commercial appt.
[07:00] The self-belief problem that kills more producers
[09:00] Why you should go to every loss control visit and audit
[10:00] How David Carothers built his first-year book around one carrier's appetite
[12:00] The free public data strategy that generated $475K
[15:00] The one question to ask your underwriter that no other agent is asking
[17:00] Three qualifying questions to ask before working any commercial account
[20:00] Why producers don't understand their hourly rate and what it costs them
[23:00] What is actually hard about commercial and how to push through it
[29:00] A $45M flooring company and why David Carothers walked away
[36:00] The conference room visualization used before every new business appt.
[38:00] How to connect with David Carothers at killingcommercial.com

Connect with David Carothers:
🌐 Website: killingcommercial.com
💼 LinkedIn: David Carothers
▶️ YouTube: Killing Commercial

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The one rule, number one rule about commercial insurance, it's never about the insurance. Never. It's operational 100% of the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

This is the insurance buzz, and we are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver. We coach insurance professionals, business owners, and people just like you every day on how to live a life and have a business you are excited about.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Here on the insurance buds, we share the wins, the losses, and everything in between that comes with being married business partners, training in the insurance space, and growing our business side by side. We also connect with other business owners and leaders making their mark in the world and hopefully inspire you to make yours.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

In today's episode, we have the man, the myth, the legend, the king of commercial himself, David Carruthers on the buzz, and he's going to share exactly what he does and how he produces so much commercial year after year and teaches thousands of peers and agents to do the same thing. Just to give you an idea, David, in his first year ever of producing commercial insurance with no experience, wrote over $475,000 in commissions, not premium, commissions when it comes to commercial. He's going to break down exactly how to brand yourself, how to niche. It's about the operation. It's not about insurance. Stop talking about insurance and start asking questions about the business. With that being said, let's start the show. Hey, welcome to the insurance buzz. We are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver, and we've got a special guest with us today, David Carruthers. David, how are you doing, my man? I'm good. How y'all doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

We are ready to talk about commercial insurance.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

We're ready. That's right. Commercial insurance, baby. Might be able to find my way through that topic once or twice. Yeah, we figured you'd be we figured you'd be okay at it. So that's why that's why we wanted to talk about it. So let's let's get right into it. New agent wanting to get into commercial, or maybe they're just a new agency owner, they've never focused on commercial, but right now all providers are pushing commercial insurance. Where do they even start?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

It's a really good question, man. They got to figure out what they want to do first. Um, you know, commercials like the wild west. There's so many different things. You could ensure a dump truck, you could also ensure some guy's grow house. You know, I mean it's it's all over the board where things are. And in when I work with new producers, um specifically, my goal is to get them to identify the three to five ideal prospects for them. And by ideal prospect I mean size, shape, class of business. So if they can go really deep in those three to five things, they don't need to be a generalist. I think you get really, really dangerous in the commercial arena when you wade too far out of your core competency. Um you know, and the in the industry's made it easy to do that because there's a lot of bops and things that are cookie cutter products that you can find a way to fit things into, but it's not necessarily the right way to do it. So, you know, knowing what you're passionate about and what what like excites you in terms of you know, I like people who are into cars, okay, well, go after auto services places, go after body shops, go after the the modification shops, whatever you know, floats your boat. But stick with something that interests you so that you can have conversation around it outside of just the the insurance piece. Because the one rule number one rule about commercial insurance is never about the insurance. Never. It's operational 100% of the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Love that writing that down. Alright, so operational. Dive into that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Well, think about this. You're a new producer, you may or may not have insurance experience, and so what's the most daunting thing for you to go in and talk about a complex topic with a business owner in the hopes you don't say something stupid and get yourself kicked out so ultimately you have an opportunity. But I can walk into any business on the planet and ask them about marketing. I can ask them how they're growing their top line, I can ask them if they're having problems with recruiting and retaining talent. I can, you know, not to mention the fact the beauty of commercial insurance over personal is the amount of data that we have access to for absolutely nothing from the various databases that the states have and everything else. So when you go call on somebody as a cold call, you're not walking in with nothing. You've got some background on this operation. You've got a pretty good idea of how their workers' comps performed if you've pulled the experience mod. You've got an idea of how big the fleet is based on the fact they've got trucks sitting out in the lot. Most of the time they're numbered. If one of them's got number 56 on it, we got a pretty good idea they've got at least 56 trucks for for all practical purposes. So you don't have to know everything about insurance when you go in. Ultimately, yeah, you do, but you know, I've been doing this for 20 years, man. I ran grocery stores and super targets before I got into the insurance industry in my early 30s. And the one thing that's never been invented is a USB drive that you can stick in your ear hole and download everything you need into your brain for the insurance industry. It's not there. There's a certain amount of what we do you're only gonna get with experience. You can do other things like go to the National Alliance and get your CIC or CRM designation, or you can get your CPCU or any of the others that are out there, and that's gonna give you a foundational knowledge of coverage. But I would argue that anybody has life experiences that they can relay at the point of sale, especially if they did what I said originally and found those three to five things that they have an interest in that they're passionate about, that they can go have conversations about that. And worst case scenario, if you don't have anything you're passionate about or don't know, just go in and walk around the lobby before you approach the gatekeeper and notice what's going on, what's hanging on the walls, what's on the coffee tables, and you're gonna be able to start a conversation from that.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

