Sterling Benefits
BACKGROUND
Sterling Benefits is an employee benefits brokerage built on the relationships its producers create in the field. Chris Whitney, Partner at Sterling Benefits, has worked with Zywave since 2016 across multiple firms, and Sterling Benefits has been a Zywave customer since 2023, having invested in both Sales Cloud and Client Cloud.
Chris keeps a close eye on where producer time actually goes, and the math on cold outreach never worked. Producers were writing emails to people they had never met, often after paying for bad contact data through third-party data vendors, for a return that rarely justified the hours. Sterling Benefits needed a way to keep that pipeline moving without pulling producers away from the higher value activity that builds the book: warm relationships and referrals.
- Saves producers' time
- Automates cold outreach
- Strong customer support
- Hands-on, responsive Zywave support throughout the pilot
- Collaborative implementation process with active iteration and improvement
- Strong long-term potential with a clear roadmap for continued growth
- Saves producers 10+ hours per week
- Reduces manual prospecting effort
- Potential to generate new business with minimal producer time investment
OPPORTUNITY
Sterling had already tried solving this problem once, hiring an outside cold calling service at a previous firm. It cost more than it returned. So, when Sterling's Zywave rep introduced Producer Agent, part of the Zywave Apex™ AI platform, Chris saw a different path: let AI aggregate the data, build the sequences, and run the outreach in the background, so producers spend their time on warm leads instead of cold ones.
The goal was straightforward. Automate the low probability, high effort work of cold prospecting so producers could redirect their time toward the relationships most likely to close. Chris set a simple internal benchmark: if the program helped close even one or two sizable accounts over 12 months, it would pay for itself.
SOLUTION
Sterling Benefits joined the Producer Agent early adopter program, putting Zywave Apex to work on cold email outreach. Producer Agent pulls together prospect and contact data, drafts outreach sequences, and runs them automatically, so producers are not manually researching, writing, and sending emails to prospects they have never spoken with.
The appeal for Chris was simple: give producers back their time to focus on building client relationships and growing the business.
Ninety-five percent of the time should be spent out and about, not sitting behind a computer. If companies don’t have a tool like this, they are still going to spend a lot of time gathering contact information, pulling leads, and then structuring and creating emails.
WORKING THROUGH THE
EARLY ADOPTER PROGRAM
The [Zywave] team has been there to help and has responded very quickly.
I knew a little bit of what we were getting into when we went into an early adopter program. The team has been great about responding whenever needed."
RESULTS
Chris sees that shift as the real win. Cold outreach should be a small share of a producer's week, not the default.
Ninety five percent of the time should be spent out and about, not sitting behind a computer. I don't want my producers spending time on something that yields a very low percentage of wins… If I get three to five clients a year, it's worth it for me.