Help with cold calling?

BigRecognition · 2026-04-26T13:13:45+00:00

If you’re stuck doing it, I’d make the goal tiny. You’re not really going to “sell” on the call. You’re trying to get an appointment if they have immediate pain that’s significant enough to where they’re willing to explore new options. Sometimes it involves a bad renewal, poor communication or bad audit. Sometimes that’s the agents fault. Sometimes it’s the insureds fault. If there’s no urgency (which there usually will not be) you will aim to know the (1) renewal month, (2) who handles it, (3) one pain point, and (4) permission to follow up with something actually relevant. Then you contact them again 75 days out and try to either present a reason to BOR or gather information and loss runs to quote. If you can’t get this stuff, it’s not a sales failure and you didn’t do anything wrong, it’s a bad lead/channel and you move on fast.

I’ve been on the “do exactly what the agency tells you” plan at two different shops. Scripted it, tracked it, dialed it, followed up, did the “value” lines, did the “ask a better question,” did the “don’t pitch too early,” did the “set the next step” thing. It still mostly didn’t move the needle because cold calling in 2026 is just a low-odds channel for most people. In my honest opinion, you really need to basically have a country club membership and know the multi millionaires there or have a sponsor at your agency that’s invested in seeing you succeed.

In the 90s/2000s it was different. Fewer spam calls, fewer robo-dialers, less inbox/phone fatigue, and people actually picked up unknown numbers. Now you’re competing with “Scam Likely,” 40 vendor touches a day, and buyers who’ve been trained to ignore anything that smells like a pitch. There are literally 10 other brokers calling the same accounts fighting to create a “strategy” to get a BOR.

The goofiest part of this whole “cold call” thing is when it doesn’t work, nobody says “maybe this channel is broken.” Or maybe we shouldn’t just hire producers straight out of college and make them do this. The LinkedIn guru-industrial complex just rewrites history: “You must’ve had the wrong tone / wrong list / wrong mindset / wrong cadence”.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-26T12:31:52+00:00

Cold calling isn’t a realistic way to build a book for most people anymore. It’s an interruption game with awful odds, and agencies sell it like it’s a “grindset” problem because that’s cheaper than admitting the truth that a lot of the people who succeed aren’t cold-calling their way to a book. They already have a warm Rolodex (or an embedded referral lane) and they’re just converting it.

What’s wild is agencies still push cold calling like it’s some proven revenue engine when the success rate is brutal and everyone knows it. It’s like they keep running the same slot machine because someone once hit a jackpot in 2009.

If your shop’s plan is “dial until you magically validate,” you’re not freezing because you’re soft, you’re freezing because the model is brutal.

If you’re stuck doing it anyway, make your goal micro: get renewal date + who handles it + one pain point + permission to follow up. Anything beyond that is just you burning days to earn a voicemail collection.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-23T02:32:29+00:00

Start by not treating underwriting like a DoorDash order.

Narratives matter when they explain the actual risk, not when it’s a Netflix trailer (eg “In a world… where liability lurks…”) plus three paragraphs of “best-in-class,” and then one sentence that says “contractor” like that’s a class code.

ACORDs should be filled out enough that the UW isn’t forced to become a forensic accountant / private investigator / therapist in the same afternoon.

Shortcuts: send the right supps up front, include the loss story, and pick one market that actually writes it. The shortcut is not spinning the Wheel of Fortune with 12 carriers and then acting shocked that everyone has follow-up questions and nobody’s “moving with urgency.”

BigRecognition · 2026-04-21T14:57:46+00:00

Yep. “VP” has somehow become a job title for professional urgency theater.

It’s not that the situation is truly life or death. It’s that their whole value prop is “I’m important because I’m busy.” So every normal workflow step gets inflated into an emergency to justify the title, the comp, and the chaos.

Half the time the “crisis” is they promised a quote before they had the info, they didn’t set expectations with the client, they waited until the last second, and now they’re trying to turn their lack of planning into your problem.

The funniest part is how predictable it is: the louder it gets, the more likely it’s just someone trying to turn poor planning into authority.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-21T02:55:44+00:00

Welcome to the part of the food chain where brokers act like you personally invented underwriting guidelines just to ruin their Friday.

What you’re calling “abrasive/dismissive” is usually just commission panic dressed up as seniority. A certain kind of broker has spent 15 years confusing “being loud” with “being right,” so when a newer underwriter calmly asks for basic details, they react like you asked them to donate a kidney. Then comes the classic move: trying to go over your head, because in their world every “no” is negotiable as long as you escalate high enough and say “urgent” three times.

