Excel, insurance proposal software, or a custom sales system: which fits a benefits agency?

How do the three options compare?

When is doing it by hand the better choice?

Doing it by hand is the better choice when proposals are rare. If you quote a few groups a year, an Excel template and the carrier quote will do. The cost shows up when volume goes up. A typical renewal has 2 or 3 plans. Someone finds last year’s quote, hand types the comparison, and does the increase math. Rushing it is where you miss a rate, do the wrong math, and go blind from all of the individual cells in the spreadsheet.

When is insurance proposal software the better choice?

Insurance proposal software is the better choice when your agency runs a large volume of group renewals and RFPs and is happy working inside a vendor’s product. Plansight is built for benefits brokers: it reads carrier proposals, builds the quote comparison spreadsheet as quotes come in, and connects to agency systems like BenefitPoint. If that covers your problem, buy it.

The tradeoff is that you work the way the product works. The proposal looks like the product’s template, and the deal room and the notetaker are separate purchases from separate companies.

When is an off the shelf note taker the better choice?

An off the shelf AI note taker is the better choice when you want notes tomorrow and don’t need them to feed anything else. Fireflies and Otter both join Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls, transcribe them, and write a summary with action items. Otter also shows a live transcript and a live summary during the meeting.

I used Fireflies at my last company. When I left, I built my own Mac app instead of a Fireflies alternative off the shelf. It records my microphone and the call audio separately and transcribes on my Mac. In my experience, the summary is saved within 60 seconds of the call ending, and nothing leaves the Mac. The live copilot once flagged, privately, that a prospect named one priority and then a different one 20 minutes later.

When is digital sales room software the better choice?

Digital sales room software is the better choice for a sales team that already runs a large content library. Highspot and GetAccept both sell digital sales rooms with engagement tracking, and GetAccept includes mutual action plans. Those products are built for sales teams with marketing departments behind them.

My deal rooms do a smaller set of things for a benefits sale. The first page is a mutual action plan I fill in myself, pasting from meeting summaries an automation dropped into my CRM. I get an email when a new stakeholder opens the room for the first time. There’s a welcome video from me, documents picked to forward to the buying committee, and client references when needed. Gartner found buying groups now range from five to 16 people across as many as four functions. Most of those people you’ll never meet, so the room does the talking.

When is a custom system the better choice?

A custom system is the better choice when the problem is the handoff between tools. The quote becomes the proposal, and one click creates the group in the enrollment platform with a QR code on the booklet. The renewal lines up against the current quote automatically. The meeting summary lands where I can paste it into the deal room, and I decide what goes in the plan. That chain is what I built and use at my own desk, and it’s what DoBetter builds for an agency, on the agency’s own brand.

Quick answers

Can I mix these?

Yes. Keep the note taker you like and build the proposal generator.

Is custom slower to start?

The proposal generator comes first. The rest follows in stages.

Who keeps a custom system running?

I do, if you choose the optional monthly support.

Where do I start?

With the proposal generator, built from the quotes your carriers actually send.