NAPAA - National Association of Professional Allstate Agents, Inc.

feature
Anticipating our New Future
One agent’s perspective
commanders, are sometimes credited
with incredible luck in overcoming certain
adversities. In reality, they simply
apply their learned powers of deductive
reasoning. That is, for them, it is a matter
of looking at the past in order to anticipate
what might happen in the future,
and then act accordingly.
In spite of the obvious benefits of using
historical knowledge, there are those
of us who prefer tackling life’s challenges
as they come along. These “free spirits”
are frequently destined to repeat avoidable
mistakes until “history” catches up
with them.
Someone once said, “Telling the future
by looking at the past is like driving a car
by looking in the rearview mirror.”
The problem with this axiom is that
it assumes that we should all be amnesiacs
and wake up each day with a handicapped
ability to control our future actions
because we have no knowledge of
past events. Perhaps it might be more acceptable
to state: In order to anticipate the
future, one often has to look to the past. We
do exactly this on a daily basis, with little
or no conscious effort. We know, for example,
that if we leave home at an early
enough time, we can avoid the crush of
commuter traffic. We also recognize the
various stalling tactics teenagers utilize
just before bedtime. Our lives are built
on our ability to learn from past experi-
ence and through this gained knowledge,
we either modify our behavior, or failing
this, we simply accept the path unfolding
before us with all of its associated consequences.
In complete contravention to the last
axiom, if we are about to invest our precious
financial assets in mutual funds, we
are always cautioned: Past performance is
not a guarantee of future results. Although
this disclaimer is designed to absolve the
investment company from the ire of an
angry investor who has lost his fortune,
it does little in the way of changing our
habit of looking at the history of a fund
in order to attempt to predict its behavior
in the future.
People who are successful, such as
businesspeople, coaches and military
Hey Look….there’s Elvis!
These days, many, if not most, Allstate
agents are relatively new to the
company. Although a closely guarded
secret, the high agent turnover rate at
Allstate has arguably produced the most
inexperienced agency sales force in company
history. Recent hiring blitzes aside,
many of these new agents either sought
out what they thought was an entrepreneurial
opportunity, or they responded to
the lure of working for a large Fortune
500 company. Once in the hiring loop,
agents are promised they can: “be their
own boss,” “you can work independently,”
and “can partner with an industry powerhouse.”
Prospective agents are told they
can open an agency’s doors with as little
as $50,000 in liquid capital, but it seems
they are often hired with far less.
Because the hiring process is surprisingly
short (in some cases about two
months), prospective hires are afforded
little time to perform certain elements of
their due diligence prior to signing Allstate’s
EA agreement. Certainly, it would
be wise idea for them to “shadow” an existing
agency in a non-competing market,
or interview several existing agents
over the phone. But should prospective
Summer 2011 Exclusivefocus — 47