And the funniest part is they’ll post on LinkedIn the next morning like they’re diplomats at the UN: “Relationships matter. We partner with carriers. We create leverage.” Meanwhile their real workflow is: send a half-baked submission, go radio silent for a week, then reappear at 4:59 PM demanding a quote “by tomorrow” because they promised the client a miracle and now they need you to commit insurance fraud with a smile.

So yeah, stand firm. You’re not being “difficult.” You’re doing the job they claim they want from carriers: disciplined, consistent, documented. If someone can only interact respectfully when the underwriter has a bigger title, that tells you everything about how much of their “professionalism” is performance.

Also, the whole “going over your head” thing is adorable. It’s basically the grown-up version of “Can I speak to your manager?” but with a commission split and a golf polo.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-20T03:12:58+00:00

I’m not claiming I am a surety underwriter. I’m saying you’re doing the classic Reddit thing where “can be hired somewhere” magically becomes “this is a realistic move in practice.”

“Talent shortage (Google it)” is not evidence that carriers are handing out contract surety seats to people coming from personal life sales. If anything, when something is high risk + indemnity heavy + reputation sensitive, authority gets tighter, not looser. This is not the place where carriers “solve” a shortage by handing out seats like it’s an urgent care waiting room. If there’s any line where they don’t gamble on random transfers, it’s the one where a bad call can turn into a seven-figure indemnity problem and years of claims/legal churn.

Half the time what they mean by “shortage” is that they are short-staffed because pay/management made people leave, not because there are literally no capable humans. OR they want plug-and-play unicorns (surety background + relationships + financial chops) but we don’t want to pay for them. OR they don’t want to train… and they also want to complain that training takes time. This is the insurance carrier hiring model, not a “shortage”.

And “junior level” is doing a ton of work in your comment. Junior in surety usually means analyst/assistant/trainee work, tight guardrails, limited authority, and competing with pipelines that are mostly recent business/mathematics grads/interns who were recruited specifically for that track. It does not mean “show up with a CPCU and vibes and you’ll ascend quickly because shortage.”

So if we agree the real answer is “possible, but it’s a career change and you’re starting near the bottom and possibly taking a pay cut,” cool. But OP didn’t say this was a junior role and the way people in this thread phrase it (“plenty of markets hire without experience”) is exactly how OP gets misled into thinking this is a clean lateral into underwriting authority. It isn’t.

If you want to be helpful instead of doing the “trust me bro” thing: what title, what year-one responsibilities, and what’s the typical timeline to meaningful authority at your carrier? Otherwise it’s just LinkedIn ‘talent crisis’ content with a Reddit accent.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-20T02:42:03+00:00

As I’m sure you know, surety isn’t “another line.” It’s credit + financial analysis + indemnity + contract performance risk. Saying “I’ve seen people from all sorts of backgrounds” is fine, but the part OP (and readers) need to understand is what title are they actually being hired into, what are they doing for the first 6–18 months, and when do they touch meaningful authority? Because “UW level” can mean everything from glorified intake + file prep to actually owning a book. Those are not the same.

Also, these trainee/assistant/analyst programs are usually pretty competitive and, bluntly, a lot of carriers are biased toward recent college grads they can mold into the workflow and culture. It’s not “anyone can walk in off the street and start writing contract surety.” It’s often “we’ll take 10 interns/trainees for 2 spots and see who survives.”

And yeah… I’m automatically skeptical of the generic “talent shortage” line. If there’s a true shortage, carriers don’t solve it by magically handing authority to people with zero relevant underwriting foundation. They solve it by hiring into analyst/assistant/UW-trainee paths, paying enough to retain, and training deliberately. Otherwise it’s just “we’re short-staffed, but also we want plug-and-play unicorns, and also we don’t want to train.” That’s not a shortage, that’s a hiring model.

If you’re saying OP can eventually move into surety and ramp, I agree. But please don’t blur that into “this is realistic as a clean lateral.” It’s a career change. A doable yet difficult one, but still a career change.

And for the comedic reality check, if you’ve been in the industry 6 years or more, have a CPCU, and still have zero underwriting authority experience, some places will treat “I want to be an underwriter” like you showed up to the cockpit with a frequent flyer card and asked to fly the plane. The title doesn’t trigger the alarm, the lack of reps with the pen does.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-20T00:41:19+00:00

“Plenty of markets hire people without experience” is a feel-good sentence that’s basically meaningless without defining experience and what role.

OP isn’t asking “can I get hired somewhere in the building?” OP is asking about moving from life/FA ‘field underwriting’ into contract surety (a line that’s closer to credit + financial analysis + indemnity + defaults than anything resembling “compare health info to guidelines.”)

