Exclusivefocus Spring 2013 - National Association of Professional ...

Direct Mail Reinvented Agent Pension Plan President’s Perspective 

Exclusivefocus 

Spring 2013 

An Official Publication of the National Association of Professional Allstate Agents, Inc. 

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From Allstate 

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An Official Publication of the National Association of 

Professional Allstate Agents, Inc. 

FEATURES 

12 Florida Region: Observations from the 2013 Agency Forum 

By Dale Revels 

14 The Seller’s Side of the Sale 

By Brian Spillman 

16 Errors and Omissions – What You Don’t Know Could Cost You 

By Jim and Nancy Fish 

20 In Search of Greener Pastures… 

Allstate vs. State Farm vs. Independent Agent 

26 Lessons Learned 

By Mike Handrick 

30 The Psychology of a Company 


32 Agent Pension Plan Information for 

Former Allstate Employee Agents 

By Nancy Fish 

Sales & 

Marketing 

22 Are the Patients 

Running the Asylum 

By Bill Gough 

24 Practicing the Golden Rule 

By Ed Horrell 

34 Reinventing an 

Unloved Marketing Strategy 

By Scott Brodbeck 

39 Should Your Agency 

Have its Own Website 

By Robyn Sharp 

Opinion 

42 From Intangible Product 

to Intangible Company 


37 The Saboteurs 

By Dave Thorpe 

44 An Unsung Heroine 

By Jim Fish 

Business 

27 Seller Transparency: the Threshold of Acquisitions 

By Rick Dennen 

A Magazine for Allstate Agency Owners and Allstate 

Personal Financial Representatives 

DEPARTMENTS 

6 President’s Letter 

8 Letters to NAPAA 

51 Membership Application 

53 NAPAA Market Place 

54 NAPAA Board of Directors 

4 — Exclusivefocus Spring 2013

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president’s perspective 

Tom Wilson Awakens a Sleeping Giant 

In Solidarity 

Bob Isacsen 

President 

NAPAA/OPEIU 

Guild 17 

During my 52 years of insurance industry experience 

I have never witnessed such a lack of overall 

leadership as that currently being displayed by Tom 

Wilson. It’s astounding. In my view, his leadership 

– or lack thereof – has produced an unprecedented 

reduction in the agency sales force: a corporate 

strategy he first disowned, but now freely admits 

was his plan all along. This strategy has decimated 

the agency force and caused a great deal of suffering 

for untold thousands of our brothers and sisters, 

some of whom ended their own lives in the process. 

The result is that a once-proud agency force that 

numbered 14,000 is fast approaching 8,000. 

The implementation of draconian commission 

cuts, coupled with a decline in overall market share 

has led to the mass resignations of some of the best 

agents in the company, many of whom sought and 

found more rewarding opportunities elsewhere. 

Apparently, this exodus of better than average 

agents was unexpected because Allstate is now 

offering referral bonuses up to $10,000 in certain 

states for new agent hires. It seems to me if the 

Allstate opportunity was as good as the company 

proclaims it to be, there would be no need to offer 

a bounty. Word gets around, whether positive or 

negative, and these days, the word on the street is 

that Allstate is not a place where agents can expect 

stability or permanence in their professional lives. 

And the turnover hasn’t been confined to the 

agency force. We have also seen the exodus of some 

of the brightest and best insurance and sales executives 

in the business. From what I’ve observed, nobody 

is safe, including those in the upper echelons 

of power at Home Office. Just in the past few years, 

we have lost some remarkable members of the senior 

staff, including George Ruebenson, Joe Lacher, 

Mark LeNeve and Joe Richardson, Jr. While these 

names won’t be familiar to new agents, they can be 

easily searched online. 

So, as Tom Wilson fiddles, his empire is burning 

out of control. Yet he is generously compensated. 

The slash and burn management tactics that have 

endeared him to the Allstate Board of Directors 

have caused animosity among some – if not most 

– of his former colleagues, and likely some in his 

current inner circle. In my opinion, his careeningout-of-control 

management style has severely 

weakened the company and opened doors of opportunity 

to the competition. 

The struggles of the Allstate agency force are 

legendary and are well known among savvy competitors, 

some of whom are now taking advantage 

of Mr. Wilson’s missteps and his lack of popularity 

among rank and file Allstate agents. 

One example is the Farmers Insurance Group, 

where some former Allstate executives landed after 

their Allstate careers abruptly ended. This “sleeping 

giant,” whose parent company is Zurich Financial 

Services – the second largest financial services 

company in the world – is aggressively expanding 

in the eastern U.S. The Farmers Insurance Group 

had its beginnings in 1928 and currently operates 

in 41 states. Farmers has 15,000 agents, mostly 

west of the Mississippi, and together with its sister 

companies – Foremost Insurance, 21st Century 

Insurance, Bristol West and their brokering company, 

Kraft Lake Insurance – it is one of the largest 

personal lines insurers in the nation. 

Believe me, selling personal insurance is not 

rocket science, so what has the Farmers Group 

done to leverage its brand above the competition 

Quite simply, they have replaced much of the 

onerous language in the agent contracts of their 

competitors with softer and gentler wording, as 

well as a one-of-a-kind option that allows agents 

to transfer ownership of all or part of their agency 

to an acceptable/approved member of the agent’s 

immediate family. Also, Farmers does not have the 

legacy problems that go along with the long tenure 

of operating in a given state, so at least in the 

eastern U.S., it will be able to offer take-away rates 

and broader product offerings. 

I have not written this message to promote the 

Farmers Group over Allstate Insurance Company; 

I merely want to highlight the damage that Tom 

Wilson’s regime has done to the company and its 

talented agency force. 

Many of you reading this message are newer 

Allstate agents. I wish my message could be more 

upbeat, but I have seen too many careers ruined 

and too many lives torn asunder by the actions of 

the current management regime. You are fortunate 

PRESIDENT continued on page 8. 


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Spring 2013 Exclusivefocus — 7 

© Copyright 2012

letters to NAPAA 

Just a heads up in case you haven’t 

heard, Matt Winter used the word “franchise” 

at least twice when referring to our 

business when he spoke at the Orlando 

Forum. In my opinion, he used that word 

to describe the agent business opportunity, 

or at least that’s what I took away 

from the meeting. On the other hand, 

maybe he just strayed off the reservation 

with his comments. 

I truly think that management is trying 

to grow the Allstate Brand and trying to 

walk the same fine line that Farmers does 

with 21st Century. For our sake, I truly 

hope we’re successful. Based on what they 

said at the Forum, they plan to re-invent 

the role of the Field Sales Leader to help 

develop agencies that want to grow and 

improve on their processes. 

I thought the Forum was useful because 

of the interaction and sharing that 

took place between the agents during the 

breakout session. We met in small groups 

to talk about things that work and some 

vendors that don’t work. I picked up 

some good ideas that I’ll try in my agency. 

I guess that just proves you can teach 

an old dog some new tricks! 

Editor’s response: I suspect that Matt’s 

use of the word “franchise” was meant in 

the broader business definition, which does 

not always pertain to franchisor/franchisee 

businesses that are regulated by federal and 

state law. 

I wanted to take a quick moment to 

update you on our local Kickoff meeting 

last week. Mr. Winter was very interesting 

to listen to. If he does everything he 

says, then we will be a great company 

again, but I’m not banking on it. 

What I found most interesting was 

the amount of time he spent honestly 

discussing the “bad moves” that the company 

has made. He admitted that their 

plans were poorly executed and caused us 

to lose focus on growth. These included 

the renewal questionnaire fiasco, property 

non-renewals, auto rate increases… 

and the list went on. He also admitted 

that their initiatives would cause market 

share to fall and stall growth, but would 

stabilize the book and earn more profit. 

If they had just explained this up front, a 

lot of bad blood could have been spared. 

Instead, they chose to threaten or terminate 

us for our failure to grow. 

I wondered how Mr. Winter could get 

up on stage and publically admit that the 

company’s plan did not allow for growth 

– a plan that resulted in a great deal of 

pain and anxiety for the agency force 

– and then stand there and say that we 

must move past “our” mistakes and look 

towards a brighter future and allow for 

more capacity to grow our agencies. As 

I heard this, I wondered if he would say 

the same thing if he was called to testify 

in court. 