If you don't have to know everything though, and I'm somebody who likes to feel confident when I'm walking into a situation, what would you advise me to know?

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Well, I mean, there's there's things that you definitely want to know and understand, like basics. Is this business covered properly, right? You want to you want to know like property insurance. Okay, is the is the do I need to be able to be a Marshall Swift engineer to determine replacement costs? No, but there's a tool that will allow me to go put information into a computer system that's going to give me a reasonable replacement cost estimate. Do I need to be a full-blown loss control person to go in and fix issues with somebody's workers' comp? No, I don't, but I need to know enough about how to read loss runs, what they say and the story they tell, so that if I don't have that skill set, I can use a third party to go in and do that stuff for me or utilize carrier resources to go in and fix those things. I need, I mean, really, you have to have a general understanding of the business and how it operates so you can even think about what the exposures are that they face. And I'll be honest with y'all, at this stage in my career, doing this for 20 years, if I miss something, it's always the most basic thing. It's always the thing that I would have gotten the second I had my insurance license. It's never the technical stuff anymore. You know, I would I had had my license for probably four or five years, and I sat in front of a guy uh at a at a decent sized commercial opportunity, and he came in and he said, I just need you to tell me one thing. I said, What's that? He goes, Why do I even need general liability? I froze. I literally froze. My book was almost a million dollars in commissions at that point, and I froze at the point of sale because he asked me probably the most basic question anybody could ask me. So, what I what I would tell you is this I work with a lot of producers across the country, specifically in commercial, and the number one thing that I see across every single one of them is self-belief, and that's it. You've got to get it right in your head, and you even said it yourself, you've got to feel confident, right? You have to know you're confident going in. Here's the thing insurance is the byproduct of operations. All the premium is is the punitive action the carriers taking to finance your risk as a result of what your loss runs say. So quit worrying about the coverage at the point of sale. That's not a place where you need to talk to somebody about the forms and endorsements and everything else. What you do need to understand is why seven people at workstation six have had lacerations to their left ring finger in the last 18 months. That's something that you can pick up just by reading loss runs and understanding and using common sense. Is it a guarding issue? Is the workstation not set up properly? Are these people not properly trained? Are they bypassing some piece of equipment? Do they not have personal protective equipment? I just gave you five things that have absolutely nothing to do with an insurance policy that if you go on a loss control visit one time, you're going to remember that. And so one of the things I encourage producers to do is as they have opportunities, they should go to every loss control visit that their clients have, whether they think they should be there or not, and listen to what the carrier rep says when they go in, look at what they're looking for, look at how they're off recommending that it gets solved, and do the same thing with audit. If you do those two things, you're gonna get a college-level education on two very important segments of what we do that most agents turn a blind eye toward.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

No, this is this is good. So when you talk about the three to five ideal prospects, are you so you're trying to niche down here? Which I love. Riches are in the niches. Are you trying to get three to five ideal customers, prospects all within the same niche? Is that what you're recommending? Are you trying to are you maybe niche out?

