Why Producers Are Struggling to Book Meetings in 2026

Hey, hey, welcome back to the Accelerate Your Insurance Sales podcast. Andy Neary, CEO and founder of Complete Game Consulting, where we help you sell more insurance with confidence and conviction. Welcome back to the show. We are going solo again from your prodding, your urging for me to do some more solo episodes again. Here we are. So here's what we're going to talk about today. Today, I actually want to talk about How insurance sales has changed and what you need to do to evolve your strategy to make sure you are booking appointments, you are attracting attention from the right high-quality prospects. Because let's admit, there, there is a lot that has changed. So what I'm going to walk through today is really what has changed between what we would call the traditional insurance sales cycle. To the modern and the current insurance sales cycle. Because when I look at a lot of the training in the industry, I don't think it's keeping up with what's going on today. Hence a lot of producers are really struggling right now, um, and frustrated because they're trying to book more appointments and it's just not working. The, the tried and true strategies aren't working anymore. So we're going to help you fix that today. So if you're tuning in, you're a producer who's trying to book more appointments, maybe you're just starting off in your career, welcome to the industry. You can use the content from our show to really get your career launched. If you are a high, uh, elite producer who's had a lot of success, what you're going to hear today is going to help you continue to scale your book. Or if you're an executive or a sales leader looking for more answers for your team, I think today's episode is going to really help you out. Because here's, here's the problem right now: the sales cycle in the insurance industry has not only gotten longer, it's changed. And when you look at the industry right now, here's what every producer is faced with. One, there are more producers in the industry than there have ever been. Whether you're selling health insurance, commercial insurance, personal lines, whatever, there's more producers in this industry than there's ever been before, which means there's more noise in this industry than there's ever been before. Number two, the sales cycles are longer. As we shift into a very different sales environment in any industry, but with the insurance industry specifically, the sales cycles are— have gotten a lot longer than they used to be, even compared to a decade ago. And partly because of the third thing I'm about to say here, trust is harder to build than it's ever been. We are in a trust recession right now. And so you have to figure out how you're going to build trust with prospects. The days of picking up a phone and calling somebody who not only doesn't trust you, they don't know you, and is willing to commit 30, 45, 60 minutes of their time to you without any trust. Whoo! It is hard to make that happen today unless you are a savant on the phone, or you luckily caught a prospect on the perfect day. But it's kind of like winning the lottery right now. It really is. So sales cycles are longer, harder to build trust than it's ever been. We're going to talk about the 4 layers of trust you have to build in today's episode. And then we've got the newest addition to this game called sales, and that's the new competitor in town. AI. And so all this chaos is just making insurance sales harder. And so what can you do to play the game right today so you, your team can still have a lot of success booking appointments, with the right prospects, which enhances your chances of winning the business and growing your book predictably, growing your agency predictably so that you can create a predictable stream of, of organic growth. That is really what we're talking about here at the end of the day. How can you create a predictable stream of organic growth? Growth given all the challenges we have in sales today. Because when you compare the traditional insurance sales cycle to what it looks like today, here, here's what the traditional insurance sales cycle— when I got in the insurance industry in 2002 and I started really focusing on selling health insurance about 2007, 2008, it, it looked a lot like this. You take a list of suspects who have no clue who you are, and you're going to throw a lot of activity at them, right? Calls and emails, calls and emails. Maybe you go door to door, you drop in the business. Maybe you use snail mail, but what you're doing is you're using cold tactics to turn a suspect into a prospect. And if you do it enough, if you put enough of that activity in, Somebody will submit to a meeting. It's just how it was. If you make enough phone calls, you send enough emails, drop by enough businesses, somebody's going to submit to a meeting. You're going to catch somebody on the right day. Now that you got an appointment with them, especially when you were selling health insurance, it just became a game of, do I have the right quotes and am I going to be competitive? Because now I got an appointment. This is the— these are the days well before the cost containment