In the end, maybe this is a good sign 

for those of us who made it through the 

Great Agent Purge. Unfortunately, these 

words were too little, too late for my fallen 

friends, family and colleagues. 

How come NAPAA never took any 

legal action over last year’s outrageous 

commission cut to 9/9 or the shortages 

in our comp statements 

Editor’s response: Unfortunately, we had 

no basis to sue Allstate over the 1% commission 

reduction. The contract that you and the 

rest of the agency force signed allows Allstate 

to change commissions at any time with a 

90-day notice. 

As for the commission shortages, we’ve 

asked Allstate’s audit department for a forensic 

audit: a request they have yet to comply 

with. In addition, we have asked several 

agents if they would submit to an audit 

of their comp history so we could use their 

results as proof that the alleged shortages 

exist. So far, no one has stepped forward. 

Please understand that NAPAA calling for 

a forensic audit does not require compliance 

from Allstate. If we tried to sue Allstate over 

the alleged shortages, both the court and Allstate 

would ask for evidence, and as of today, 

we have none. 

By the way, here is Allstate’s most recent 

statement regarding the commission issue: 

“Deloitte & Touche has validated Allstate’s 

SOX control assessments regarding 

the financial reporting of agency compensation 

as part of its audit of Allstate’s financial 

statements. The Audit Committee 

has overseen a review and revalidation of 

agency compensation reports and payment. 

The review determined that payments have 

been correctly made and compensation correctly 

reported to agencies and in Allstate’s 

financial statements. 

As part of Allstate’s due diligence in regards 

to agency compensation Internal Audit 

reviews agency compensation processes 

on an ongoing basis and reports any issues. 

Additionally, Internal Audit validates all 

resolution activities prior to the release of 

bonus payments to agencies.” 

Source: EA Independent Contractor Reference 

Guide – February 25, 2013 

Section title: “Legal Compliance” 

PRESIDENT continued from page 6. 

to have escaped the acrimonious and painful upheaval that occurred over the past several 

years under the direction of Tom Wilson. But as long as you remain an Allstate agent, 

you will forever be affected by it. Starting with the paltry 9% base commission rate you 

are paid. It is among the lowest in the industry and is expected to drop to 8% in 2015. 

As much as he may deny it, Tom Wilson is no friend of the agent. He has to go – the 

sooner the better. What must happen in order to forestall the competition from luring 

more agents away and eroding more PIF is for the company to develop a fair contract 

that pays an equitable base commission rate and offers more job security. 

Don’t allow Mr. Wilson & Company to weaken the agency force any more. If all 

8,300 Allstate agents joined NAPAA – the only organization dedicated to your success 

– we would have the kind of leverage that is needed to effect positive change on 

your behalf. Please come grow with us before it’s too late. Ef 


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Spring 2013 Exclusivefocus — 9

Continued from page 8. 

I was a coastal agent who was recently 

terminated after more than 20 years of 

loyal service. Yes, my book had shrunk 

and my AFS sales were lacking, but 

much of that can be attributed to the 

company’s property non-renewal initiative 

in my state and an uncompetitive 

auto rate, which was consistently 20 to 

30 percent higher than the competition. 

I was on pace to make the company 

over $500,000 profit in my final year, 

but they still terminated me. I dare Tom 

Wilson to meet me face to face and tell 

me how I was harming the company. All 

I wanted was to continue working until 

I could retire, which was just a few short 

years away. All I can say now is, “Thank 

you, Tom Wilson, for rewarding my loyalty 

by kicking me to the curb. I may have 

been one of the ‘human modems’ you talk 

about, but I’m also a human being.” 

A couple years ago, I sold my Allstate 

agency. I owner-financed most of the 

sale, but the buyer stopped paying me 

two years ago. I live in a non-garnishment 

state where the legal system is as 

slow as molasses in January so it is hard 

to say when they’ll get around to my 

case. I do have the assignment of TPP, 

but the new agent is running the agency 

into the ground and the TPP keeps going 

down. Allstate local leaders are aware 

of this. I also have an attorney, but Allstate 

says there is nothing they can do at 

this point until the legal system takes action. 

All of this has put me in a bad spot 

financially. Please caution your readers 

that seller-financed sales aren’t all they’re 

cracked up to be. 

I sold my agency to an outside buyer 

on October 1, 2012. My manager was 

very motivated to bring me a qualified 

buyer since she said her job depended 

on it. Two other existing agents wanted 

to purchase my book, but the company 

wouldn’t let them. This doesn’t seem 

right, seeing that we are supposed to be 

independent contractors. 

Hoping all is well with you guys. I understand 

the company is losing agents 

like crazy. 

I’m not sure you if are aware that another 

agent has committed suicide. She 

was an agent from Tampa and took her 

life around Thanksgiving. She had taken 

TPP and opened an independent agency. 

Apparently, when the company found 

out, they withdrew her TPP payments, 

causing her great financial stress. As you 

know, the company plays hardball. Ultimately, 

the financial stress was too much 

for her. This is so sad. It certainly wasn’t 

the first time and unfortunately, will not 

be the last. 

NAPAA has been the only thing that 

has kept me from losing my mind at times 

during my 30 years as an Allstate agent. 

Thank you for your commitment to keep 

us informed about what is really going on 

with the company. You and the organization 

are in my thoughts and prayers. 

I am very fortunate to have a friend 

who owns a pretty large independent 

agency with two locations. He wants me 

to be a producer for him, but also wants 

me to manage one of his agencies. In return, 

he says he’ll give me a cut of the 

production written by the producers in 

the office. 

I have really gotten to like the fellow 

that bought my Allstate agency. He 

called me shortly after the sale and wants 

me to go to work for him. He knows very 

little about running an Allstate agency. 

I really feel sorry for him, but I already 

committed to working for my independent 

agent friend. 

I really hope my buyer can make a go 

of it. It would be sad to see him fail. 

Dave Morgan, one of the best-liked, 

longest-standing agency managers in 

Pennsylvania, has left Allstate and gone 

to Farmers. He is now working under 

former Allstate executive Joe Richardson, 

who suddenly left the company a 

couple of years ago. We all knew Farmers 

was looking to hire Allstate agents in 

PA, and now with Dave Morgan, they 

have a real key to that plan. He’s already 

communicated with the agency force by 

providing us information on his position 

and his phone number. Towards the end 

of his Allstate career, Dave was trying to 

hire agents, but I don’t think his heart was 

into it; I think it was just too hard for him 

to sell something that should not be sold. 

After reading your story, I am pissed 

at Allstate. Seriously, corporate America 

has had a lot of issues for many years 

and it never really seems to get any better. 

Thank God for people like you who 

stand up for their rights and the rights of 

others and just do the right thing. I wish 

you both continued success. And, by all 

means, keep up the good work. 

I have some questions that deserve 

scrutiny. One concerns the proprietary 

product requirement. According to one 

financial publication, a relationship with 

a client should exist on trust. One of 

the key elements of trust is to always be 

objective when presenting investment 

choices to clients, especially when competing 

products pay higher commissions 

than others. Another premise of trust is 

to always keep the client’s bests interests 

ahead of your own. So exactly what is 

Allstate doing by establishing a proprietary 

product quota in order for agents to 

get back to 10% commissions 

Think about it. If an agent is up against 

their proprietary product requirement 

and needs a sale, what do you think the 

client is going to get, American Funds 

or an Allstate annuity An Allstate annuity 

or a Prudential annuity My guess 

it would be the Allstate annuity. Is this 

the agent’s doing or another strong-arm 

Continued on page 52. 



feature 

Florida Region: Observations from the 

2013 Agency Forum 

By Dale Revels 

This year’s annual kick-off for Florida 

agents was held at the Rosen 

Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando, 

Florida. 

For a buy-in of $188, agency owners 

were treated to a first-rate dinner, a great 

cocktail party and an opportunity to hear 

from Matt Winter, president of Allstate 

Auto, Home and Agencies. He seemed 

sincere when he revealed that the company 

loves its agents and expects things 

to get better as we go forward. If he said 

the same things in other regions, it is 

sure to be music to the ears of an agency 

force that was reviled by management 

just a few short months ago. He also proclaimed 

he wants our agency model to be 

the best in the business. 