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Now, I mean, I'll give you an example. I write technology, life sciences, um, light manufacturing, and department of defense contractors, and residential service contractors. That those are the five things that if you look at my book book of business, 95% of it is that. Well, if you break that down further, four of those things are in that book of business because they are very much in Chubb's wheelhouse, and Chubb was the carrier that was writing property in Florida 20 years ago when I started in the industry. So I figured out from talking to my underwriters that if I could find industry, if I could find light manufacturing, technology, life sciences, or do contractors that had construction from 1996 or newer that was masonry non-combustible, two miles or more from the coast, that I could get an admitted property quote. And Chubb was in Florida, and they were the only ones who hadn't pulled out, and they were a difficult contract to get. So it was very easy for me to say, okay, let me just go after these classes. I don't have any, you know, I have adult diagnosed ADHD. It's not a punchline. I legitimately have it. It's a problem, and it's I I did an episode of my own podcast one time that was called My Greatest Affliction is My Greatest Superpower. I just know how to manage it at this point. And so I decided if I can go in to these four things, they're different enough, they will, number one, hold my attention and keep me interested. Number two, I can get data around this. So I started with manufactur like with light manufacturing. That's something anybody can go in and work on pretty easily. It's not overly complicated to write the insurance for it, but I needed to have a property solution. So I found out that if I went to the tax collector website for Hillsborough County, which is Tampa side of the bay, and Pinellas County, which is the St. Pete Clearwater side of the bay, that if you were a manufacturing concern, you had to have an occupational license with the county, and the tax collector is the one who collected and administered that. So I went to their site, I downloaded a list of everybody who had that license in Hillsborough County, and then I immediately began to do my research. I went to see the property appraiser's website to see if it was 1996 or newer, masonry non-combustible, two miles or more from the coast. If it passed that test, it went in one tab. If it didn't, it went into the ENS tab. But we basically built an entire prospecting plan around Chubb. And at the end of year number one, by the way, I'd like to remind everybody who didn't hear me say this, this was the first year. I had no experience. I worked in retail my entire life. I didn't know insurance from anything, and I went out and figured out a system to get organic leads. Okay. So if you don't think you can do it, let me just dispel that rumor right now. I'm a big dumb animal. I had no business doing what I did, but I did and I figured it out. It worked out okay in the end. End of year number one, we didn't even get through the letter E in that spreadsheet, and I had already written $457,000 in commissions for my agency in the first year. All because I just took the time to figure out where free data was that was going to stack the deck in my favor. I didn't have to sell the policy. Chubb's policy is one of the best in the marketplace. I just needed to go and explain to somebody Chubb's not the cheapest, Chubb's not the most expensive, but Chubb's always here. And I take the underwriter on the appointment with me. If questions came up about coverage, the underwriter was there to answer it. Do I look like a dummy? No, I'm the first guy that ever brought the underwriter to the meeting. I look like a superhero. They think I'm doing it to impress them. I'm doing it because I don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Oh my gosh, I love this. Okay, so how important in commercial is the relationship that you have with your underwriter?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

