A few weeks ago I told you I was on the struggle bus.

In one of the worst slumps of my career, I hadnt closed anything since December. January, February, March came and went without a peep. I had a small cross-sell pop in March for about $13K. But outside of that? Nada.

I've been doing this for quite a while, and I've had dry spells before, but being in a slump never gets easier. It messes with your head, I don't care how seasoned you are.

Am I ever going to write anything again?

A lot of you reached out after that one and told me you were going through the same thing. So I figured I owed you an update.

Here's what happened.

And even that one almost didn't happen.

She called me three hours after we'd agreed to move forward to tell me her incumbent had dropped their price by $30 grand. I hung up and figured it was dead. The next morning she called back, “We're going with you.”

Thank you Jesus.

I had done the work during the due diligence and found some coverage stuff, and payroll classification issues that exposed some real sloppiness in how her account was being handled. She appreciated it. So when it came down to it, she trusted the process we'd been through more than she trusted a last-minute price drop from a guy who'd been asleep at the wheel.

That one felt good.

That one had its own mess too.

I thought I could AOR a policy, but found out I couldn't because we didn't have access to the market.

Bummer.

Luckily, I managed to out quote with a carrier relationship I've been crushing with. Never under-estimate what a banger underwriter relationship can pull off for you.

And then the big one.

These guys had been with their broker for over a decade.

The reason they took my call in the first place was that their rates kept going up. But when I got in the room, the real issue was way more basic than that.

Last year's renewal was so disorganized they didn't even get an official proposal until after the policy had already bound. Their broker just wasn't running the renewal process well, wasn't communicating worth a flip, and wasn't making them feel like anyone was paying attention.

$115K account being underserved. Mind blown.

I went in, did my due diligence, showed them a benchmark report, introduced a captive concept their broker had never mentioned, and then told them I wanted their business.

Then I basically went quiet for a month.

Five weeks later they came back, “we're moving forward with you.”

Hallelujah.

So what actually made the difference?

Honestly a few things stand out.

None of those deals were clean.

Every single one of them almost went the other way. The $16K client called to cancel. The $35K deal had a market access problem I didn't see coming. The $115K was a decade-long relationship I had little chance to crack.

If any two of those go sideways, I'm writing a very different newsletter right now.

Very few deals are clean and easy.

You have to fight, scrap, and claw for 95% of deals in my experience.

Even during the worst of it.

My follow-up later list I keep next to my phone kept me sane.

I could see what was coming even when nothing was landing. And a lot of what just closed came from calls I made back in January and February. That's a tough part about this job. Delayed gratification. The work you're doing right now doesn't show up on the scoreboard for months or years.

Keep filling that pipeline, no matter what.

Almost everything I closed was won on service, not price.

Four out of my five deals this year came down to a client who felt ignored, disorganized renewals, or a broker who had just stopped paying attention. I didn't come in dramatically cheaper. Sometimes I actually came in $30K higher.

But I came in more prepared, more communicative, and I ran a better process. That's it.

If you're in a slump right now, I'm not going to tell you to stay positive. I'm going to tell you to keep calling, keep your follow up later list in front of you, and trust that what you're building right now is going to show up eventually.

It always does. -MS