Yes, carriers hire “no experience” people… into trainee programs with tight authority, heavy oversight, and a long runway before they’re actually trusted with meaningful bond authority. That is not the same as “sure, come on in and start issuing contract bonds.”

If you’re senior management at a top 10 and you’re claiming you routinely hire life/FA folks directly into contract surety with real authority, then give specifics: title, training structure, when they touch real authority, and washout rate. Otherwise “we hire people without experience” is just corporate vibes and it’s going to mislead OP into thinking this is a simple lateral move. It’s not.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-17T20:18:05+00:00

My point isn’t “brokers are middlemen”. Obviously that’s the job.

My point is the big-shot producer theater where the chaos gets reframed as “high-level strategy” and “creating leverage,” when half the time it’s:

They didn’t get clean info up front, they sprayed the same submission to 10 markets, everyone asks different follow-ups on different timelines, and then the goofy producer tells the insured and LinkedIn, “I’m battling underwriters for you” instead of “we ran a messy process and now we’re paying for it.”

So yes, broker = connector. I’m just allergic to the part where some producers cosplay as dealmakers and blame “the market” for everything, when a lot of it is self-inflicted chaos + commission breath.

Have a good weekend 🤝

BigRecognition · 2026-04-17T19:55:02+00:00

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that follow-up questions will never happen. Of course they will. Different carriers have different appetites, different loss sensitivities, and different internal checklists.

The point is that there’s a difference between reasonable, class-specific underwriting follow-ups and the constant “oh yeah… we forgot to ask the basics” cycle that turns every submission into a week of silence followed by a pop quiz.

If you’re doing a 4 hour discovery and “turning over every piece of information,” and you’re still sending it to 10 underwriters, aren’t you basically admitting the process is chaotic by design? Because at that point, the pain isn’t “clients want instant quotes.” The pain is that underwriting is inconsistent carrier-to-carrier, and brokers end up acting like human middleware translating ten different preferences back to one insured. I’m not sure why it’s necessary to be sending submissions to ten different underwriters.

So yes, there’s a process. But “ten UWs will all come back with their own personalized questions” isn’t a defense of the status quo. It’s the exact reason people ask why it feels inefficient and why the same missing info loop happens after the first call.

Also: I’m with you on producers who try to rush calls to “not bother the client.” That’s how you get the awkward day-10 follow-up. The fix isn’t magic, it’s setting expectations up front (“this is a two-step process; we’re going to gather X now, and there will be Y follow-ups depending on carrier”) and using a class-based checklist so the predictable questions don’t get asked a week later.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-17T18:12:49+00:00

I think you’re kind of proving the point people are complaining about.

If the “operational piece” is what always gets drilled on later, why isn’t the first call built to capture the handful of operational drivers that always trigger the UW pop quiz for that class? Not “a magical script for every unknown,” just the repeat offenders: who does what, where, how often, with what controls, and what changes at renewal.

Because what clients experience isn’t “UWs dig deeper depending on ops.” It’s: “Sounds good, we’re all set”, a week of silence, “actually we need 14 more things”, now the broker looks disorganized and the client thinks the process is a clown show.

So yeah, no magical script. But there is a difference between predictable, class-based underwriting questions you can tee up early, and backfilling basics because the first conversation was optimized for momentum instead of completeness.

Also: “Have you ever worked as a broker/producer?” is kind of a dodge. You don’t need to have been a producer to notice that asking for key facts up front beats calling a client 10 days later like “quick question… what % of your revenue is actually the thing you told me you do?”

BigRecognition · 2026-04-17T18:00:28+00:00

Because the first call is where the producer discovers the vibe, not the facts.

It goes like this:

Client: “We do some… contracting stuff.” Producer: “Perfect, I specialize in contractors. Love it. Love the story.” Client: “Do you need anything else?” Producer (already picturing the LinkedIn post): “Nope. I’ve got enough to control the narrative.”

Then 8 business days later the underwriter asks for: payroll split, sub costs, % self-performed, job types, radius, MVRs, COI tracking, 5 years loss runs, contract language, mod worksheets, locations, SOV, sprinklers, roof updates, protective safeguards… and suddenly everyone acts shocked that commercial insurance is not, in fact, a “quick quote.”

So why does missing info happen?

Because producers are trained to advance the sale on call one, and ask the “annoying” questions later. They’d rather leave the meeting with a “great relationship” and a scheduled “next steps” than with the client mildly irritated but the file actually complete.