This year I am celebrating 26 years as 

an Allstate agency owner and this was 

my 24th kickoff meeting. As you can see, 

I always try to attend, especially when 

food and adult beverages are involved. 

As I look back at the last quarter century, 

there have been many changes. 

There can be no doubt that we agents 

have been marginalized. We now have 

less control over our businesses, and we 

earn lower base commissions. While 

these and other changes have been difficult, 

I believe there may be a silver lining 

in our futures as Mr. Winter guides us 

through the next few years. 

Also speaking at the meeting was Jim 

Parolin from Merrimack, New Hampshire. 

He is a super-successful agency 

owner who had it rough for a couple of 

years but is now back on track as one of 

the top producers in the country. He gave 


a compelling speech about staying positive 

and provided copious notes about the 

best ways to recruit support staff – copies 

of which were sent to agents throughout 

the Region. 

Our Region disclosed that there were 

over 700 attendees at the meeting, including 

about 200 from management 

and meeting vendors. There were lots 

of new agency owners to meet, as well 

as some older, experienced agents who 

have managed to survive the challenges 

of the past few years. Florida lost 400 

agents in the past two years, but at least 

at this year’s kickoff, management didn’t 

refer to them as a pack of losers, as they 

have in the past. Instead, they said that 

those who remain have an opportunity to 

achieve great success. 

From my vantage point, both in the 

front and rear of the meeting room, I 

noted there were three types of agency 

owners in attendance: 

• Older agents like me, who were 

perhaps just too stupid to sell and were 

willing to make some changes to continue 

in this tough environment. 

• Newer agents in competitive markets 

who are doing well, writing big 

numbers and getting large bonuses. 

• Agents in the middle who got stuck 

because they could not find a buyer or 

get a fair price for their books. 

After all the meetings, it was during 

the networking event where I was able 

to interact with all of these agent types. 

Overall, most were very unhappy with 

the new variable compensation plan and 

told management directly. Management 

politely listened and nodded their heads 

when appropriate, but the new comp 

plan is here to stay. Of course, there is 

still the nagging fear that the company 

will lower the base rate to 8% in 2015. 

The company’s latest mantra – Foundations 

for Success – was often referenced 

throughout the meeting. And even 

though the decision to abandon Woople 

had probably already made, management 

did not mention that it would be eliminated 

for 2013. That struck me as somewhat 

strange because most agents told 

management it was a waste of their time. 

Management could have scored some 

points had they made the announcement 

at the meeting. But then that would be 

admitting that one of the company’s key 

initiatives was in fact a dismal failure. 

It appears that the Foundation for 

Success will replace Woople. It is a comprehensive 

plan to help agency owners 

with acquisition, retention, cross-selling 

and the customer experience. I think 

it best to keep an open mind and learn 

what you can from it – maybe it will help 

grow your agency. 

Even though it has been a rough couple 

of years in Florida, I think we are finally 

positioned for some growth in auto 

and other lines. It is clear that the company 

lost more agents than it wanted in 

the past few years. Why else would they 

be on such an aggressive hiring binge 

and paying referral fees up to $10,000 

in some regions Hopefully, management 

has seen that they need us and the 

value we bring to the table. Obviously, 

the Internet cannot capture the amount 

of business necessary to grow the company, 

so we remain an essential part of 

the company’s success. 

Some say talk is cheap and that we 

should “watch what they do, not what 

they say,” but to me, Matt Winter seems 

more genuine those who preceded him 

in recent years. But then again, maybe 

such a soothing and persuasive corporate 

salesman is just what the company needs 

to mitigate the huge plunge in agent 

morale that has taken place over the past 

several years. Based on the results of the 

latest agent opinion survey, Mr. Winter 

has a long way to go to recapture the 

trust of the agency force. My hope is that 

he is sincere and will back up his words 

with action. If he is unwilling or unable 

to do so, then we’ve gained nothing except 

another ineffectual talking head. 

Anyone who knows me understands 

that I am an eternal optimist, sometimes 

to a fault. I want to believe that Matt 

Winter is a man of his word. I want to 

believe that things will get better and 

that Matt Winter wants agency ownership 

to become a legacy proposition so 

agencies can be passed on to future generations. 

I want to believe that we will be 

more competitive and finally grow again. 

And I want to believe that agencies will 

see an upward trend in valuations. 

Only time will tell if the promises made 

at the 2013 Agents’ Forum will come to 

pass. My plan is to stay positive and adopt 

success strategies so I can grow in 2013 

and beyond. The agency force is counting 

on you Mr. Winter. For the sake of this 

great company, don’t let us down. Ef 

Dale Revels proudly serves as the immediate 

past president on the NAPAA Board of 

Director. He is an active Allstate agent in 

Kissimmee, Florida. He has been an Allstate 

agent for 25 years and a NAPAA board 

member for more than 10 years. 

Join the 

“ALL Agents Page” 

on Facebook 

All New Group for Allstate Agents 

and Former Allstate Agents Only 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/304988616263352/ 

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once you’re a member, the link will be under 

Groups on your Facebook page. 


feature 

The Seller’s Side of the Sale 


I 

recently sold my agency after 17 wonderful 

years with Allstate. Okay, so 

maybe only 15 were wonderful and the 

last two fell slightly short of the mark. 

I purchased two other books during my 

tenure as an agent and built a combined 

book that exceeded $4 million in premium. 

The company sent me the standard 

warning letters threatening termination 

if I didn’t sell more policies. So like 

many other agents, I took it upon myself 

to get out of a difficult situation – that 

was only likely to get worse – by putting 

my book of business up for sale. Besides 

the constant stress and harassment, there 

were many other personal reasons for me 

to get out, including my desire to spend 

more time with my family. 

I knew that managers in my region 

and elsewhere were on a mission to replace 

tenured agents like me with a new 

generation of agents, perhaps in the 

hope that they could somehow improve 

agent attitudes and morale. I also knew 

that these managers had a stable of preapproved 

buyers in their hip pockets 

who they were ready to present to selling 

agents at the drop of a hat. I took advantage 

of this opportunity and that is when 

the “fun” began. 

Allstate managers marched buyer after 

buyer in front of me – a total of five in 

all. “Great,” I thought. I would be able to 

choose the highest bidder among them, 

as long as he or she was a good fit for 

my agency and my clients. But that’s not 

how it worked out. Instead of me being 

able to select the buyer of my choice, it 

appears that one of the competing managers 

must have “won out” in a back 

room deal – I’m guessing in a hotly contested 

game of “rock-paper-scissors” – 

because suddenly, his buyer became my 

only option. In my mind, I pictured him 

installing an inground swimming pool in 

his backyard with the bonus money he 

earned for finding a buyer. The company’s 

decision was set in stone and I would 

sell to this one buyer. Period. 

Lucky for me, the buyer who was being 

forced down my throat tendered a 

reasonable offer and was a good fit for my 

agency. But I could have fared a lot worse 

if their buyer had given me a low-ball offer 

or was of dubious character; either way, 

I doubt whether the company would have 

cared. Their goal is to hire bodies to fill a 

spot and collect a bonus – keep in mind 

that the ground had already been broken 

for the inground pool and hot tub in the 

victorious manager’s backyard. 

At that point, I began to work out the 

details with the buyer that the company 

had custom-chosen for me. I was retained 

as a consultant for three months 

to smooth over the transition and keep 

current customers from leaving in droves. 

I was prepared for this. 

What I wasn’t prepared for was how 

poorly Allstate prepared the new buyer for 

this job. He knew how to run a business, 

but had no prior insurance experience. 

When he came back to the office from 

Allstate training, he didn’t know how to 

take a payment or do an endorsement. 

Granted, these are tasks normally done 

by the agent’s staff, but any agent needs 

to know how to do them in the event the 

staff is on vacation, sick or quits. 

I also wasn’t prepared for how much 

time the buyer spent away from the of- 


fice in order to attend company meetings 

and training classes. So the staff was basically 

working with me on a daily basis 

instead of the new agent/owner. As a 

result, questions with no answers began 

to pile up and decisions had to be made. 