It's paramount, like anything else. Everybody gives it lip service, but I mean, you have to have the right relationships. And you know, there's there's different philosophies out there. Um, you know, we're highly, highly focused in accounts that require risk management help and service. So if I go find you and your experience mod is a 1.5, that's like a five-star prospect for us because I know I can help that account. If I go out and your mod is a 0.65, I might not even turn to look at you because I don't know what I'm gonna bring to the table other than trying to find an insurance solution. Everybody else wants that. I've spent 20 years building a reputation and relationships with underwriters that say if this guy comes in with the 1.5 mod, you better gobble it up now because that's the most money we're ever gonna make on this account because they're gonna clean it up, drive it down, and ultimately it's gonna be profitable. So we'll go in and we when we engage with somebody, we want them to commit to three years with that carrier because they have problems. We don't want them sticking the carrier with a bunch of claims right out of the bag and then leaving and going somewhere else because the carrier has to take some rate. We want a three-year commitment, our clients honor that. And then the other piece of that is we're not so we're not gonna shotgun the marketplace. There's a lot of places that want to shop every single year. Here's the problem you go to 20 underwriters every year for 10 years, 19 of them have been told no. People don't understand. The average business owner out there, I sincerely believe this. They don't understand that they have a reputation in the underwriting marketplace. They have no idea. They are only doing what they have been conditioned to do by who? By us. It's our job to educate these people. So when you have an agent that says, oh, don't worry about it, I'll go out and shop this thing, get you the best price I can, get you uh 20 different quotes, and you can pick the one you want, that's great, but you have absolutely destroyed their reputation in the underwriting community. And every year you do that, it gets worse and worse and worse. How important is the relationship with underwriters? It's important enough that if I find the right one and they've been told no for nine years in a row, they're gonna give me that lead and I'm gonna go make it yes in your number ten.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Okay, so I'm going in to meet my underwriter. We're gonna have a connection. What advice would you give me? What do I need to do or say or not say to make sure that I start off on the right foot?

SPEAKER_02 16:46

What's a class of business that you were really good at that nobody ever sends you? Nice. Everybody gets so focused on the hot list from the marketing people when they come in. And I joke about it. Anytime I speak in public, I use the same example, so I'm gonna do it here too, so everybody knows it's really me. Here's the deal there's only so many silk flower distributorships that generate $400,000 in premium in the United States. There is a wholesaler that every single time they've come in to visit us for the last 15 years, there's been a silk flower distributorship on there. I didn't I'm not going after that class of business. Number one, guy, I know you've been in 30 other agencies in the last two weeks, and everybody else is gonna be going after your hot list. I don't want to go after what everybody else is going after. If the industry goes left, I'm going hard right. Let me get to the underwriter who really is gonna be the one that's gonna make money if we write business, find out what they're good at, what they never see, and here's why. Number one, you can be their hero. If I go get that and they write it and they bind it, I'm gonna have a never-ending supply of accounts they wish they would have gotten before, but the agent didn't represent it right. Number two, if they come back to me and their quote isn't good, coverage isn't right, pricing's not good, I can now hold them accountable and say, look, you told me you were good at this. You told me you were good at it, but you don't ever see enough of it. I need you to sharpen the pencil and come back to me with better terms because this doesn't seem to be telling me the same story that I heard from you. And so if you can ask the underwriter that question and get them to answer you with a class or a couple of classes of business, you've got to leg up on your competition because other agents aren't asking that question.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

It's good. I I got I have a question though, I want to go back real fast because I'm we're from the personal lines world. All right, we've done some commercial, but the three-year agreement, is that a contract or is that just like a gentleman's handshake?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

It's a handshake, it's a handshake agreement, but when we explain to them why, they understand it, right? I've got a whole bunch of handshake agreements, but I also have a formal engagement letter that we use. But we we have rules, right? Like there a lot of the time I see producers waste so much time that they don't need to waste because they just missed it on the front end. They didn't qualify correctly. They're letting garbage go into their pipeline, so garbage is coming out of their pipeline. They don't purify their leads lists before they put them into marketing systems and everything else, and that's really what creates the problem. Think about how many times producers say, Oh, I was gonna quote it, but I never could get the loss runs, or I couldn't get this or couldn't get that. Question number one, will you give me the information I need when I need it in a reasonable amount of time? If the answer is yes and I don't get it, you get one get out of jail free card. If I still don't have it, I'm cutting you loose and moving on to the next person. I don't have time to chase you for information. I can't want it more than you want it for yourself. Number two, do I get access to your people? I need to talk to your frontline supervisors, your executives, and your hourly employees. I want to get a flavor for the culture of what's really going on here. Producers, you can learn more about a company smoking a cigarette with the loading on the loading dock with the receiving clerk than you're ever going to learn in the conference room talking to the executives. I don't smoke, but I'll stand back there while they do because they're gonna tell you everything. Number three, if I come back and show you reasonable work product that proves that we have the ability to fix the problems that you have right now, do you have the ability to fire Bob or Sally and hire me? If I don't get yeses to those three questions, we ain't going to do the dance. Gotta have it up front. If they don't get me the information, they're gone. If they don't give me the access to the people, they're gone. And if I don't have the right person, I will not meet with them until the right person is in the room, too. Here's the thing producers don't understand how to value their time. They don't understand their hourly rate. If a producer were to take a look at their book of business and they went back and they looked at all of the different accounts that they write, and they looked at and thought about how many hours they could reasonably project that they worked on each one of those, they're gonna find out they're working for a lot less money per hour than what they really think that they are. I don't work for less than $500 an hour, period.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Qualifying the lead, baby. I like that. So, what struggles can somebody getting into the commercial space expect?

