In the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis (and subsequent movie starring Brad Pitt), the Oakland Athletics baseball team, led by general manager Billy Beane, used data-driven analytics and sabermetrics to build a competitive roster despite having one of the lowest budgets in Major League Baseball. In a world where data is king, there is no reason why insurance brokers can’t use a similar “Moneyball” data-driven approach to improve producer performance and accelerate revenue growth.
The insurance brokerage industry continues to face a wide variety of pressures. Competition for the best and the brightest in a tight talent market, shifting client expectations, and rising demands on producers to grow revenue faster each year are just the tip of the iceberg. In this environment, leaders who still rely on anecdotal assessments or “manager’s instinct” when coaching their producers are probably putting them (and their firm) at a disadvantage. The firms gaining an edge today are doing something different. They are grounding producer development in data — clear, actionable, benchmarked data that sharpens coaching, improves accountability, and strengthens all aspects of sales, including velocity.
Why data matters
Data delivers clarity and credibility, both of which increase coaching impact. Too often, coaching defaults to generalities: “Your numbers need to improve.” “You need more activity.” “You should be writing larger accounts.” Maybe all of those things are true, but these comments lack intentionality and precision, and because of that, they’re not supercharged to inspire new behavior. While all three questions above tie into the same issue, more detail is needed to effectively coach your team. What activity needs improvement, and what should you stop doing? How is a producer pre-qualifying a lead to ensure it’s the right revenue size to help their book grow and increase sales velocity? How does your producer compare to the rest of the industry? Access to data changes that conversation.
When sales leaders can anchor their conclusions to specific metrics (e.g., average account size, new business written, total number of accounts, year-over-year book growth, or industry percentile rankings) coaching becomes clearer, fairer, and more productive. Producers no longer guess at expectations; they see them. They know where they stand and what they’re aiming for. They’re engaging with a leader who is no longer basing their statements on feelings but on real-world evidence.
The power of benchmarking to deepen producer development
Many firms collect internal metrics, which are valuable and necessary but only work for internal comparison. That is a severely limited approach. It’s like a baseball team believing that its best hitter’s .150 batting average is impressive and encouraging everyone on the team to aim for it — while the league’s top hitters are batting twice that.
In preparing this article, we used MarshBerry’s Producer Stack Rankings (which collects data related to the activities of more than 4,600 producers at over 1,400 firms to help illustrate this point).1 We selected a firm entirely at random and chose their third-highest producer for new business. Ranking third isn’t terrible within this firm. But what was their rank compared to the rest of the industry? Answer: 4,167th. External benchmarking elevates coaching by revealing what “good” truly looks like. The value of such data is not the data itself, but the conversation the data enables.
This data-driven conversation creates three advantages:
- Alignment and understanding. Producers understand how their book compares internally and externally. Industry-wide benchmarks give context: a $1M book may appear strong out of context, but within the context of a comparable peer group it might be average or even below.
- Accountability that feels objective, not subjective. Data removes ambiguity. Coaching shifts from opinion (e.g., “I think you could be performing better”) to observation (e.g., “Compared to similar producers, your average account size is 30% lower. Let’s talk about a strategy to win larger revenue accounts.”).
- Clearer pathways to growth. Instead of vague improvement goals, producers receive targeted direction. (e.g., “Let’s strive to increase average account size to X, expand multi-line penetration by Y, adjust your prospecting lists to target Z, and refine the qualification strategies you’re using.”)
The cornerstone metric: Sales velocity
Sales velocity — which measures the amount of the current year’s new business as a percentage of prior year commissions and fees — is one of the clearest indicators of producer health. Because sales velocity reflects revenue added beyond renewals, it helps firms understand whether growth is incremental or transformational. When producers understand the drivers behind their sales velocity and are given well-defined, data-based metrics, coaching conversations become both more strategic and more motivational.
Building a firm-wide, data-driven producer culture
High-growth firms don’t view data as a report. They treat it as a management philosophy. A data-driven culture is often characterized by early intervention (catching issues before they become chronic), consistent coaching rhythms (producers know when conversations will occur and what data will be discussed), and goal-setting tied to controllable behaviors. Taken together, this develops into a shared language of performance. Holding data-driven conversations helps producers understand the expectations for their category and forge a clear plan for reaching the next echelon.
