AI for Commercial Insurance Account Manager

of 4— Set up Perplexity and understand how it works

What you'll accomplish

By the end of this guide, you'll know how to use Perplexity Pro to produce cited, up-to-date competitive intelligence snapshots for your clients in 30-45 minutes — compared to the 3-5 hours the same research currently takes through manual Google searches and article reading.

What you'll need

A Perplexity account at perplexity.ai (free tier works for getting started; Pro is $20/mo for more searches and longer answers)
The competitor brand names and product categories you're researching
A client context document or brief to frame the research
Time needed: 30-45 minutes per competitive snapshot
Cost: Free tier available; $20/month for Perplexity Pro (more searches, longer answers, better model)

How-To Guide: Use Perplexity Pro for Competitive Intelligence

Step 1: Set up Perplexity and understand how it works

Go to perplexity.ai and create a free account (sign in with Google for fastest setup)
Perplexity is different from ChatGPT — it searches the web in real-time and shows you the sources for every answer. This matters for competitive research: you're getting current information, not AI knowledge that might be 1-2 years old.
Look at the interface: there's a search bar in the center, a "Focus" dropdown (set to "Web" for competitive research), and a "Pro Search" toggle (blue icon; use this for more thorough multi-step research).

What you should see: A clean search interface similar to Google, but with an AI response at the top and cited sources listed on the side or below.

Tools:Difficulty: EasyResearch TypeCompetitor campaignsCategory trendsProspect researchBrand voice analysisChatGPTClaudeMake