SPEAKER_02 21:12

It's not easy. You know, anybody who tells you it's easy is just trying to convince themselves of that. It's not that it's overly difficult either, though. The product knowledge is gonna come to you. There's plenty of places you can get it. There's all kinds of webinars that carriers put on. There's there's you know designations you can get. The the part that's hard is the part where you have to fight human nature of staying in bed instead of getting up and going out and cold calling. Or fight the human nature of leaving the phone on the receiver instead of picking it up to dial for dollars. That's the hard part. The hard part is getting past your own biases, your own preconceptions, and actually pushing through to do the things that you need to do. I think that part of the reason why that hasn't been as big of an issue for me is because I did grow up playing sports. I was on a team my entire life. I had to practice my entire life. I had to practice with the team, I had to practice when the team wasn't there. I was accountable to other people, and I didn't have a problem with being accountable to them. I openly solicited feedback and I was coachable. I let people tell me what I needed to do to be better, and I still do that today. None of us are ever at a point in our lives where we can't get better today than we were yesterday, but we're not as good as we'll be tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Gosh, that's so good. Will you I need you since you brought up the sports, I you need to tell the baseball story that we were talking about before we hit record.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah, so I grew up wanting to play baseball professionally and And I had an opportunity, but ended up not taking that in exchange for going to play in college instead. And um I made my college debut at St. Cloud Commons in Huntington, West Virginia against the Marshall Thundering Herd. And I wanted to be Wild Thing Rick Vaughn when I grew up. That that's that's it. I wanted to come out, I wanted everybody screaming, yelling, holding up signs, cheering for me. And we get down to Marshall, and it was an old school minor league ball stadium. They still had the bullpen in center field, the defense still opened up, and you jogged, you know, unless you were a maniac like I was, you jogged from center field to the pitcher's mound to go do your warmup pitches when it was time for you to come into the game. So I was a freshman. I honestly, to be honest, wasn't even expecting to play, and they had me get up and start warming up in the next to the last inning, and then sure enough, the bullpen phone is a real thing. The phone rings and they pick it up and they're like send them in. So the gates open, and I hear ACDC start piping. The only thing that was missing was a fog machine. If I could have had a fog machine, it would have been game over. But AC DC starts pumping through the loudspeakers, and I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. They're playing Thunderstruck. I throw my last pitch, gate opens up, I sprint as hard as I can to the mound. I wail my 10 warm-up pitches, probably in record time. And I'm standing there on the back of the mound, and I take my hat off. I had the rosin bag to get my hand dry. Take my hat off, run my fingers through my hair, and like, man, this is it. This is what I've I grew up wanting. This is this was the moment for me, man. Thunderstruck's playing that's my song. I got my warm-up pitches, I'm making my debut, these people are going nuts, cheering. And then it hit me that they were playing Thunderstruck for the Marshall Thundering herd. And I played for their opponent. And I said to myself, This isn't about me, this is about them. And I tell that story because so many times we get that first appointment with that account we've always gone after, and we go in and we just vomit all over the table, everything about us that makes us so great, and we get the best insurance, the cheapest insurance with the most coverage, and everybody wants to do business with us. When in reality we need to make it about that. And we need to listen to what's going on, what's driving this conversation. Why did you even meet with me? And you know, it's interesting because I feel like the more that you do that and the more that you're willing to just say what needs to be said, the more successful you can end up being, and the the better better job you can do as a producer. I've never viewed my job as a producer to be a salesperson. I've always viewed my job to be an educator, period. I need to educate my clients, I need to educate my prospects, I need to educate my team, and I've always taken that approach. And I I think a lot of people say that, but if you've ever been on a call with me, you know, I when COVID happened, things