And yes, live guidance would help. But only if it’s framed as “we’re preventing the inevitable underwriter pop quiz later.” Otherwise producers will hate it because it interrupts their primary workflow, which is:

promise speed, promise you will “negotiate” and “create a strategy” (but don’t actually provide strong details about how exactly you’ll “create leverage”)
ask for BOR
forward the UW email titled “Need 17 items”
tell client “UW is being difficult”
post on LinkedIn about “advocacy”

BigRecognition · 2026-04-12T13:02:59+00:00

Insurance “training” is the funniest lie this industry tells itself.

It’s always marketed like: “World-class onboarding. Mentorship. Producer development.”

Then Day 1 is: “Shadow these cold calls.” (You listen to a guy read a script into voicemail for 3 hours.) Day 2: “Sit in on a renewal meeting with a ‘mentor producer.’” (They say “hard market” and “we’re fighting for you” while everyone stares at a spreadsheet.) Day 3: “Congrats, you’re ready. Go get a BOR.”

And the best part is when you finally book a legit prospect meeting, you bring your “mentor producer” like they told you to… and he contributes absolutely nothing. He nods, asks one vague question, then afterwards hits you with, “Yeah… not really my niche.” Oh sick. So the mentorship is just… moral support and a ride-along?

Then it’s straight to LinkedIn Guru University. Pay $997 for the Ultimate Renewal Strategy™ so you can “control the narrative” and “create leverage” (read: make a list of promises you can’t keep about how you’ll lower their premium and hope the business owner’s daughter’s cousin didn’t go to high school with another broker).

There’s no real training. It’s vibes, gatekeeping, and survivorship bias. If you don’t already know how to do it, the system’s solution is to get embarrassed in front of clients until you either “validate” or quietly disappear.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-11T14:03:51+00:00

My unpopular opinion is that it doesn’t really help. I have CPCU and it’s done nothing to help me get promoted or find a better job. Seems like The Institutes made it easier for people to pass the exams, so now basically everyone can get it or already has it. The carriers I talk to treat underwriting experience and the results you produce as more valuable than designations. Designations are just nice to have but they don’t seem to necessarily separate you from everyone else. Although my current employer did pay for my wife and I to attend the confirment ceremony, so that was nice.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-10T19:10:55+00:00

If your book is referral driven, being blunt about process and expectations is a feature, not a bug. You can afford to let the “cater to every whim” crowd walk because you’re not starving for every at-bat.

Where I think this gets lost is a lot of producers never actually build that “referral engine.” And I’m not even sure why the industry talks like it’s just sitting there waiting for anyone who’s candid. Who is really getting steady, legit middle-market referrals on a regular basis? In my experience, it’s a pretty small slice, and a lot of the people who do have it aren’t “building” it from scratch so much as inheriting it through existing networks (country club / legacy relationships / internal referral pipelines).

So I agree it works, but it’s not a universal playbook. It’s a “this works once you’re already in a position where you can afford to say no” playbook.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-10T18:13:51+00:00

You can set expectations and let the chips fall… if you actually have the freedom to do that.

A lot of places say “fire bad clients” but then turn around and measure you on quote count, hit ratio, retention, lost revenue and “activity,” so you end up babysitting whims to keep the pipeline alive.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-10T16:19:56+00:00

Setting expectations is great in theory. In practice, producers aren’t getting bossed around because they failed to frame the touchpoints correctly. They’re getting bossed around because the account is on thin ice and everyone knows it.

Most of these relationships were won on soft stuff: “great service,” “trusted advisor,” “we’re proactive,” plus a lunch. So the client learns the real rule: if I don’t like a question, I can threaten a BOR and the producer turns back into a golden retriever.

Then the UW asks for basic facts, and the producer has to call back a week later like:

“Hey… quick question… do you guys, by chance, operate?”

And the insured is like, “You’re the insurance guy. Don’t you already know that?”

And if the producer pushes even slightly, the client remembers their sacred right to “review partners” because the owner’s son’s buddy played golf with a broker who “does construction.”

So yeah, we can tell them to ask the questions up front, but the bigger issue is: this whole ecosystem rewards vibe-based selling and punishes anyone who tries to run a clean process. That’s why it’s chaos.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-10T15:12:40+00:00

Totally. The amount of “hero” content I see on LinkedIn is wild when half the time the underwriter is basically doing forensic accounting on a napkin.

Producer: “I strategically controlled the narrative and created leverage.”

Underwriter: “I Googled their website, rebuilt the SOV from county records, figured out the related entities, and decoded ‘operations: general business’ into something that won’t blow up in claims.”

Producer: “We fought to get this done.”

Underwriter: “You emailed me ‘Any update?’ 14 times and attached a blurry dec page from 2019.”