What do we tell our customers What 

about vacation time the staff already 

planned before the new owner took over 

What would be the commission rate for 

new business All these were considerations 

that needed to be discussed, but I 

couldn’t provide any answers because it 

was not my business anymore. 

Next, we had the Allstate affiliates, 

such as LBL, Northeast Agencies, 

Hagerty, etc. The new owner had to set 

up all of these on the fly as he settled in. 

Sure, these things could have been set up 

ahead of time, especially since the company 

knew he was going to be the buyer 

before I did. But why make things easy 

Next came the MAIF account, the staterun 

high-risk pool, which nobody told 

him about either. 

So the new owner is running around 

trying to secure appointments with the 

various Allstate affiliates while, at the 

same time, attempting to learn everything 

else all at once. Meanwhile, the office is in 

my hands and the old staff. My thought 

was, “What if the staff quit” Who would 

operate the office What would happen 

Then I thought of the Allstate location 

down the street where the new agent/ 

owner hasn’t set foot in the office since 

purchasing it a month ago, and now it sits 

empty with no one to answer the phones 

or take payments. Hmmm… I guess that 

answers my question. 

When the company makes a new hire, 

it should hold someone accountable to 

help the new agent get up to speed. Apparently 

– and I find this particularly 

shocking – the company was content to 

just let me train the new agent. What 

happens when buyers have no mentors 

to lean on Most managers can’t help because 

they don’t have the skills either. It’s 

almost as if the company wants to test 

the survival kills of its new hires, and if 

they fail, so be it. 

New agents should have someone in 

the office on a daily basis – at least for the 

first few weeks – to help with the transition. 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen 

when managers are paid hiring bonuses 

with no teeth. A hiring bonus should 

only be paid after a full-year of successful 

agency ownership. That way, management 

is incentivized to ensure success. 

Right now, new agents are thrown 

against the wall to see if they stick – kind 

of like the way the company used to run 

life promotions on a “submitted premium” 

basis, instead of an “issued premium” 

basis. Agents received accolades 

and went on trips for a bunch of business 

that was rejected or turned down by the 

customer because the policy had been 

rated up for a medical reason. Those who 

wrote the business were heroes, but the 

company was the loser. Likewise, when 

new agents fail, the company loses out 

too. They lose someone who could be – 

with a little TLC – a great producer: they 

lose up to $10,000 in referral fees paid, 

hiring bonuses for the FSL responsible 

for hiring the agent, time and energy expended 

for new agent school and training 

and, perhaps most importantly, they 

damage their reputation every time an 

agent is forced to shut down an agency. 

Sadly, the hiring manager doesn’t care 

– he’s got his inground pool and is already 

looking for a replacement agent 

for the one he just hired. This is akin to 

the wacky thinking that went into believing 

that paying agents on submitted 

life business was a good idea. Why not 

pay agents for submitting auto apps on 

drivers with multiple major violations It 

makes about as much sense. 

None of my ranting herein is to discredit 

the agent who bought my book 

or any other new agent. My beef is that 

many, if not most, new agency owners 

get short shrift in terms of basic job-related 

information and practical training. 

I am now finished with my three 

month commitment with my buyer. 

He now seems pretty well trained and 

is focused on bringing in new customers. 

Keeping current customers, however, 

does not seem to be on the training 

agenda. This surprises me, since growth 

is much harder to achieve with an 80% 

retention ratio than a 90% retention ratio. 

As always, there are two sides to every 

coin and I wish him all the best. Ef 

WRIGHT BEAMER, Attorneys 

SERVING NAPAA AND THE AGENTS OF ALLSTATE SINCE 2000 

DIRK A. BEAMER, ATTORNEY 

EXPERT CONSULTING FOR AGENTS AND THEIR ATTORNEYS ON: 

• ALLSTATE CORPORATE SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS 

• BUYING & SELLING BOOKS 

• ALLSTATE EA AGREEMENTS 

PH: 248.477.6300 

WRIGHTBEAMER.COM 

DBEAMER@WRIGHTBEAMER.COM 


feature 

Errors and Omissions – What You Don’t 

Know Could Cost You 

By Jim and Nancy Fish 

Agents under contract with Allstate 

are required to maintain 

Errors and Omissions (E&O) 

insurance with a minimum per claim 

and aggregate limit of $1 million. 

According to the R3001 EA Manual, 

all R3001 agents – with the exception of 

those in New York State – must obtain 

E&O insurance through broker CalSurance, 

with coverage provided by Fireman’s 

Fund Insurance Company. 

The policy period for the Allstate 

agent group renews each year on October 

1st. Agents are required to purchase 

the renewal policy online via the Cal- 

Surance website by a specified deadline, 

typically around September 21st. There 

are two payment options: agents can either 

pay in full, or pay in three installments 

via ACH, the last of which is due 

by November 1st. 

If an agent fails to fulfill his obligation 

to renew the policy by the deadline, Cal- 

Surance will notify Allstate and they will 

pay the premium on the agent’s behalf. 

The full premium, plus a 25% “processing 

fee” will then be deducted from the 

agent’s commission until the premium 

and processing fee are paid in full. 

New agents are required to purchase 

the coverage at least 15 days prior to 

their appointment date. The premium is 

prorated and must be paid in full. 

Changes in company claims 

handling procedures are 

unconfirmed, but… 

Agents have reported a large increase 

in the number and types of E&O claims 

that have been turned over to CalSurance 

in the past two years. Several agents who 

have been involved in recent E&O incidents 

have been told they are responsible 

for binding unacceptable risks, regardless 

of the fact that the company accepted the 

risk at the time of the transaction and 

upon subsequent renewals. 

According to the agents, Allstate informed 

CalSurance that it incorporates 

underwriting guidelines into technology 

preventing agents from submitting 

unacceptable risks on new business applications, 

but that the same technology 

does not exist in the policy endorsement 

system. One example is the ineligible vehicle 

list, wherein the new business application 

risk assessment alerts the agent 

and rejects the application, but when an 

agent adds the same vehicle to an existing 

policy, it sails right through the system. 

An example of such a scenario was 

detailed in a letter that appeared in the 

last issue of Exclusivefocus. 

Another example involved a $20,000 

SPP item on a renters insurance policy. 

The customer had covered the item on 

their homeowners policy for ten years 

and when they sold their home and 

moved to an apartment, the agent transferred 

the ring to their renters policy by 

endorsement. 

The company then renewed the renters 

policy twice before the insured had a 

loss. It became an E&O claim because 

the amount of coverage on the ring was 

out of proportion to the amount of underlying 

personal property coverage on 

the base policy. 

Once a claim is turned over to CalSurance, 

they pay the claim and submit a bill 

to the agent for the deductible. The consent 

clause in the policy leaves the agent 

with virtually no recourse. 

In its explanation for the 17% rate increase 

in 2012, CalSurance stated there 

has been a significant increase in claims 

in recent years. They also cited the overall 

decrease in the size of the agency 

force as a factor contributing to the increased 

rate. 

Some agents speculate the increased 

claim activity has not only boosted premiums, 

but may have also been the impetus 

for prompting Fireman’s Fund to 

implement a sliding deductible schedule 

that became effective with the October, 

2011 policy renewal – a change that 

could indicate the company’s expectation 

that an increasing number of agents will 

suffer multiple losses going forward. 

Prior to the October, 2011 policy renewal, 

the deductibles for E&O claims 

were $1,000 on Allstate policies and 

$5,000 on Expanded Markets policies. 

The new sliding deductible schedule 

states that the standard policy deductible 


will be increased if there are more than 

two paid claims reported during the prior 

three policy periods. Hence, Allstate 

agents who experience three, four or five 

E&O claims could see their deductibles 

rise to $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 respectively. 

The Expanded Markets deductible 

is also increased for multiple claims. 

CalSurance E&O Facts: 

• Coverage is provided for any act, error or omission you become 

liable for in rendering or failing to render professional services in 

your profession as an insurance agent. The policy has exclusions, 

including dishonest, fraudulent, criminal or malicious acts. 

• The policy covers the agent, and employees of the agent, including 

licensed and unlicensed staff. 

• Coverage automatically ceases on the date the EA Agreement 

terminates. On that date, the automatic one-year extended reporting 

period begins. 

