| Topic Name: |
agency |
| Message Name: |
Becareful |
| Date Posted: |
03/01/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Hi FrankBurns,
Thanks for reponding to my post about State Farm. What is your experience with the company? Did you work for them as an agent? Why are you so negative about them?
Thanks,
Larryreid |
| Message: |
Larry,
Yes I was an agent and my experience was pretty negative. There are going to be a lot of factors that contribute to your success as an agent, and may of these factors are beyond your control. Unfortunately, the factor that contributed the most to my demise was my AFE.
You will become a successful SF agent if you choose a small rural location. If you grew up in the location and have many contacts, family and friends, you will more than likely have a successful agency.
Make sure you evaluate the opportunity carefully. Realize that creative marketing is not SF??s strong suite and the preferred marketing strategy is cold calling. Seems like many of the so called opportunities SF has available are ??scratch agency??s?? meaning you must develop your own book of business. You will need approx. 1000+ clients to be considered a successful agent and in the money so to speak. If you make 100 cold calls, you will probably quote 10 people, and of those 10 you will probably write 2. Thus, to get 1000 clients you will need to make 50,000 cold calls over the course of several years. Does this sound like fun?
There are a couple things you need to keep in mind about becoming a SF agent. The most important is that when SF, Farmers and Allstate want to increase market share in a given area, they appoint additional agents in that location. To attract new agents, these companies tend to over state what they offer. Yes, what they promote can be achieved, but only by a very rare few. Since you are a captive agent, you are at the mercy of the appetite of the company. What this means is that if SF doesn??t want to write a certain type of business, or their rates are uncompetitive, you are out of luck in terms of sales. This will be frustrating for you as you will be hustling to bring in new clients, and SF will be picking and choosing those they want to insure and those they don??t. Remember, SF has 20 ?? 25% market share. They don??t want to grow much more than that overall, but they do want to grow in selective markets and classes of business. This means they will limit your ability to write certain classes of business, but will allow you to write others, until they reach a saturation point.
Good luck to you. Make sure you explore all your career opportunities Many will offer you similar work situations without making a financial commitment. Additionally, if you are married, this can also add great stress to your relationship. Divorce is a common occurrence for new agents.
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