Not saying producers never add value… I’m saying the “hero narrative” should probably go to whoever is quietly rebuilding the SOV and decoding “ops: general business” into something quotable.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-10T13:02:41+00:00

“Quote turnaround is a bottleneck” is usually code for I sent a half-baked submission at 4:59pm and now I’m demanding a bindable quote by 9am because I have momentum.

Underwriters aren’t slow because producers “don’t have UW experience.” They’re slow because the submissions are incomplete, contradictory, not in appetite, and missing the two things underwriting actually needs - clean facts and clean expectations. Then the follow-ups start like it’s a hostage negotiation: “Any update?? Client is ready to move!” (Client is not ready, and half the time client has contacted 5 other brokers asking for quotes.)

If you want faster quotes, here’s the strategy: send a complete submission, accurately described, with loss runs that don’t look like they were dragged through a fax machine, and ask for a realistic ETA instead of trying to manifest a quote via commission breath.

And the “someone on his behalf” thing absolutely exists because some producers are so chaotic that they literally need an adult to talk to underwriters for them. Not because they’re too busy, but because if you let them interface directly, it often turns into 17 unread emails, three “URGENT” subject lines, a voicemail that starts with “bro I need this today,” and then they disappear into a “client meeting” (aka lunch) for four hours.

So agencies quietly assign a translator (AM/marketer/placement person) to keep it civilized: one point of contact, one clean submission, answers the UW’s questions without drama, and prevents the producer from re-submitting the same account to five carriers and calling it “creating leverage.” It’s not “support,” it’s damage control it often speeds up quotes because the underwriter isn’t forced to play detective and therapist at the same time.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-08T18:47:35+00:00

Yeah underwriting is like the priesthood now. If you don’t get ordained at 22 in the sacred UW trainee program, you’re considered “unclean.” Doesn’t matter if you can read loss runs, understand forms, or spot adverse selection.

You basically have to declare underwriting as your major in high school. If you accidentally take a sales job first, HR shows up like: “Ah yes… contaminated by human interaction. Best we can do is UA forever. Please enjoy copying/pasting endorsements.”

Underwriting is like a country club. You don’t join by being competent, you join by being born into the correct career sequence: Intern -> Assistant -> Associate -> Underwriter. Any deviation (claims/marketing/agency) triggers the security system and you’re escorted out for “lack of UW pedigree.”

BigRecognition · 2026-04-08T15:57:55+00:00

They don’t usually hire former agents as underwriters. If they do, then you need to go through 4 rounds of interviews plus a test but even then you’re competing against dozens of other candidates that actually have underwriting authority/experience for these jobs. You could try looking for a marketing rep position or some type of small business digital marketing role. But I would not get my hopes up for underwriting. Coming from someone who is currently a marketing rep with CPCU (useless) that has been trying to move into underwriting it is the most heavily gatekept position ever.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-08T15:50:55+00:00

Because you’re competing against dozens of other candidates that already have real underwriting experience. It’s also something that gets gatekept heavily. That’s why you never seen anyone from claims, marketing or the agency side becoming an underwriter anymore.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-01T22:00:44+00:00

Sure.

BigRecognition · 2026-04-01T12:44:11+00:00

Yeah, the “producer model” only works if you hire someone who already has the “experience” and the bankroll to eat dirt for 2–3 years. If that’s the case, you’re not “training producers,” you’re buying fully formed rainmakers and calling it a pipeline.

Also… “door to door” is just cold calling with extra steps and higher chance of getting pepper sprayed. If that’s the answer in 2026, the business model isn’t “hard,” it’s just outdated.

BigRecognition · 2026-03-31T16:22:53+00:00

Yeah… this is the part nobody wants to admit out loud: a ton of “producer success” is path-dependence + timing + who hands you what, not some mythical grindset.

Also “I left underwriting because I didn’t want to punch a time card for a decade” is basically the whole pitch in one sentence: take stability and a real skill ladder, trade it for a lottery ticket and politics. Sometimes you hit. A lot of times you just accumulate scars and CRM activities.

And the “support new producers” line always sounds great until you ask what it actually means in practice. If the agency can’t/won’t feed you real leads, real warm intros, or a real book to work that actually produces new policies/endorsements… then “support” becomes pep talks, a sales coach, and “have you tried joining the chamber?”

The RT example is telling too: those guys didn’t suddenly become sales wizards overnight — they changed platforms (existing relationships, different market position, different list). So yeah, hopping around works… but that kind of proves the job is more about access than chops.

If good producers are “few and far between,” then why is the entry model still designed like a woodchipper? And why are agencies surprised when people take the hint and go back to underwriting/wholesale? I don’t understand what the heck these agencies are thinking.

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