Pros
I can NOT think of a single positive thing about this company.
Cons
***I highly encourage anyone who is applying to work at this company to please read this. I am going to share my experience that I had with this company. Not everyone had the same experience that I did, but I am no longer at this company for a reason*** Best Practice One thing that always annoyed me at this company was the term “best practice.” As soon as one high producing agent hits some record, it instantly becomes best practice within the company and all agents are expected to adapt to this process. I understand breaking records and always trying to be the best, but at the end of the day, other agencies are doing similar things that we are. This company teaches us that all other agencies are bad and that every single insurance agent is in debt and that they hate their lives. This is simply not true. Sure, this company is efficient at times, but not everything you touch is best practice. Your incredibly high turnover rate for both clients and employees would not be what it is if you truly had “best practice” in the industry. Company Hours This is a statement that is said around this company is that, “A 10 hour work day is normal.” 8:00am-6:00 pm are the posted company hours. It is frowned upon to show up at 8:00am and leave at 6:00pm. Sure, management will tell us that they will not guilt trip us if we show up at 8:05am and leave at 6:00pm, but yes, they keep track of this. You are expected to be in the office at 7:45am and should stay until at least 6:15pm. This is the norm. Once a month (especially if the company is behind), some of the managers will send an email saying that they will be working in the office on Saturday for a few hours. This is optional to attend, but they will pressure you into attending and will note if you aren’t there. You can say goodbye to any chance of having a social life with this schedule. At this company, you are expected to work at all times. You are expected to always be on the phone or sending an email or making contact with a new business partner. It is exhausting, even for highly skilled and talented individuals. Another fun statement that is said is that “highly successful people do not get into the office past 9am.” Well, the successful people who I know work from home and hold their own hours, but okay… After-all, everything at this company is “best practice,” right? Monoline This annoyed me the most. It is frowned upon at this company to sell one line of business. What does this mean? Well, I will explain. Lets say that you are in need of car insurance. You give your good friend a call at this agency and you need a quote. The agents are trained to get multiple lines of business from you. They will try to sell you a home policy or a renters policy or an umbrella policy or a flood policy or something to go with your auto policy. Mono line policies have to be approved by a manager and it can be very difficult to do this. It is also frowned upon. They tell us that it is all due to client retention and that we just need to deal with it. This company does not have a very competitive auto product (besides Progressive). It makes selling insurance very difficult when you do not have a competitive auto product. Often times, agents are forced to tell potential clients that it is a requirement (or qualifier) to have multiple lines of business with a particular carrier or within our agency. This results in the client sometimes paying more money for insurance when their current company was just fine in the first place. I do not think that this is right and gives added pressure on selling insurance. Saturated Market Leadership will deny this until the end of time. They will never actually admit that they have an issue here. They will feed agents numbers every couple of weeks with the loan officers who are NOT working with this company. What they don’t realize is that these LO’s are not working with us for a reason. I do not remember how many loan officer offices that I have been kicked out of due to terrible past issues with this company. Either an agency partner messed up a relationship or a young inexperience agent screws up a few too many deals, either way it is tough to get a network started in Dallas. If you are wanting to work for this company (after everything I have listed), I would recommend a market outside of Dallas. Pay Structure I will say that the leadership team does a great job of explaining this to new hires. They fully explain the numbers and what you need to hit in order to hit certain goals and bonuses. What they don’t tell you is how incredibly difficult that it is to hit these metrics. You can get a bonus 2 ways. 1. Ramp up bonus: this is basically for agents 2 years and under. If you hit a certain number, then you will get a bonus. 2. Corporate incentives: this is constructed by the sales leadership of the company and is different each month. The goals that agents are presented with is represented in new business revenue and not actual premium sold. In order to get this number, you take the premium that you sold, multiply it by the commission rate of the carrier you sold with (each carrier is different) and then you add your AGENCY FEES to this number. Yes, if selling with this company wasn’t already difficult enough, this company charges agency fees to its clients. You will be on the base salary until you become commissionable. This “honor” is determined by your manager. You will make a 40k base until you are able to hit the commissionable number. It was very difficult to hit the sales numbers to get commissionable (especially in the 1st and 4th quarters). If you have debt, loans, and/or payments of any sort, I would look at working for another company. Weekly Sales Meetings 8:00am every Monday morning. This meeting is when the sales leadership members get in front of everyone and tells us the numbers. Each office head then goes and discusses individual performers and then we get on to the topic. I did enjoy how they recognized everyone during the meeting. It was nice to be given a shoutout in front of the entire sales floor. What I did not like were to topics that they discussed. Waste of time. At least once a month, they would go over how much the top performers were making and would even share their paychecks with us. I think that this is a huge privacy violation, but I don’t think that the company really cared. They did this to show us that if we worked as hard as they did in the beginning, then we too could earn massive paychecks. Since I am being brutally honest during this review, you couldn’t pay me enough money to go through the things that those agents go through. They are great people and I truly mean that, but they are chained to their desk and are slightly bitter while in the office. I do not mean to speak for them, but the stress seems to be getting to them. It is unhealthy and I truly hope that they can de stress a little bit. They are seriously good people who are just being over worked. No Complaining This company does not allow you to complain. At first, I really liked this rule. Then, I started to notice that it created a really fake work environment where you really can not voice your opinion. Management sets everything and they truly believe that everything is “best practice” and therefore you can never go against what they want you to do. When I first started my job, I was told that I could not listen to music (with headphones) in the office because I needed to listen to the people who were around me. I voiced my opinion about it and was then lectured about how listening to music will distract you from doing your job and best practice is to listen to others. Awesome, so I didn’t listen to music in the office while I worked because I was afraid that I would get in trouble. Never again will I ever be told something like that. Sales Coaches/Managers When you get about halfway through training, you will be assigned a sales coach and a team. The team is headed by a manager. Your sales coach will guide you through the first 3 months of your job. Being paired with the right sales coach and make or break your career. Your sales coach will basically teach you everything that you need to know about the company and go over their sales process with you. I wish that young agents could have a say in who their sales coach will be. If you do not have a good fit with your sales coach, good luck at this company.