• Agents may purchase an optional five-year or unlimited (lifetime) 

extended reporting period for 200% or 500% of the last annual premium. 

The extended coverage must be purchased within 60 days of 

contract termination date. 

• If a terminated agent submits a written request for a mid-term 

cancellation and a short rate refund of premium, the one-year automatic 

extended reporting period is reduced to 90 days. 

Ignorance is no excuse anymore 

In order to avoid potential E&O claims, 

it is essential that agents and their staff be 

fully familiar with applicable MMGs and 

binding authority. Review the MMGs 

frequently to stay abreast of changes, and 

be sure to seek underwriting approval prior 

to endorsing an ineligible risk; then do 

your best to document any details relating 

to the exception. 

Agents must be knowledgeable about 

the products they are selling. This is especially 

true of new products, such as 

House & Home, which presents a multitude 

of potential E&O traps for unsuspecting 

agents. It is crucial that agents 

understand this product so they can fully 

explain the coverage limitations of the 

policy to the customer, especially when 

replacing an existing policy that has more 

comprehensive coverage. It will also be 

important to document those conversations 

with the customer. In our view, 

policies like House & Home present a 

greater potential for E&O claims than 

traditional homeowner policies. Don’t let 

the customer scream, “But my agent told 

me I was covered.” As always, make sure 

you cover the bases with the customer 

and document, document, document. 

Equally as important is the obligation 

for agents and staff to submit complete 

and accurate applications, a task inherently 

more complex than ever before. 

The new House & Home policy application 

includes information about the 

customer’s automobile ownership, auto 

insurance policies, driving record, roof 

geometry, construction materials, and 

more. Above all, agents and staff must 

be fully aware of the consequences resulting 

from intentional falsification of 

information in order to obtain a better 

rate or better coverage. If your staff is 

working on commission basis, there may 

be a temptation for them to “cheat” in 

order to make more money. At a minimum, 

agency owners should spot check 

staff applications and contact customers 

to verify information if something looks 

awry. With good oversight of your employees, 

you will have fewer E&O claims 

and you’ll reduce or eliminate any unethical 

conduct by your employees. 

“ 

“All agency 

owners should take 

proactive steps to 

ensure that they 

and their employees 

fully understand the 

MMG guidelines 

and binding 

authority.” 

“ 

Agents who have not been diligent 

in adhering to MMGs in the past also 

face another dilemma – how to mitigate 

exposures that still remain in their book 

of business from previous underwriting 

transgressions. As an example, the 

agent who wrote and told us about the 

ineligible vehicle that her staff added to 

a policy suddenly realized that there were 

probably many more “claims waiting to 

happen” within her book of business. 

When she tried to get a list of policies 

that had ineligible vehicles insured, Allstate 

was unable to provide her with an 

accurate accounting, making her efforts 

to fix the problems much more difficult. 

Worse yet, errors made on policies 

outside your own book of business are 

virtually impossible to find. This is a big 

problem. And with the increased expectation 

for agents to provide service to orphaned 

policyholders, the agent’s E&O 

exposure escalates significantly. 

So Now What 

Once identified, how are past errors 

corrected Obviously, Allstate has no 

incentive to “clean up” its book of business 

because they actually benefit from 

leaving things the way they are. First, 

turning over claims to CalSurance saves 

time and money. Once a claim is deemed 

to be an E&O, they have little more to 

do with it, saving additional claims handling. 

Then, by not identifying problems 

that need correcting, they can continue 

to renew the affected policies for years 

on end – collecting premiums on risks 

for which they will never pay a loss. It’s 

like free money. Last, they save the time 

and expense it would take to identify the 


problem policies. 

Fixing problem policies is not all that 

simple either. Many states have laws that 

prohibit insurers from canceling or nonrenewing 

policies once they have insured 

a risk for a certain amount of time. This 

problem could be further compounded if 

state insurance commissioners uncover 

that Allstate is collecting premiums on 

risks with no intent to cover future losses. 

This leaves it up the agents to ferret out 

the tainted policies, and then what Should 

they approach each customer and ask them 

to voluntarily drop their policies 

In our view, the company has some, if 

not most of the culpability here. Their 

primary emphasis has traditionally 

been on new business underwriting, as 

evidenced by the lack of technology for 

screening policy endorsements. Renewal 

underwriting has typically been confined 

to property reinspections, loss history, 

credit and MVR history and driver 

and use classification. Rarely have SPP 

items, add cars or replacement cars ever 

been questioned, which leads us to ask, 

“Where is the oversight” 

Indeed, it is unprecedented for a company 

the size of Allstate not to have a 

state-of-the-art system in place to identify 

problem renewal risks. And by simply 

turning a blind eye to this massive elephant 

in the room, Allstate could feign 

ignorance and continue to collect premiums 

on risks they really don’t insure, 

thereby saddling the agency force with 

mounting E&O losses that can only lead 

to ever-higher E&O deductibles and 

premiums. 

Certainly, the agents aren’t without 

fault here. There are some who intentionally 

disregard the guidelines because the 

system allows them to do so. And there 

are repeat offenders who scam the system 

time and again. With a good oversight 

system in place, smart management could 

readily identify the offenders and take appropriate 

action. But, as we’ve seen in the 

past, regional and local leaders are often 

reluctant to take action, especially when 

the culprit is a top producer. 

Going Forward 

In our opinion, the company needs to 

take the high road here. First, they need 

to recognize that they bear some culpability 

for this E&O mess. Second, they 

should institute a claims amnesty program 

which pays for losses resulting from 

endorsement changes – occurring before 

2013 – that they failed to underwrite. 

And finally, they should immediately incorporate 

policy endorsement technology 

that warns agents of MMG violations. 

Responsible agency owners take great 

pride in app completion and adherence 

to company standards, but like anything 

else, nobody is perfect. That’s why computers 

come with spell check and grammar 

correctors. Likewise, there needs to 

be need a system that alerts agents and 

staff of possible underwriting infractions 

before an endorsement is submitted to 

Allstate. 

Only time will tell if Allstate will 

adopt these suggestions. In the meantime, 

all agency owners should take proactive 

steps to ensure that they and their 

employees fully understand the MMG 

guidelines and binding authority. Clearly, 

higher E&O rates are driven by those 

who are ill-prepared and uninformed. 

We suggest agents establish an inhouse 

system to monitor new business 

and endorsement activity, which is something 

they can either do themselves or 

assign to their most fastidious employee. 

Obviously, if yours is a busy agency, it 

may not be practical or possible to check 

every app and endorsement, but you 

should be sure to spot check as many as 

you can and let your staff know you’re 

doing it. They will soon understand that 

you mean business and will pay more 

attention to detail. Stay on top of every 

process in your agency and expect perfection. 

Raising staff awareness is essential 

for reducing or eliminating needless 

errors in your agency. 

Other Resources 

CalSurance provides several loss prevention 

resources that can help prevent 

E&O claims; it would be wise for agents 

and staff to review them. Hopefully, 

heightened awareness by all agents of 

their responsibility to be knowledgeable 

about the products they offer, diligence 

in their disclosures to consumers, adherence 

to binding authority, and making 

sure that everyone in their agencies takes 

time to document conversations with 

customers will result in more stability of 

the E&O group insurance program. For 

more information, please visit www. 

calsurance.com/allstateagent. Ef 

“Allstate will handle errors 

and omissions claims involving 

Allstate policies (including 

facility, flood, and Assigned 

Risk policies written by Allstate) 

where you are alleged 

to have made a mistake, but 

the risk is one that Allstate 

would have otherwise written. 

An example would be 

where you fail to add rental 

reimbursement coverage to 

an Allstate automobile policy 

as requested by the customer. 