era. If I got an appointment, I'm gonna go look at all the markets I have, even though their current broker could do the same. I'm gonna go look at all the markets I have, and if I throw a spreadsheet of rates at them and my numbers are competitive, I might have a chance to win. That was the sales game played 20 years ago. See prospect, hammer prospect with calls, they submit to an appointment, you throw a bunch of quotes at them, and if you're competitive, you might win. That is not how it works in 2026. The game has changed a lot. Why? Because it starts with the fact we are in a trust recession. People just don't trust people naturally. I bet you, you don't. You probably don't trust people as much as you used to. Why? It's obvious. All the propaganda thrown at us through the media these days, social media, scroll, you name it. With all the things going on right now in our society, culturally, it's just hard to trust people. And that goes for how your prospects don't have trust in you. So the modern insurance sales cycle looks a lot different. You still have suspects, right? A list of suspects who don't know who you are. But before you can go to work putting the activity in to turn them into an appointment, You have to build awareness with them. And this quite frankly is a slow burn. Doesn't happen overnight, but you have to build awareness where they know you exist, where you are delivering a lot of value to them long before they are willing to give you any time. This is why we stress the use of our Brand Authority Blueprint, the 4 pillars to help you become and create a unique sales message in the industry. It's one, it's gonna help you stand out, but two, it allows you to build a lot of, create a lot of value for your prospects before, before you ever walk in their door. And if you're willing to commit the time to deliver a lot of value, to your prospects before you ever walk in the door, you're gonna build credibility and some trust before you ever walk in their door. That's a must today. What does that mean? Well, this is why you gotta start to consider some of the channels via marketing that you can use to build credibility and trust. Are you using social media appropriately? You know, if you're in B2B sales, you should be using LinkedIn and YouTube at a minimum. Are you using that appropriately to build awareness with your ideal prospect? Are you speaking? Where can you go find rooms that your prospects hang out in? Conferences, organizations, associations where you can speak and build that credibility and trust. Are you hosting webinars? Are you out networking? It's why podcasting exists. All this is is another channel of delivering value to build credibility and trust. You know, when I look at the success we've had here at Complete Game Consulting, it, it has definitely been through leveraging the power of the slow burn. I made a commitment long before I opened the doors of Complete Game Consulting when I was still selling health insurance. I made a commitment that I was gonna show up every day on LinkedIn with valuable content directed at my ideal prospect. And that's what helped me sell a lot of insurance and also open a lot of big doors that I could have never opened before. Fast forward, it's the same strategy we're using at Complete Game Consulting. When I go do a, a half-day workshop with a, a team, hands down, the number one reason that workshop happens is because the sales leader, an agency executive, had been digesting enough of my content that he or she got to the point that they knew I or we were the right choice. That doesn't happen overnight. In fact, I can think of 3 separate workshops we did just this year where the sales leader introduced me to the team by saying, "I've been following Andy's content for years, and I finally realized this is the guy we got to bring in." It's a slow burn, but the modern insurance sales cycle requires you to build awareness with your prospects. Because if you build enough awareness with the credibility and a little trust, you will open doors. Guess what? You'll open doors with a leg up on the competition because you're already walking in with credibility and trust. It's a differentiator. Now, here's another area where the modern insurance sales cycle has adjusted. Just because the door's open doesn't mean your job's done. You also have to utilize a sales process that allows you to continue building credibility throughout the sales process. So by the time you get to the finish line, you're the only choice they want to consider. When I look at the elite producers we get a chance to work with, they utilize this strategy. They build credibility throughout their sales process to the point where the proposal or the finalist meeting, whatever you want to call it, is actually an afterthought. It, the, it's almost like the proposal is just the prospect's way of validating their decision to hire you. Really what it is. It's not, you're up against 5 others and I hope you do well. It's no, no, no. You've built so much credibility and trust with us that we just need to make sure we trust, we, we are validating what you're saying to us and what you say you can do for us. Let's get together and let's validate that. The, the proposal is almost the afterthought. The decision has already been made before the proposal. Why are they doing that? Because what they're doing in the sales process is they're utilizing a lot of modern sales strategies to build the credibility. Number one, they're being transparent. 