| Topic Name: |
agency |
| Message Name: |
My Reasons I |
| Date Posted: |
03/06/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Frank,
Thank you for staying engaged in this dialogue. I also have not had much contact with management at State Farm but more with agents. These guys are all very positive although they warn me that the first year is a major hurdle to overcome that not everyone survives. I am still skeptical since they are all clearly very good salespeople but they don't need to sell me on the company since they are not recruting for State Farm.
I do have other job opportunities I could pursue but nothing that leads to "ownership" along the lines of this one. I'm waiting to hear back about base/commissions etc for a job working for an agent which is going to be the testing ground for me. If I'm not successful or what you are saying is true then I don't continue. If I can hit the ground and sell that will tell me a lot about this opportunity. I'm going to focus on the commercial area for an agent who has been very successful but hasn't had time to develop that area.
This is such a huge decision for me that I DO want to hear the negatives. It's been hard to put your comments and others in context without better understanding why this didn't work for you. Larry |
| Message: |
"not some call center in India, getting a different person everytime."
Ha I had to laugh when I read this comment that GONY posted. You have no idea what really goes on behind that PC in an agent's office. Ever wonder why I post so many negative comments? Read on.
I too like many thought SF's IT/Systems area was the utopia aka garden of Eden. Never in my life did I work with so many people with a distasteful attitude toward SF. Why if I was Bill King over that area I'd outsource it all to IBM, or Wipro, or EDS, or Satyam, or someone else and be done with it all. If they ever got their rear in gear and rolled out something useful and timely to an agent I would have been surprised to say the least.
I had one person tell me one day when I was studying for a certification exam that SF should pay for the exam fees. Geez their attitude was stick it to SF (or in other words the customer). One person said that he didn't worry about his job because SF had plenty of money. I can't tell you how many times Adm. Services had to send service people out to unclog a toilet somewhere where some dumbass employee threw a bunch of paper towels into the toilet and flushed it. The worse bathroom in the Corp. South complex was the one outside Dick Shellito's (one seat below Bill King) office. I'd find toilets not flushed as well as urinals. Used paper towels thrown on the floor that some lowly cleaning person had to pick that crap up. Why 10 year olds act better than those employees did. I met employees that had been there for years earning I bet 90K or more that hadn't picked up a technical manual in 25 years. Ha and GM and Ford think they have employee problems. Why if those people had to really find a job they'd starve.
I was totally shocked and appalled at what little those employees knew about what an agent actually did in their office. If I had one word to describe that IT area it would be CHAOS. I had managers that didn't have a friggin clue about what they were supporting. An opening would become available and they'd go get someone that had not a spec of IT experience to fill the position. Worse yet were those offshore contracted people from India that knew what about insurance? Nearly nothing at all! In my opinion the shit they programmed was just that shit!
When I was there no agent and I mean no agent could even load any software onto their system. I don't care how good it was or where you bought or got it from the answer was NO your not going to load or install it. In some ways I could see reason(s) why they didn't want to let agents do this but there seemed to be no flexibility what so ever. NONE!
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