In this type of claim situation, 

Allstate will pay the claim 

once it is determined that an 

error or omission occurred as 

long as you had authority to 

bind the risk. Claims in which 

it is alleged that you made a 

mistake resulting in no coverage 

because the policy type or 

coverage was not offered by 

Allstate or you exceeded your 

binding authority in binding 

a risk that did not meet Allstate’s 

underwriting criteria 

or claims in which it is alleged 

you owed a duty to a customer 

which you breached (typically 

related to inadequate 

or lack of coverage), will be 

covered by your errors and 

omission policy through Cal- 

Surance. Claims alleging that 

you owed a duty to a customer 

that you breached can often 

be brought after the end 

of the agency relationship 

with Allstate and this is one 

of the reasons it is important 

that agents who are no longer 

active with Allstate purchase 

the five-year or Unlimited Extended 

Reporting Period coverage.“ 

Source: R3001 Supplement 



feature 

In Search of Greener Pastures… 

Allstate vs. State Farm vs. Independent Agent 

Submitted anonymously 

My story starts back at the beginning 

of 2004. I was at a 

job for 15 years and was looking 

to make a change. A friend of mine 

was an Allstate agent and recommended 

me to be an agent for them. That’s when 

things changed. Allstate came after me 

really hard. They romanticized the opportunity 

by telling me how great it was 

and how much money I could make as an 

Allstate agent. I had no reason to doubt 

what they were telling me was true, so 

I jumped in headfirst without knowing 

anything about the insurance business. 

After eight years I’d had enough. The 

never-ending parade of inept managers, 

each one more incompetent that the 

last, and the despicable actions of some 

of my agent peers was simply too much 

to tolerate. There were Allstate agents 

who called other agent offices to steal 

staff, broke company rules and/or violated 

state laws while the company looked 

the other way and even rewarded them. 

The company didn’t care what they did 

as long as they were writing lots of new 

business. That was the overriding factor 

that drove me over the edge in my decision 

to leave. 

They would put these agents up on a 

pedestal and shower them with accolades, 

nice trips and rewards for their nefarious 

behavior. The next thing you’d hear was 

that they were being investigated by the 

department of insurance or having E&O 

claims filed against them. Conduct of 

this kind is reprehensible and I just could 

not be part of it any longer, especially 

feeling as I did that management was 

effectively condoning such behavior by 

feigning ignorance of its existence. 

In January of 2012, I sold my $1.5 

million book of business to a young kid 

who had worked for another agent who 

had failed. I was going to take the money 

that I had left over from the sale – which 

wasn’t much after paying off all the debt 

I’d run up as an “independent contractor” 

Allstate agent – to stay at home with my 

new little baby girl. My plan was to stay 

at home with her for two years and then 

when she was old enough to go to preschool, 

I would go back to work. 

Shortly after I sold my book, State 

Farm came a-callin’. They wanted me 

to take over a book of business in the 

Cleveland area. They offered me $90,000 

a year while I was in training and then 

would hand me a $2.2 million book of 

business. While it was a great offer, I was 

torn because of my desire to stay home 

with my baby daughter. The practical 

side of me said to accept the offer, but 

my emotions told me to follow my heart. 

Besides, there were other considerations, 

like the non-compete I had with the 

buyer of my agency. But the location of 

the State Farm agency was far enough 


away that it would not violate the agreement, 

so now I had to make my decision. 

In the end, my pragmatic side won. To 

begin with, two years out of the job market 

would make it harder to find employment. 

And since it was unlikely I would 

ever get another offer like the one from 

State Farm, I decided to seize it. After 

all, how much worse could it be than the 

experiences I had with Allstate 

Well, after the first week of training 

at State Farm I knew it wasn’t for me. 

In fact, I knew I didn’t want anything to 

do with them. Sure, Allstate has its pros, 

cons and quirks, but so does State Farm. 

State Farm is like a cult, which is a little 

scary. For one thing, they talked openly 

about “drinking the Kool-Aid,” which 

gave me a bad feeling. There was no way; 

I was too old to be brainwashed. Despite 

this, I stuck it out for a while because the 

money was good. 

There are some definite differences 

between the two companies. Allstate 

only cared if I had enough money on 

hand to start a business; they could have 

cared less about an ongoing business 

plan. Sure they required one upfront, 

but they rarely ever referred to it again in 

the eight years I was there. In fact, when 

I was hired, I was told to borrow my 

buddy’s business plan and put my name 

on it. The next thing I knew, I was an 

Allstate agent with no knowledge of the 

insurance business! Their training was 

laughable; there was no preparation for 

the real-life situations I would face in the 

field. Basically, they hire you and throw 

you to the wolves. I guess that’s because 

they don’t really have a stake in your success. 

Start a scratch agency or buy one, it 

doesn’t cost them anything, so they have 

nothing to lose. 

It took me about two years before I felt 

comfortable as an Allstate agent. While 

I was an agent they encouraged agents to 

buy other books and run multiple agencies, 

now how dumb is that You’re no 

longer an agent, you’re a CEO. In my experience, 

people want to talk with their 

agents. Mega agents don’t do that; their 

LSPs do all the talking. 

With State Farm, it was much different. 

They were all about the business 

plan. Managers wanted to see it every 

other week. If they didn’t like what they 

saw, they would tell you to change it, 

even going as far as telling you what they 

wanted it to say. I thought, “This isn’t my 

business plan, it’s theirs.” That drove me 

crazy because whenever I added something 

in the plan that I wanted to do, 

they would always shoot it down by saying, 

“No, you need to change it to this 

or that.” 

As far as training though, they were 

the complete opposite of Allstate. At 

State Farm, you have to do a lot of roleplaying 

and this was done with someone 

sitting there watching your every move 

and listening to every word you said and 

the manner in which you said it. Afterwards, 

they would critique you, instructing 

you what to say and how you should 

have said it. They want you to be perfect; 

so perfect, in fact, that you might as well 

be a robot. 

Now what was strange about the State 

Farm mentality was that they constantly 

boasted about being number one and the 

fact that they have 108 products to sell, 

from auto and home policies to checking 

and savings accounts to home and auto 

loans. And as a new agent, you better sell 

all of them or you face the risk of losing 

your agency. 

Allstate is certainly all about controlling 

their agents, but they can’t hold a 

candle to the amount of control at State 

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or 

Farm – they are incredibly controlling. 

In my mind, you would have to be 

young or really dumb, or both to put up 

with the BS that the new agents have to 

endure. It’s like being a fraternity pledge 

forever. You have to be okay with being 

told everything, from running your 

agency to policy sales or turning on the 

coffee pot. This is micro-management 

to the extreme. 

In total, I spent about three months 

with State Farm. The normal one-year 

training program was reduced for me 

because of my previous experience and 

the fact that I had all my licenses. Even 

though I’d made it halfway through 

the training, I had to get out because I 

couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know, 

maybe after I had become a full-fledged 

State Farm agent, it might have been 

okay, but I seriously doubt it. 

That is my experience with the two 

largest P&C carriers in America. Now I 

am an independent agent and truly believe 

I have finally found a greener pasture. 

Nobody tells me what to do and I 

have no life quotas to meet in order to 

keep my job. I get paid more commissions 

and I am treated with respect by 

the carriers I represent. This is the best 

insurance experience ever and it is where 

I belong. I should have done this a long 

time ago… Ef 

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sales and marketing 

Are the Patients Running the Asylum 

By Bill Gough 

I 

get questions all the time about training 

staff, keeping them accountable, 

pushing them to close more sales, 

etc. Next to your book of business, your 

staff is the most important part of your 

agency and your biggest expense. As 

savvy business owners, we must do whatever 

we can to make our employees more 

productive by taking a proactive role in 

training them and setting them up for 

success, which will ultimately help our 

businesses thrive. 

“You are a direct reflection of your staff. 

If they stink, it’s because you stink. You’ve 

allowed them to become the way they are.” 

– Bill Eggar, Allstate Agency Owner & 

Green Sheet Process Creator 

Remember, it is your name on the front 

door, not your receptionist’s and not your 

office manager’s. Therefore, you are the 

one that is responsible for whether your 

staff sinks or floats. 

What are you doing to actively train 

your staff, hone your systems and processes, 

and create a team that consistently 

produces great results If your answer 

is “not much” or “nothing,” then the 

patients are running the asylum and it’s 

time for you to take control. 

In 2012, Wendy Murphy, who was the 

vice president of my agency, bought my 

book of business and became the agency 

owner of The All-American Agency. She 

now trains her staff – with my help – using 

the very best practiced, scripted processes 

and systems. She keeps her staff 

accountable by making every task measurable 

and setting high expectations. 

