How Trailstone Insurance Doubled Its Close Rate by Rebuilding Its Website Around Trust

Trailstone Insurance’s Endless Customers Journey

Mark Rodgers founded Trailstone Insurance in 2013 as a one-person independent agency in Colorado. By 2019 it had about seven people. Today it’s approaching 70, serving home, auto, and commercial insurance clients across seven states.

Education has always been part of who Trailstone is.

As Mark, Trailstone’s President and Founder, put it:

“One of our core values is heart of a teacher … All we’re doing is educating people, helping people understand more about insurance.”

Mark first discovered They Ask, You Answer, now known as the Endless Customers System™, on a road trip in 2020 and became obsessed with it. But not everyone on the leadership team at the time was convinced, and some preferred to keep spending on advertising.

Trailstone’s previous website reflected that thinking.

Mark described it plainly:

“Everything is about lead generation. Nothing is about trust.”

It was expensive, and it didn’t perform. So Trailstone decided to rebuild with IMPACT.

Showing the humans behind the brand

When Marquece Cunningham joined as Marketing Director in 2025, he brought nearly 20 years of marketing experience and a belief that insurance needed far more transparency.

He explained:

“We want people to know that there are real humans behind the brand.”

That led to one of Trailstone’s boldest pieces of content: a video addressing its own one-star reviews, explaining what happened and what the agency is doing about it.

Marquece described the thinking:

“If something comes through that isn’t a good reflection of our agency, then we want to be able to address it and not just sweep it under the rug like a lot of companies will do.”

How they implemented

With coaching and website support from IMPACT, Trailstone Insurance:

• Rebuilt its website on HubSpot with IMPACT, starting with long conversations about Trailstone’s values and how it serves customers.

• Rewrote more than 160 pages, revisiting copy, images, alt tags, and schema on every one, and launched just one week past the original target date.

• Built an in-house video studio and a scheduling system with scripts ready in advance, so team members can prepare before filming.

• Made video part of hiring, asking candidates to record a short video about themselves and why they want to work at Trailstone.

• Addressed negative reviews openly, in a video instead of hiding them.

• Held quarterly alignment meetings modeled on IMPACT’s Alignment Day to keep the whole company on the same page.

Results

Mark and Marquece described what changed after the new site launched in late 2025:

• Close rate: leads are closing at about double the previous rate.

• Better-qualified leads: buyers arrive having done most of their research and already trusting the agency.

• Visibility into AI-driven buyers: HubSpot reporting now shows how visitors arrive from tools like ChatGPT, what they read, and when they reach out.

• Traffic recovered: after a roughly 40% drop following a domain change, website traffic has returned to its previous level.

Mark described seeing that first AI report:

“I can see the search string in ChatGPT. I can see what web page they clicked on, how long they were there. Then they clicked the form to get help. And then we reached out 20 minutes later and we closed them like a week later.”

Why coaching mattered

Trailstone runs on EOS, and Mark learned the hard way that trying to self-implement a system usually means doing only part of it. He sees Endless Customers the same way.

He explained:

“The accountability is key. Because we tell ourselves stories, hallucinations of what we’re doing.”

Marquece, who has built close to 300 websites in his career, credited IMPACT’s Janet for keeping the rebuild thorough and on schedule, and for helping set up a site that can scale as technology and AI change.

What’s next

Trailstone is already focused on its next chapter:

• Producing the dozens of website videos it identified during the rebuild

• Creating bio videos for its team so buyers feel like they know someone before they call

• Using AI to give buyers more of what they want before they reach out, including faster quotes

• Exploring how to bring its content model to related industries

Marquece’s advice for other businesses:

“I would say stick with it and that it’s iterative.”

Want results like this in your business?

If your website is built to capture leads instead of earning trust, Trailstone’s story shows what can happen when you rebuild around education, transparency, and the real people behind your brand.

Curious where your business stands today? Take the free Instant Diagnostic to see how buyers and AI see you, or schedule time to talk with our team about what the Endless Customers Coaching Program could look like for you.