Improve on Training and New Agent Support
Pros
If you are looking to have a salary while beginning your career as a new and upcoming Insurance Agent, this is a good place to start as long as you have a large enough group of friends and family willing to allow you to pitch a sale. The online training system is very informative if you are willing to take the time to go through each video and take a lot of notes. If you are making your "benchmarks" you have the ability to have a very flexible schedule when you're not tied up servicing your inherited book of business. Their Sales Process is one of the best since it is based on building long-term trust based relationships with the clients and provides an opportunity to cross-sell. Problem is a lot of the agents do not use it!
Cons
There's a major GAP that exists between CAL School(corporate new rep training) and the preparation for a new Rep to actually have the opportunity to succeed. After an excellent week of informative training on the sales process at CAL, many agents are thrown out to the wolves on their return to the home office without a clue on how to attract clients and overcome the objections we are often faced with. Mainly dependent upon lack of brand recognition, I cannot count the number of times I have had to explain that we were not a loan finance company or associated with Country Wide mortgage company in anyway. Which I already expected I would be faced with anyway. But it is one more battle you have to overcome in my particular area. Back to the GAP, COMM center is a great support system but it cannot teach us everything! Constantly having to call the tech support is no way for an agent to learn along the way... especially when simple problems pops up when you're sitting with a client. Most of these "how to" issues can be avoided with a strong mentorship program in place. However, the other employee reps in the office do not have the time because they are too busy servicing their own book of business and trying to stay ahead of the benchmark system to avoid a $1500 deduction out of their paycheck for missing the mark! Yup, you read that right, no typo... deductions range from $1000-$1500 for missing your mark! Do not get me wrong, if you're not doing your job which is producing business, you should be penalized because the company cannot afford to pay salaries to reps that cannot bring in more business. The problem arises when the company preaches the best source of business comes from referrals, yet does not give the appropriate time for new reps to build community rapport. In 5 months you are on the Benchmark system, meaning you will be faced with an inevitable $1000 deduction from your pay. I have not seen many reps avoid it thus far!!! And I think that speaks volumes! To some, 5 months may seem like a lot, especially if you are a seasoned agent, but to us newbies, 5 months to train, learn the company products, go to CAL, build strong relationships with referral sources, etc is an unrealistic feat. Which probably explains the high turnover rate! Not many people can afford too many $1500 deductions when they have a family to support. I have witnessed good reps who work their butts off for the company still be deducted, not because they didn't make their numbers but because the policies they have written have not been issued by underwriting??! I mean, seriously??? But that is a whole different issue. There are a lot of issues that are easily fixable if corporate will take an honest look at what is going wrong, yes there will be bad apples in the bunch, but you will rarely get a whole bag of bad apples, and if you do, it's probably the farmer's error. #justsaying Overall here are my list of Con's: *GAP in new agent support system *Lack of Brand Recognition *Unrealistic expectations of new agents that lack the appropriate support system *If you do not have a referral based system established, you will have to rely on leads purchased with your own money with a very small close rate. *Agents should be Agents, not CSRs *Management is stretched way to thin, I cannot even blame my manager because there is way too much area too cover and it would be extremely difficult to mentor every rep. *In order to play with the big dogs in a local area, people need to know who you are, the trademark should be easy to recognize. Reps cannot afford to rent an $800 billboard when they're constantly being deducted $1000 every couple of months. So either rent it for them, and make the pitch a little smoother or stop wondering why they keep coming up short. *The life underwriting process is ridiculous, can end up costing you some of your pay. For this to be a Life Insurance enthusiast company, you'd think that it would be top notch.