Following are two great examples of 

things Wendy is doing in her agency to 

take a proactive role in training her staff. 

See her results below… and remember, if 

we can do it, so can you! 

Every campaign Wendy runs has multiple 

steps across many media types… 

calls, postcards, emails, etc. In January 

2013, Wendy started a new campaign 

to convert term life insurance customers 

to permanent life customers. One of 

the steps in this campaign is, of course, 

making a call to the customer. The script 

for this call is tailored to be a follow-up 

to the Allstate “Call Me” postcard and is 

designed to create curiosity so the customer 

will call back. The script itself is 

simple… 

“Hello Mr. Jones, this is Sarah with 

Wendy Murphy’s Allstate office. I was 

calling you today because it is time for us to 

do a review of the life insurance you have 

with us. I wonder if you could check your 

schedule to see if Monday or Tuesday of 

next week would work for Cecil to come 

out to your home. Which day would you 

prefer” 

If you need to leave a voice message, 

it’s simpler… 

“Hello, this is Sarah with your Allstate 

agency. I need you to call me about your 

life insurance. My number is _______.” 

Just from using these simple scripts 

in combination with the other steps and 

media, Wendy’s staff is getting amazing 

results. Initially, her staff made 12 calls, 

producing four appointments. But that’s 

not all; she received five call-backs from 

customers after leaving voice messages 

and wrote six policies totaling more than 

$7,000 in premium – and at the time she 

shared these numbers with me, they still 

had two appointments to go! This campaign, 

when thoroughly completed, is 

practically fail-safe. 

The second example I want to share 

with you is about the importance of 

building a solid “Referral Culture” in your 

business. Wendy’s staff is trained to ask 

for referrals within the first 30 seconds on 

customer calls. We use a full page in our 

printed monthly newsletter to promote 

our referral program and seek referrals at 

every possible opportunity. We don’t wait 

for the referrals to come to us… we take 

action and go out and get them! 

We started taking a proactive approach 

with our referral program at The All- 

American Agency in 2004 and it is now 

responsible for more than $1 million in 

annual auto and home premiums. Almost 

a third of Wendy’s new business today 

comes from referrals. We’ve generated $1 

million in 7 years strictly from referrals! 

These pointers are simple to implement 

and cost-efficient. As long as your staff is 

in the office anyway, you might as well 

help them reach their full potential. With 

success come high-fives, enthusiasm, better 

attitudes and more income for all. Ef 

Bill Gough is a former multiple awardwinning 

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Practicing the Golden Rule 

By Ed Horrell 

One of the ongoing surveys conducted 

nationally by The Kindness 

Revolution reflects that 

over 65% of front-line service providers 

feel underappreciated by their customers. 

When probed further, the respondents 

indicated that this lack of appreciation 

stems from an absence of simple comments 

or indications of “thank you” as 

well as rudeness or inappropriate behavior 

on the part of customers. They also 

virtually all agree that they can spot rude 

or indifferent customers by their behavior 

as soon as they walk in the door. 

In a similar survey, 95% of respondents 

state that customers who are kind and respectful 

to their server will receive better 

service! In other words, kind, congenial 

customers receive better customer service 

from service providers. 

As I travel around the country speaking 

to different groups, one topic they all 

seem to agree on is that customer service 

has deteriorated greatly in the last decade 

or two. So much so, the once-popular 

motto used by many businesses of yesteryear 

– “service with a smile” – now seems 

anachronistic. 

But is it a coincidence that the consumer’s 

treatment of front-line service 

providers has fallen to a new low as well 

After all, how accommodating can we 

expect front-line service providers to be 

if they are routinely berated or otherwise 

disrespected 

If we ever want this condition to improve, 

consumers and service providers 

alike must realize that kindness begets 

kindness. Our behavior as customers 

can have a direct impact on the quality 

of service we receive. In other words, we 

have a great amount of influence over the 

quality of service we receive as a result of 

the way we behave and interact. 

At The Kindness Revolution, we 

have enjoyed numerous and engaging 

conversations with front-line service 

providers from restaurants to call centers. 

While the training of these service 

providers is varied, the opinions tend to 

remain the same. Kind customers receive 

better customer service than rude ones 

and mean customers are not as likely to 

get “gold standard” service that more respectful 

customers might get. 

Allstate agents and staff are also service 

providers and sometimes feel the 

“ 

Consumers 

and service providers 

must realize that 

kindness begets 

kindness. 

“ 

brunt of rude or unappreciative customers. 

But insurance agencies differ from 

other service providers in that it is the 

customer who opts to establish the relationship, 

thereby forming a bond that is 

commonly considered to be long-term. 

As such, customers are inclined to shop 

around before settling on an agent. Generally, 

they buy from someone courteous, 

caring and trustworthy. Most will shun 

agents they distrust or dislike because 

they know they’ll probably be unhappy 

and don’t relish the thought of beginning 

the search anew. So in the world 

of insurance, customers establish loyalty 

upfront because they recognize the permanency 

of the relationship. 

Compare this to the restaurant industry, 

where it is common for diners to 

patronize several different restaurants a 

month. And while customers may have 

a strong allegiance to certain restaurants, 

the bond is seldom the same as it is be- 

tween an agent and his customer. This 

may be one reason why restaurant customers 

are sometimes demanding and 

rude to the wait staff, even when service is 

satisfactory. Of course, this can happen at 

Allstate agencies too, but my guess is that 

it happens with much less frequency. The 

bottom line is that changing restaurants 

is easy, while changing insurance agents is 

an unwelcome and time-consuming task. 

Many Allstate agents have joined The 

Kindness Revolution, where we encourage 

the support of people on the front lines. 

We do this via our “Kindness Cards,” which 

are given to deserving front-line providers 

with a “Thank You” from our initiative. 

These cards are then showed to their managers 

and company owners, whose normal 

responses range from “Thank you” to “Tell 

me how I can get involved with the kindness 

movement.” 

Our Community Champions – who 

distribute these cards via their teams and 

colleagues – tell wonderful stories about 

the responses they receive as a result of 

these small tokens of appreciation. The 

fact that a customer would take a moment 

to leave a simple thought of appreciation 

can be the difference between just 

another day and a really GOOD day. 

Try it yourself… take a minute to be 

kind to your service providers, including 

the wait staff at your favorite restaurant 

and the hard-working staff in your Allstate 

agency. The key is to always go out 

of your way to say “thanks” when you get 

great service. 

Lead with kindness. It will make your 

day! Ef 

Ed Horrell is the founder of The Kindness 

Revolution and is the author of the bestselling 

book of the same name. For more 

information, visit www.thekindnessrevolution.net 

or send e-mail to allstate@thekindnessrevolution.net. 


The Ki ndness Revol uti on 

 

Welcomes its new partnership with NAPAA 

Our goal is to start a Revolution of Kindness in every community. 

To do that, we need a local face to be our Community Champion. 

Watch your sales skyrocket when you become the first and only agent 

in your community to represent the movement that will make 

people smile every time they think of you! 

The Ki ndness Revol uti on 

 

Simple, Powerful, Affordable and Effective 

For one Allstate agency’s experience, read the accompanying article titled “Kindness is Contagious” 

For morei nf or mati on e mail us at: all st at e @t heki ndnessrevol uti on. net 

Or call Dave Dail y at 404. 384. 6060 


If you are a successful agency owner 

who’s had a good relationship with 

Allstate, good for you. Unfortunately, 

the vast majority of agents don’t share 

your experience. 

I write this note to all of you current 

and prospective Allstate agents for one 

purpose—to remind you that you don’t 

and will never own anything. You will 

not be entitled to rights that are generally 

afforded to most other “independent 

contractors.” 

I purchased a book of business in Wisconsin 

in October of 2007, right before 

the great recession. As consumers became 

more price sensitive, I began losing 

clients and it became more difficult to 

replace them. Six months into operating 

the agency, my corporate partner came to 

my office to tell me, “You’ve tried marketing 

your way, now you have to do it 

our way.” Pardon me That didn’t sound 

like a partnership to me; it sounded more 

like a master/slave relationship. It certainly 

wasn’t how I learned to partner 

with independent contractors in the financial 

services industry to help them 

become successful. 