changed. I actually record my new business calls on Zoom now and I share them in my online community so people can see, oh, this guy actually does say the things he tells us we should be saying. They can see it in real time. But I actually do that stuff. And what I've found is if you'll just take the extra time to make that explanation and get that connection, you're gonna go much, much further. I mean, my the title of my first book was called The Extra Two Minutes for a reason. The whole premise is if you just take two minutes more than your competition, you're gonna write way more business than they will because you're gonna deliver that extra level that they're not willing to go to. And so I think that agents get frustrated because in our minds we forget. You brought it up. You want to be confident, you want to know what it is, but we expect our clients and prospects to know insurance like the back of their hand, and and people just don't. We've conditioned them to shop every year. We've conditioned them to buy the cheapest every single year. Most of the people we sell to pay more to hire us than what they were paying. And I'm in there competing against all of the notorious price, uh, the price deliverers, right? And so I feel like if you take the time to educate, I had a call come in. I had an inbound lead come into us at the end of last week for a flooring in uh flooring distribution and installation company that does $50 million a year in sales. Okay, came through through HubSpot on the internet, blew my mind. I actually thought maybe it was $450,000, and the lady made a typo when she put it in the form or whatever, and it wasn't assigned to me, it was assigned to one of my producers, so I followed up with him to make sure that he had had reached out or had plans to reach out, and he was actually out of the office that day and I'd forgotten, so I called her myself. And this lady um gives me the information. I said, let me let's just ask a few questions real quick. Number one, you know, I see that you do 45 million. Is that an accurate number? Is that what you're projecting for this next year? She goes, 4550 somewhere in there. I said, okay, I just wanted to make sure that we were good with that. And I said, and and I just went through normal questions that I would ask about the operation and everything. And I said, let me ask you a question. Why did you why did you reach out to us? And she goes, Well, I'm looking for quotes. And I said, So you're you're looking for quotes online? And she said, yes. And I said, How many other people have you talked to? She goes, Well, I've I've I've gone to um this tells you how little people know about how this stuff works. Well, I went to GEICO, I went to Progressive, I'm like, well, ma'am, they're they're not gonna write the type of business that you are. She goes, Well, I've talked to three or four agents. I said, ma'am, with all due respect, I'm probably not the guy for you. And she said, Well, what do you mean? I said, I'm not here to sell you insurance. And I said, I have a very strong feeling that we're gonna find things in your program that are not gonna be right, and you're not gonna be okay with what it's gonna cost you to fix it if I'm just being completely transparent. And she said, Well, well, what do you mean? And I said, Well, I said, I'll tell you what. I said, Do you have quotes right now? And she said, Yeah. I said, Who did you get them from? And she named the carriers, and I said, Okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I said, only because this is Friday and I've got some open time in my calendar, I would I'll do this because I feel bad. I feel like you don't know the kind of situation you're in. I'm gonna go to two of my carriers, I'm gonna see if I can get a quote real quick. I'm gonna do it myself. I'm not gonna hand it off to anybody. I'm gonna do it myself, and I'm gonna see where pricing comes back, and let's let's talk then. So I did. I went to two different carriers. One of them was a carrier who she already had a quote from that I should not even have been able to get a quote from, but I wasn't blocked, which leads me to believe maybe there wasn't a quote to begin with, or that the information wasn't put in right, and the other one was where I actually thought the business was gonna go, but I wanted to get a bracket around where the premium was so I could explain it. First quote comes back, mind you, $45 million in sales. First quote comes back, and it's like $32,000 for the general liability. Second quote comes back, it's like $26.9. Right in the wheelhouse, exactly where I figured it would be. I figured $25,000 to $35,000 is where this is gonna fall all day for the GL. And so I pick up the phone and I call and I'm like, hey, I just want to let you know, I actually found a quote from the got a quote from