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They're trying to give the— they're giving the prospect reasons not to do business with them, or the reasons they may not be a good fit for them. They talk about objections early and often, all things we preach and you've heard me say. But they're also continuing to deliver immense value to the prospect. They're giving away everything for free. Whether it's in their content, talking to the prospect throughout the sales process, they're giving everything away for free, which is making them the obvious choice. This is how the modern insurance sales cycle works today. It's interesting, I was doing a keynote talk just a couple weeks ago, and I was demonstrating our Brand Authority Blueprint in real time with one of the attendees. I had one of the attendees walk up to the front on stage, and I walked them through our Brand Authority Blueprint as everybody else did it for themselves. And when you get to the fourth and final question of the blueprint, which is, all right, what is the framework you're going to use to teach your prospects how to solve the problem you're best positioned to solve? And I looked at them, I said, tell me in 3 or 4 steps, how are you going to help your prospects solve this problem? And he looked at me cautiously and he said, Andy, I don't know if I want to share that. I got some competitors in the room. And I looked at him and I said, that's exactly why you're not growing. You refuse to deliver any value for fear that somebody else might be listening, and you're absolutely eliminating your opportunity to build credibility and trust with the prospect. Prospects want value before they're ever going to hire you these days. If you want to stand out, especially if you're not the biggest competition in town, Deliver everything you know before you win the business, and that is the most effective way to stand out. Let me give you an example. One of our clients recently filled me in on a win he had in the last 30 to 60 days. He's been posting content on LinkedIn consistently for about a year now. Full transparency, he's a part of our Expert Program, which means we help him with his social media presence. So he's been posting content every day for almost a year, and he found himself in a finalist situation, not the biggest account, but he found himself in the finalist finalist situation with 2 other competitors. So 3, the prospect was evaluating 3 total producers. And Tom had been, has been actively and consistently posting content directly directed at his prospects. So he gets to the finalist meeting and it's there he learns one of the decision makers, the president of the organization, was not going to be in attendance. And you know, that's the tough position you face when you're in a finalist situation and you learn that, you know, well, not all decision makers are here. What do I do? Do I Do I walk out? Do I try to reschedule? Because that could eliminate your chance. So he went through with the finalist presentation and he walked out the door and I'm sure he was pretty skeptical 'cause hey, one of the main decision makers wasn't in the room and now you're relying on the rest of that team to deliver the message to the president. And you know how that goes. It doesn't go as effective as you deliver your message, right? So anyways, he walks out, probably not overly enthusiastic about his opportunity. However, a couple of weeks later, gets a call from the president and he's hired. And here's the lesson I wanted to share with you. It's what the president said to Tom when he called to say, "We're hiring you." He said, "I know I wasn't in the finalist presentation, but I will tell you, after everybody presented, I vetted all 3 of you on LinkedIn." He said, "I went to the first," at the first broker's LinkedIn profile and he didn't even have a profile picture. Maybe he did and maybe he had the setting on where second connections can't see it, which is the dumbest idea, but he didn't have a profile picture. He was immediately eliminated. I looked at the second broker's LinkedIn profile who represents a very large firm and he said, all I saw in that profile, especially in the content, was why he was so great and why his firm was so great. Wow, I was annoyed. If you're with a large firm, by the way, take note. And then he said, "I looked at your profile, Tom, and you made a post a couple weeks ago about how and why you support the small businesses in your community." And it was a post, and I may be giving away who this is by talking about it, but Tom had talked about how and why he delivers all the hangers from the local dry cleaner. He returns them all back to the dry cleaner when he is done using them because he knows how much it costs that dry cleaner over the course of a year to buy these hangers. So he returns them all the time. But the president said, when I saw that post and I saw how