| Topic Name: |
agency |
| Message Name: |
Your Story |
| Date Posted: |
03/08/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
When I ??pathed back?? as they called it then, I was immediately approached my another AFE who wanted me to join his team as an agent. By that time I just wanted out and was done with it all. At the time I recognized that this was a turning point in my career and remember saying to myself that I would know in 5 years whether I was better or worse for the situation.
It has been close to 7 years now and I can say being fired was probably the best situation for me. I??ve kept in pretty close contact with my peers I went through the program with and strongly believe that I am in a much better situation not only financially, but also in my personal life as well.
After leaving SF I started my own business with several partners, who I bought out after a couple years. I ran the business on my own and ended up selling the business after 5 years of ownership. Currently I am part of a partnership in the process of purchasing another business. We are in transaction now and should have complete ownership in a year or two. In addition, my family is intact while several of my peers have had divorces and others from what I understand are on the verge.
The reason why I advocate caution when approaching becoming an agent with SF is because you are investing $30K of your own money as well as a great about of time and effort. It is not a guarantee, and like my situation, poor management or location can play a huge role in your success or failure.
You really need to know what you are getting into. The majority of your sales will be geared toward financial products. So why not just get appointed with Edward Jones? You will be building a book of business on your own. Why not open your own shop and get appointed with Safeco, Allied, Progressive, Unitrin/Kemper. The benefit is that by going this route you will build equity in what you build and can sell it when you are ready to retire. This is a huge benefit!
Hope this helps.
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| Message: |
I hear now if your an internal at SF and you go the agent career path and it doesn't work out you can't path back. I kind of take it that the company was getting burned on the training expense and other expenses incurred only to have the employee quit being an agent and return back to some other position. I wish I knew the percentage but I don't.
Sad but true the company managed you out is what they did.
I see a lot of similarities between your experience and mine. Quite frankly I thought employees were over managed as in you felt like a manager was hovering over your shoulder all of the time. Krimminey I thought they were going to put video camera's in the bathroom that's how it felt. Actually it was more like being in a prison to be descriptive of the company. Probably the worse was the airhead managers they had that seemed to move all around all of the time. To tell you how bad it was I happen to get a chance to meet with a few Graduate's working on their MS at a university and I mentioned that I once worked for SF and they said they had friends that interned at SF and advised them to stay away from SF. Definitely people are networking and finding out about SF's management.
Personally I couldn't believe the levels of management that existed within SF and couldn't imagine how they've gotten by with this structure for as long as they have. At best the only answer I can give is that they are thriving on the number of customers they have and that is about the only thing that keeps them afloat so to speak. By and far their current customers aren't shopping around because I would say they are in that age category/generation that by custom used an agent.
All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not there anymore. If your into the militarilistic type of work place then that's the place for you. If your innovative and creative and more free spirited just walk on by their door.
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