How To Negotiate With Commercial Insurance Brokers - Take Control Of Broker Sales Interviews

You can save a lot of money on business insurance if you insist on brokers forwarding quotations in advance of sales interviews. I've been helping buyers negotiate with insurance brokers for years, and I can report this one action is very powerful for negotiating lower rates.

These interview can waste a lot of time. Try my suggestion below, and see how much better use of your efforts results. When you follow these procedures, the need for traditional sales interview is largely negated. Furthermore, the farther ahead of policy renewal time these procedures are executed, the easier your renewals will become. By following sound renewal control practices, meetings your broker can be focused on making sure service time-lines are established and followed.

When a broker calls to announce a quotation is ready for delivery and asks to schedule a meeting, consider the following response in lieu of what you might normally say:

"Great. Thank you. We need you to email the proposal ahead of time, please, so we can prepare for your meeting."

If you make that your standard response, brokers will come to expect you want information transmitted in advance. This single request is very powerful, and goes a long way towards protecting you from manipulative broker sales tactics. It does so because it helps to separate the commodity of insurance policies (the quotes, and their associated quality and pricing factors) from the professional relationship you have with your broker (the meeting, your broker relationship, the servicing of your account, etc.).

Insisting on getting proposals sent to you in advance, and even asking the broker to include an agenda for the meeting, will do you a great deal of good. You will have time to understand your options and prepare your questions. The meetings will be more professional and productive. Sometimes a quote is very disappointing. If you get it in advance, you can cancel the meeting and save yourself a lot of time and aggravation.

I like the idea of thinking of insurance as a commodity, while recognizing the need to separately purchase professional advice from qualified commercial insurance brokers. If your broker is getting paid by commissions, be aware of the conflict of interest this creates.

But that, as they say, is a topic for another day...


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Get help from the author of The Buyers Guide To Business Insurance (1993), and founder of Insurance Cost Reduction Services. Over $20 million in measurable savings delivered by helping buyers negotiate with their brokers. Here's where to get free support and direct help: www.contractorinsurancetoohigh.com www.icrs.biz