committed you are to supporting local businesses, I knew you were my guy. And when Tom told me that, I said, hey man, I know it can be frustrating when you're posting content consistently and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything. That was a $15,000 post. The revenue on the account was 15, not huge, not massive, but I said, that was a $15,000 post. How do you feel about that now? You see, Tom was building awareness with his ideal prospect. He does it every day, but it doesn't create an overnight, overnight win tomorrow. But what that awareness does is it does turn ideal prospects into interested buyers. Tom walks into discovery meetings with a leg up on the competition, but it also allows him to become the guy they choose when they're making the decision of who they're gonna hire. Why? Because he shares, he gives away the good stuff, he lets prospects get to know him via his content. Now he's about to unleash that same strategy with speaking and other channels, and it's going to absolutely blow up for him. But this is what the modern insurance sales cycle looks like today. And I can't preach it loud and hard enough. I watch agencies still train their producers how to prospect. And don't get me wrong, it's important. You gotta make so many phone calls per week. You gotta send out so many emails. You need to go join a board and you need to go network and you need to go door to door. Whatever you teach your producers to do, you teach 'em how to prospect and the activity is important. But what we are sadly missing right now is what are you doing to give them a sales message that is uniquely theirs that they can go out and share with confidence and conviction? And what are you doing to help them amplify that message so they can deliver value to their prospects long before they book the appointment. That's the name of the game today. And I'm not— I'm here to tell you it's not your corporate, your agency's marketing. Nobody buys from a logo anymore. They buy from the people they want to do business with. And at the end of the day, if you want to create an army of producers who are out winning consistently and creating predictable organic growth for your agency, it's about giving them a sales message that is uniquely theirs, that they can go out and deliver with confidence and conviction. So when they pick up the phone, when they send the emails, when they go door to door, when they put out the LinkedIn content, they're building awareness around a message they feel good about. And they're building awareness with the prospects long before the prospect raises their hand. The days of see suspect, sell suspect, quote suspect are over. We are leaving the transactional world this industry has been tied to for decades, and we are entering the era of the industry expert. And one thing that ties elite producers, expert producers together is they give freely, they share daily, and they're not afraid to give it all away for free because they know that is what is going to lead to the highest level of credibility and trust. What are you doing today to build credibility and trust with your, your prospects before you ever walk in their door. This is one of the reasons we offer our half-day workshops. It's why we offer our Expert Program, because if we spend a half day with your team helping every one of your producers develop a sales message that is theirs, that they feel good about, they're gonna go out and sell with confidence. And that confidence is gonna turn into activity, and that activity is gonna turn into AORs. The reason we offer the EXPERT program is because there are elite producers out there. Maybe you're one of them that has already had a ton of success, but you're trying to scale your organic growth. You're trying to get into bigger doors. And guess what that requires? More credibility and more trust. Did I mention we're in a trust recession? You need to be building and creating awareness every day. This isn't a nice to have anymore. It is required for sales success. What are you doing to build credibility and trust before you walk into the buyer's door? This has changed my career as a producer, as the CEO of Complete Game Consulting, It's changed the lives of the elite producers we've had a chance to work with, the teams we've had a chance to do workshops with. Not only do we see more predictable organic growth, but we see a team of producers who are having a hell of a lot of fun doing it. Hmm. So that's what I leave you with today. The insurance sales cycle has changed. The way we sell insurance has changed, and your strategies and your approach has to evolve with it. And if you feel like your team, yourself, could use one of our brand workshops, or, you know, you, you're producing at a high level today and you know you need to be out there more building credibility 24/7, I invite you to consider our Expert Program. Where we become your content strategy arm, building your expertise within the industry. Either way, it's not just about how you prospect. It's not about making more calls. It's not about sending out more emails. It's about building awareness via a unique sales message that makes your ideal prospect say, tell me more. Be good.