NAPAA - National Association of Professional Allstate Agents, Inc.

new hires raise this issue during the hiring
process, they are mostly discouraged
or are only given the names of agents
who espouse a “my company right or
wrong” philosophy.
One new agent I spoke to was specifically
told not to talk to existing agents
because there was a high probability they
would be fired and would only offer a
negative outlook. Comments like that
should raise some red flags. For starters,
it might be prudent for the prospective
agent to find out for himself why
the agents were being fired. Add to this
the fact that new hires are intentionally
peppered with meetings and other busy
work, as well as scouting for locations
for their new agency, all of which is designed
to keep their minds on things the
company wants and off the things the
company doesn’t want, such as learning
the truth. It is no wonder they are mostly
unaware of the unrest among the rank
and file agents.
As tenured agents sit on the sidelines
and watch Allstate’s latest hiring frenzy,
they can surely understand why the company
prefers a cloistered mindset for its
new agents. Allstate knows that with so
many distractions in its “rear view mirror,”
any new agent would likely be at
least a little gun-shy before deciding to
invest their life’s savings.
It should be paramount for any prospective
agent to know the chronological
history of the Allstate agent. Ideally,
Allstate should be proud of its heritage
and freely inform prospective agents of
the progression of agent positions and
employment status from the beginning
until present. But like a family with too
many dirty little secrets, Allstate does
not reveal its checkered past, fearing if
job candidates knew the real truth, they
would turn tail and run as fast as possible
in the opposite direction. Can you imagine
Tom Wilson, upon arriving for his
first day as President and CEO of Allstate,
discovering that all previous CEOs
were terminated after only three years of
service and that he could only be president
for his first year Further, imagine
his surprise when he suddenly discovered
that Allstate’s stock had been in free
fall for six months and was projected to
bottom out at $1.25 a share. While this
implausible scenario is unrealistic at the
executive level at Allstate, it is not too
far off the mark at the agent level, where
managers routinely pump up prospective
agents by extolling the virtues of the
agent opportunity while understating or
concealing the many treacherous pitfalls
that await them in the shadows, including
the real possibility of losing their life
savings. Who would even think about
taking a position with Allstate without
learning more about its relationship with
the agency force from past and present
Allstate agents or from NAPAA
No amount of distraction, whether intended
or not, should be allowed to influence
what should be a thorough investigation
of the business opportunity Allstate
is “marketing” to prospective agents.
Considering the countless negatives associated
with the Allstate EA program,
it is mind-boggling that any thoughtful
person would ever embark on an Allstate
career at all, let alone after only a few
months investigation. It is possible that
both the proffered opportunity for wealth
and the lure of entrepreneurship is packaged
so effectively, that even a cautious
person would be inclined to overlook any
potential shortcomings. The net result is a
youthful agency sales force suffering from
high turnover, bad morale and dwindling
numbers. And so far, Allstate is purposefully
ignoring some very vocal cries for
attention, as evidenced in the Agency
Relationship Survey and on the Agency
Community blog, as well as other agent
forums. Instead, it blames the turnover
problem not on its own dysfunctional and
deceptive system, but that it “just hasn’t
hired the ‘right’ agents” for the job; this
attitude only serves to continue and accelerate
its now massive hiring binge. More
on this later.
Allstate’s Helpful Spies
The National Advisory Board (NAB),
established in 2003, was ostensibly designed
to provide agents a “voice on national
issues.” With deference to the sincerity
of the hard-working agents who
take the time to participate, the NAB
is as useful to the rank and file agent as
a call button on a broken elevator. This
is because Allstate sets the agenda and
leaves little room for discussion of key
issues that are considered “off-topic.”
As long as the NAB program serves to
only validate Allstate’s myopic view of
its agency force, it will be of little value
to the vast majority of agencies who are
struggling to contend with ever-changing
RFG quotas, ALI, woople, mandatory
office hours and the like.
Perhaps an intended consequence
from Allstate’s perspective is the fact
that the NAB’s existence has served to
provide the company with “inside” information
about agency operations. The
NAB’s interaction with Allstate, in conjunction
with agency surveys, has possibly
done irreparable harm to the status of
agents as independent business owners.
Many agents are unaware that not only
does Allstate compete with us; it also
controls the existence of the business relationship
and the form it takes. To that
end, the NAB has taken on the role of an
unwitting accomplice instead of ardent
representative of the “independent” EA
business owner.
Consider the possibilities of Allstate’s
interaction with a truly representative
organization like NAPAA. Discussions
that even remotely touch on proprietary
information would be nonexistent.
Agents might even be able to collectively
bargain. Agent agendas would receive
attention as opposed to dismissal. NAB
members naively attend meetings with
hopeful thoughts of making Allstate a
better place and making their agencies
more profitable. NAB members may feel
they are participating, but they are not.
In reality, the “agent’s voice” can only be
significant if there are repercussions for
Allstate’s failing to act upon a true agenda
that is representative of the thousands
of small agencies that comprise the backbone
of Allstate.
The fact that Allstate not only refuses
to acknowledge its past relationship with
its agency sales force, but that it also
relegates its interaction with its current
sales force to that of cursory informational
meetings, is indicative of the lowly
status the company places on its relationship
with its agents. More to the point,
it clearly defines the disposable nature of
being an Allstate agent. In other words, if
agents were an indispensible component
in Allstate’s business plan, and if agents
48 — Exclusivefocus Summer 2011