How to Find 3-Star Prospects With 5-Star Potential

• September 1, 2026

By Micah Salas

One of the hardest calls you’ll make as a producer, especially when you’re still building your book, is deciding when to walk away from a prospect and when to keep pushing.

I get it. It feels empowering to say no, and there’s real utility to being selective with your time and energy. If you spend your career grinding away on accounts that are too small or just not a good fit, you’re going to end up overly busy, underpaid and wondering why your book isn’t growing the way you want it to.

But here’s the other side of that coin. Some of my best clients started as what I’d call a “three-star prospect.” A newer company, one to three years in, maybe with an agent, and clearly in need of help. They’re the ones I took a chance on, and it worked out really well.

When you start with someone when they’re small and grow with them, they often become fiercely loyal because they remember who showed up for them when they were in a world of hurt.

It’s not a guarantee, and once they grow other producers will come sniffing around, but if you did your job and were there for them, they remember that. So here’s the deal: If you’re going to make exceptions for three-star prospects, you better be able to see five-star potential in them.

Over the years, I’ve found some pretty consistent signals that tell you whether that potential is real. Here they are:

1) Ambition and the “it factor.” A lot of what I look for is psychographic rather than demographic. And the biggest one is ambition. I’ll meet a contractor who’s two or three years in with only a few million in revenue, but I can just tell he’s a mover and a shaker. He’s got that it factor. He gets things done. His whole life, he’s been someone who takes chances, pushes forward and figures it out, and there’s a real hunger for growth you can feel in the conversation. You can’t fake that. When you see it, you know it.

2) They’ve done this before. The next thing I want to know is whether this is a side hobby someone’s taking a flyer on, or someone who’s been building toward this moment their whole career. Did they go to school for this? Did their dad do it? Have they spent three years as a project manager at a big construction firm, learning the craft before going out on their own? That background and reasoning matter—and not just to you, because underwriters are going to ask about it too.

3) They take pride. We’ve all gotten calls from people who couldn’t care less about their coverage. But then there are buyers who, even if they’re not insurance nerds, are genuinely engaged. They ask good questions, listen when you’re talking about what matters, and you can just tell they actually want to make sure their business is protected. That tells me a lot about how they run everything else in their operation.

4) They want a partner, not a vendor. I’m not spending my time on a three-star prospect if they’re treating me like just another person to get a certificate from. That’s a dead end, and I don’t have time for that. But if they’re genuinely looking for someone to grow with, then I’m in.

Partnerships lead to referrals, real relationships, and an account that compounds over time—and that’s exactly what you’re looking for when you decide to make an exception for a smaller prospect. Partners scale. Vendors flail.

5) How they treat their people. This is probably the most telling signal of all. And I’ve seen it play out over and over again across a lot of contractors of all different sizes. The ones who turn into five-stars genuinely care about their people, and you can feel and see the difference in a first meeting.

I’ll ask about benefits and just listen to how they respond. They don’t have to be able to offer benefits to pass that test—plenty of small operators can’t yet—but if someone says “I don’t really care” or “I can’t find any good help, these workers all suck,” that’s a signal you don’t want to ignore. Negative people tend to stay small, and they tend to make your life miserable along the way, too.

Find all five of these things in a smaller prospect, and I think there’s a real chance that a three-star prospect turns into one of your best five-star clients down the road.

Micah Salas is senior vice president of Christensen Group Insurance and co-host of “The Max Revenue Show,” where he and Trey Shields talk prospecting, sales and productivity for growth-minded producers.