Where do I begin… Micromanaging is out of control. It seems as though the managers have nothing better to do than to tell you to sell more policies, but offer no real advice or coaching. There is a huge disconnect from the top down. CEO is out of touch with the insurance world and the restrictions the insurance carriers put on the agency. Sales managers are HIGHLY under-qualified, with some only having a few months of experience in such a role. This makes managers more of figureheads rather than actual leaders because they have no insurance knowledge and are not required to learn/keep up with insurance trends. There is no transparency at this organization, which is ironic considering it is one of its core “values.” You hear about important carrier/lender relations through the grape vine because they don’t want to reveal how much the company is struggling. If you try to raise concerns to management about how things are going, you are gaslit, called negative, or told you’re the only one that thinks this way. NOT TRUE. Most employees are unhappy and stressed because of the lack of leads, quality of leads, and increasing restrictions on the agency/insurance world in general. You will feel like just another number. At this point, this company only cares about sales. They decided to hire a lot of new agents in hopes to produce more sales, but without an increase in lead volume, what do you get? Sales now spread across many more agents, resulting in lower sales volume per agent. When you have to hit a minimum of 70 policies per month to even get a decent bonus, sit in available for 3 hours a day doing nothing, and the quality of leads decrease because of the insurance climate, it’s just a waste of your time. Disconnect between ISRs and agents. ISRs do not care about sending over quality leads because their bonus depends on it. This creates a more hostile and divided working environment between to two departments. They are not throughly trained on simple insurance knowledge to help weed out certain leads and will tell a customer lies just to get them over to us- hurting our close rate and wasting our time. Not to mention, their base pay starts higher. This company does not care about their customers or the quality of the policies being written. They are extremely short staffed in the customer service department. This results in long wait times for customers (over an hour sometimes). These customers then call the agent’s line which 1. Takes agents out of the queue during long wait times, which means you’re touching less leads and 2. Takes time away from being able to sell and have to do someone else’s job and/or deal with angry customer complaints about the long wait times. They also knowingly allow agents to sell policies that do fit into legal obligations - not getting permission from customer or disregarding carrier underwriting rules. They just want the numbers. The problem with this is that while honest agents are making less money or no money selling policies, agents that are selling illegal policies and hurting our carrier and customer relations are making the most. Overall, this company is not a place where you can grow. Base pay is very little- you will find higher at most other sales positions. A lot of wasted time waiting for leads, just to get one that is not calling in for insurance or is unqualified. The company sends out surveys to get feedback, but doesn’t change and continues to belittle agents. Find a job elsewhere.
