Anyone who has worked in a brokerage knows the renewal season grind is real. Seasonal hires. Staff putting in 60-plus-hour weeks. Reams of spreadsheets built by hand, page by page, before a single client presentation can go out the door.
For HUB International Gulf South, it was an annual ritual with serious consequences. With 11 offices across five states and more than 2,300 clients ranging from two to 100,000 employees, the margin for error was nearly zero and the tolerance for inefficiency even smaller.
How manual quoting created errors and burned out renewal teams
The biggest risk was errors, and there were plenty of places for them to enter. Getting census data from employer groups. Collecting carrier proposals. Manually re-entering everything into spreadsheets that were then printed and bound. Any mistake at any step meant going back to check everything again.
The expectation was accuracy. The process made that nearly impossible to guarantee.
“98% of the job was working in spreadsheets, and we would spend most of the year just preparing for Q4 renewals,” says Emily Richmond, former HUB International Gulf South Consultant Specialist.
The sheer number of people touching a single renewal made miscommunication almost inevitable. Seasonal workers, brought on specifically to handle the volume surge, were often learning the job at the same moment they were expected to get client data exactly right.
“There are so many little details, different carriers and contacts. You’re drinking from a firehose for at least a year before you know what you’re doing,” says Dana Wilcox, Operations Manager for HUB International Gulf South.
Triple-checking work before the deadline helped, but it did not solve the problem. It just redistributed the burden onto the people who already had the least time to carry it.
Why HUB International Gulf South chose PerfectQuote
“We weren’t tracking metrics for marketing, and we honestly weren’t really looking for a technology solution when we heard about PerfectQuote. Before that the answer was just staffing increases. But when we saw the platform, we immediately saw the potential,” Dana says.
With such a broad range of group sizes, HUB International Gulf South went with an Enterprise subscription of PerfectQuote to ensure they could handle any size group while still maintaining a dedicated team focused on small business.
The transition was not without friction. At first, the pushback was universal. This was not how things were done. But management saw what was possible, and once consultants and producers got time with the platform, they came around.
“We knew that this could be powerful, but we’d have to make some changes to take advantage of the benefits. So we leaned all the way into it and decided we were going to make this work,” Dana says.
The company invested in tablets and additional monitors to make digital presenting easier and reworked internal workflows from the ground up. What used to take consultants paper draft after paper draft to decide what to show a client now takes a quick look at PerfectQuote before a single page prints.
When faster quoting changed everything
The shift from skepticism to conviction often comes down to a single moment. For one consultant, it was a client in western Louisiana.
He was about to leave for a four-hour drive to make a client meeting when a new carrier quote came in. Under the old system, that would have meant either missing the meeting or walking in without the latest data. Instead, the team imported the quote, dropped it into the presentation, and reprinted it on the spot. He made the meeting. Nothing was rescheduled. No relationship was put at risk.
That kind of response, which would have been impossible before, became routine.
No seasonal hires, fewer errors and a more efficient book of business
The operational gains were immediate. HUB International Gulf South no longer brings on seasonal staff to survive renewal season. The three or more temp workers hired every Q4, plus the overtime that accompanied them, are gone. Proposals go out faster. Decisions get made with more confidence because the information is already there.
The question was never whether the agency could grow. It was whether they could scale without the answer always being more people. PerfectQuote settled that.
But the change Dana points to most often is not about headcount or cost. It is about what the work itself became.
“There’s no delay anymore. Information is accessible at a moment’s notice. It’s really helped to create a more dynamic work environment,” Dana says. “Our processes are so much more streamlined now.”
The consultant specialist role stopped being a data entry job. It became something closer to what the title always implied: actual consulting. With more time available, the team found room to negotiate better rates on larger groups and give client service the focus it deserved. With all the time recovered from manual processes, the team gained something more valuable than efficiency: a clearer view of their book of business and the bandwidth to act on it.
“It’s completely changed the culture. PerfectQuote has had a positive impact on everyone that touches a quote or interfaces with a client,” Emily says.
The results have not gone unnoticed inside the company. Other offices have taken notice, and HUB International Gulf South is now making the case for broader adoption across the organization. The next step is moving toward fully digital client presentations and leaving the spreadsheet era behind for good.
“It’s absolutely a necessary tool for Marketing. Having seen the difference it makes, I wouldn’t want to work somewhere without software like this,” Emily says.
Ready to see what’s possible for your agency?
If your team is buried under spreadsheets and manual processes, and struggling to get the right data at the right time, PerfectQuote can help.
Schedule a live demo today to see how agencies like HUB International Gulf South are saving time, reducing errors, and scaling without adding headcount.