the first carrier who you told me you had a quote from, so now I have some questions about that. But that one was 32 32 grand. I said, but I have one with the carrier I actually thought I would write this with for about $26,900. And um I and she and you could just she said, $26,000? And I'm like, well, yes, ma'am. I said, wow, you said you sound pretty excited. And I knew she wasn't. And she said, that's she said, that's that's that's insane. That's that's far more than than what we're paying right now. And I said, Well, ma'am, I said, I don't I don't know what to tell you. I said, I had this thing pegged at twenty-five to thirty-five thousand dollars before I ever went to the marketplace. And I said, it came right exactly where I thought it was gonna be. She goes, Well, I'm telling you right now the carrier that's non-renewing us is charging us less than five thousand dollars a year. I said, and I'm telling you right now they don't have a clue what you do. I said, There's no way that a $45 million company is getting, I don't care what you sell, make, anything, is $5,000 a year or less for your general liability. I said, ma'am, I said, God forbid you ever have a claim. If they come in and find no, they just do not know what you do. And she said, Well, you know, I just the owner, and I said, Listen, I said, I'm probably the most direct person you're gonna talk to in this entire process because I don't have time to play games. The reason you're where you're at is because your owner puts price pressure on the agent and doesn't let them do their job the right way, and the agent doesn't have the backbone to stand up to them. So they wrote it the wrong way for less premium, and guess what? Everybody involved in that equation's in jeopardy. If what you're asking me to do is my job poorly, then you've got the wrong guy. That's not who I am, it's not what I'm about. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm removing myself from consideration because I have no interest in representing your firm. And if you want to send me the stuff that you have is just is a favor for lack of a better term, I'll review with quotes that you have, everything else, I'll shoot holes in them, I'll send it back to you with my comments, and then you can navigate the renewal process. And hopefully down the road, you'll remember that I helped you, or Karma's gonna come pay me back for being nice in doing that. And she said, Well, hold on a second. Puts me on hold for two and a half minutes. Comes back, said, Are you around Monday morning at 1130? And I said, I in sales meeting, but I can make myself available available. She said, The owner would like to talk to you at 11.30. He thinks you're the guy we want to move forward with. And I said, Well, there's a problem with that. She said, What's that? I said, I've not met your owner yet. I'm not sure I want to move forward. I said, I already told you I was removing myself. I said, You have to understand something here. There's other things in this equation. First and foremost, my own reputation with the underwriting community. Second, I don't know how badly you've been damaged because you've already told me you've been out to almost a half dozen people to get quotes. There's only so many markets. You know, I said, I don't know if anybody else has told you this, but you're wasting a bunch of agents' time because when you go to 15 different people, there's only so many places they can go and they're tripping over each other, and you're never going to get the best result. I said, the way you should buy insurance is figure out who it is you want to represent you and then give them the marketplace and let them negotiate and leverage carriers on your behalf. That is the absolute best way to get this done. And I understand it's probably not how you've done it, but I'm I'm just here to let you know that is how it gets done. And I said, at $45 million in sales, you should not be buying insurance over the internet. You should not be walking into a strip mall to the place where you get your home and auto. You need somebody who knows what they're doing and understands the nuances of your industry. I said, not for nothing, but I just renewed one of your biggest competitors that I represent at quite several hundred thousand dollars in premium, and they're a quarter of your size. So it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about in your industry. I represent people you compete against every day. So at the end of the day, we had our call at 11.30 this morning. Owner didn't come in because he wasn't feeling well. We have another call tomorrow morning. Once I talk to him, we'll determine whether or not I want to work with him or not. But producers, you gotta learn how to say no. You gotta learn how to say no.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

Hard to get to. You covered so much good information within that. Like even going back to the sales 101 of active listening, educating and empowering. But I love what you're doing right here to where you're saying, are you a good fit for me? I don't have to write your business. I'm gonna write your business because I want to write your business, and you're going to be the perfect ideal customer that I want to write and do business with, just not now, but for the foreseeable future, and I'll do my job right. I I freaking dig that.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

And the reason why I say that is because producers, when you bring that dog into your book of business, you diminish your value proposition to every single account that you already represent. People pay attention to that in the marketplace. When I go to a new business call, one of the things that I have done for 20 years, I'll do it for another 20, God willing, is I visualize a conference room with a table full of chairs, and every single chair is occupied except for one. Those chairs are occupied by my book of business, and the empty one is that prospect that I'm going to meet with. I need to know does that person deserve a seat at the table with everybody else that I represent? Not because I'm arrogant or condescending, but because those people deserve the absolute best of me. And if I bring somebody in that takes my time, energy, and resources away from them, I'm doing them a disservice. You don't get into the family unless you belong in the family. That's number one. The other thing is I think producers, by and large, it's it's not just about saying no. It's it's about understanding their worth. Like I said before, if they start tracking what they're writing, how long it's taking them, it makes it really easy to say no. Yep. Like, here's the thing view every prospect as if you're interviewing for a job. Right? You know, we write accounts that are 25 to 50 grand in revenue. I tell my producer, prepare for this meeting, like you're getting ready to get hired for $30,000 a year. You're not gonna show up in shorts and a t-shirt. You're gonna show up dressed to the nines exactly like you should be. You're not gonna show up and just wing it. You're gonna have questions prepared, anticipated follow-ups, and everything else that goes with it. The other thing I would say about producers is active listening, you're 100% on point. Here's the thing people in today's age want to listen with an intent to respond instead of an intent to understand. If you just keep your frickin' mouth shut and let people reveal it to you, if you if you prepare and you ask the right questions, you're gonna know everything you need to know about that account and then some by the time you walk out.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

People love talking about themselves, man. If you can just ask questions and just be silent, they will tell you everything and more. David, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, follow you, do business with you, what's the easiest way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Um, if you can't find me on a social platform, I'm doing something wrong. So get a hold of the weavers and let them know, and then they can reach out and coach me on that. But um, I would say LinkedIn is a good one. I I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, I put a lot of content out there. Um YouTube channel is pretty populated as well. You know, if you want to go read the blog and get we put a lot of free webinars and things like that out there, you can go to killingcommercial.com. That's kind of the central hub for everything that I do. Um, I do not try and sell you anything there. If I do, it's because you've specifically gone looking for me to sell you something there. So you're safe. You don't need to worry about it. There may be a place where I ask for a name and an email address to get behind some protected content, but I don't spam you. I send one newsletter out every week and that's it. Yep. Amen. You got anything?

SPEAKER_00 37:03

No, this was so good. I have a full page of notes. It was it was incredible. I it really was. David, we appreciate your time. You were full of knowledge. We'll put all of your links in the show notes so they can just directly go and follow and learn more from you. I'm I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yeah. David, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Well, we need to reciprocate, man. We need to have you have you guys come on PowerPoint.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Let's freaking do it, bro.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

You just gotta keep showing up. Keep putting them out there. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

That's so kick ass, though, man. Congratulations on that. That's that's kick-ass. Thank you. All right, for all of those of you listening, thank you so much. As always, time is the most valuable and important asset that we all have. We appreciate you spending time with us today. Go out, make it great, David. Thanks again, brother. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Insurance Buzz. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, and leave a rating and review. If you want to take your insurance agency to the next level and join our community, simply check out Weaver Cells Academy at www.weaversa.com. Again, that's www.weaversa.com, or visit the show notes on our new and current programs we have available exclusively for you. As always, time is the most valuable and important asset that we all have, and I appreciate you spending it with me. See you on the next episode.