It was shortly after this meeting that I 

first learned about “Expected Results” – 

now called “Agency Business Objectives” 

– and the consequences of not meeting 

them. On my birthday, with tears in my 

eyes, I explained to my wife that I may 

have made a mistake by buying an Allstate 

agency. I explained that the 100% leverage 

using our property assets could be in 

jeopardy. I told her I had recently learned 

from NAPAA that I could lose the agency 

for failing to meet my P&C or securities 

production requirements. This concept 

stunned me. My previous work with a 

nationally recognized financial planning 

company taught me that there are no 

production requirements for independent 

feature 

Lessons Learned 

By Mike Handrick 

contractors because imposing them would 

violate well-established government rules 

regarding worker classification. 

I was told none of this by Allstate; I had 

to learn it all on my own. I take full responsibility 

for not conducting my due diligence 

before buying the agency. I wrongly 

assumed that Allstate was a large company 

that had figured out the independent contractor 

model. After all, they had converted 

their agency force to “independent contractor” 

status in the year 2000. But I was 

wrong – dead wrong. 

There was another agent in town who 

was ready to retire, but I was told I did 

not qualify to buy his book of business 

because of my Expected Results. However, 

they then permitted an outside buyer 

– with no experience in financial services 

– to buy his agency and agreed to let him 

buy mine too. They also allowed him to 

combine them into one agency. This defies 

logic and confirmed that I was hitched 

to a leaderless company. It was clear that I 

had to find an exit strategy. 

I was also told I was “required” to attend 

meetings. Really What part of “independent 

contractor” didn’t company 

leadership understand, and why was it 

that many top producers in the region 

didn’t attend Did the mandatory attendance 

requirement extend to them or not 

Why were there nine corporate people at 

these meetings and 11 agents How come 

only two corporate people spoke during 

the meetings Why were we paying the 

other seven to be there The only other 

time I witnessed such waste was working 

for the federal government. 

As time wore on, Allstate continued to 

change the rules for purchasing books of 

business: More liquid cash reserves, requirements 

to hire more producers and as 

always, final approval by Allstate. That’s 

why I say that Allstate agents don’t own 

anything. You might as well own another 

vehicle. It looks pretty when you first get 

it, but the shine wears off quickly. Then 

it begins to depreciate in value and there 

is nothing you can do about it. 

Allstate has failed in creating a management 

culture that serves its independent 

contractor agents. The company saves millions 

each year by not having to pay employee 

expenses. The problem is that they 

forgot to dispense with their manager/slave 

management culture and the managers 

who continue to adhere to it. 

They simply don’t get it, and it is apparent 

to me that they never will until the 

board and CEO are replaced. Any plumber 

will tell you that “stuff ” flows downhill. It’s 

really a shame that such a highly recognizable 

name like Allstate is being destroyed 

by its Machiavellian-style leadership team. 

If you have noticed that your stress level 

has risen and you are having bad dreams 

that involve death and murder, or if you 

spend inordinate amounts of time thinking 

about how and where to hide bodies, it 

may be time to re-examine what you think 

you own as an Allstate agent. 

On January 1, 2011, I began as a true 

independent contractor insurance agent. 

In July of 2011, I merged my independent 

agency with a major financial planning 

practice in Central Wisconsin. I’ve 

returned to my financial planning roots 

by completing my professional designations. 

We are successfully operating a financial 

planning shop that also handles 

personal insurance. You can’t operate an 

Allstate Insurance agency and launch financial 

services from it. The public does 

not believe they can get quality financial 

planning help from a P&C shop. It may 

sound like a decent business model, but 

it won’t work. If Allstate was smart, they 

would drop the securities business and 

focus on their core competencies of insurance 

and protection products. 

For those Allstate agency owners who 

remain, I wish you nothing but the very 

best. As for me, the future is bright. At 

the success rate I am having, the $150,000 

loss – associated with my three-year buying 

and selling experience as an Allstate 

agency owner – will be gone in 24 

months. And I’m one of the lucky ones. 

What is your exit strategy Ef 


uying and selling 

Seller Transparency: 

the Threshold of Acquisitions 

By Rick Dennen 

In our business, we talk a lot about the 

importance of due diligence before the 

acquisition of a business or book of 

business. From white papers to articles 

to webinars, we try to educate agency 

principals with the hope of preventing 

acquisition failures. Just when we fear 

we’re starting to sound like a broken record, 

we hear another first-hand account 

of a deal gone bad, affirming the need 

for this education. 

Recently, we received a message from 

an agency principal who read one of our 

articles several weeks too late. He purchased 

another agency without conducting 

appropriate due diligence and now is 

stuck with a poorly performing agency. 

He felt the due diligence steps we recommended 

were unrealistic because sellers, 

as a general rule, are not in the practice 

of making information available to 

potential buyers — at least not the seller 

he encountered. 

He was partially right. A thorough 

due diligence process is unrealistic in 

transactions with sellers who refuse to be 

transparent. Just as it would be unwise 

to buy a house without an inspection, 

acquiring a business without detailed 

insight into its financials and operations 

is a dangerous and risky endeavor. 

Transparency by the seller must be the 

first condition that’s satisfied before any 

other steps are made towards a purchase. 

A seller who is reluctant to share information 

is waving a huge red flag, warning 

you to take a step back and rethink 

your decision to pursue an acquisition. 

Without proper due diligence, it’s 

impossible to predict future returns on 

your investment because you can’t accurately 

estimate retention levels for 

customers, employees and contracts. You 

won’t know who key customers are, their 

premium revenue or their loyalty to the 

agency. Without policy detail and history, 

you won’t be able to forecast the 

future performance of the book. While 

this is crucial when purchasing an independent 

agency book of business, it also 

applies to captive agents, especially those 

with brokered books that will be included 

in the sale. No insight into carrier 

contracts provides no means to verify 

commissions and no guarantee of transferability. 

Perhaps even worse, you’ll be 

in the dark about employee morale and 

which producers might leave and take 

valuable customers with them. 

Many sellers are reluctant to disclose 

details because they view it as a risk. 

Potential buyers, after all, are often 

competitors. At the same time, buyers 

assume transparency isn’t an option because 

of the seller’s perception of risk. As 

a result, they don’t even ask for appropriate 

information. In truth, the exchange 

of sensitive information is critical to the 

success of the acquisition. In addition, 

sellers sometimes commit to transparen- 

cy, but later block access to vital information 

and avoid or discourage meetings. 

Suspicious actions like these should warn 

buyers that something may be wrong and 

it may be best to walk away. 

The solution to all of this is for the 

parties to sign a nondisclosure agreement 

(NDA) or confidentiality agreement. 

NDAs give potential buyers access to the 

information they need in order to conduct 

proper due diligence while also protecting 

the seller from a buyer’s misuse or 

sharing of confidential information and 

the solicitation of the seller’s customers 

and employees. 

The simple lesson here is an important 

one. If an agency owner refuses to 

be transparent, they may have something 

to hide and buyers should consider walking 

away from the deal. Without seller 

transparency, it’s impossible to know 

what you’re buying and that is a recipe 

for disaster. Ef 

Rick Dennen is president and CEO of Oak 

Street Funding, which provides commission-based 

lending for insurance agents that 

need capital to buy, build or sell their agency. 

Dennen is a licensed agent in the state of Indiana 

for Life, Accident & Health products 

and a licensed Certified Public Accountant 

in the state of Indiana. In addition, he is an 

instructor of venture capital and entrepreneurial 

finance at the Indiana University 

Kelly School of Business. He can be reached 

at rick.dennen@oakstreetfunding.com. 

The materials in this article are for informational 

purposes only. They are not offered 

as and do not constitute an offer for a loan, 

professional or legal advice or legal opinion 

and should not be used as a substitute for obtaining 

professional or legal advice. 


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* The materials in these papers are for informational purposes only. They are not offered as and do not 

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feature 

The Psychology of a Company 


Compartmentalization is a psychology 

term and according to 

www.abubakarjamil.com, it is defined 

as follows: 

“Compartmentalization is the psychological 

term for placing two or more conflicting 

thoughts, values, beliefs or aspects of one’s 

life in separate mental boxes, and believing 

that they got nothing to do with each other. 

In simple words, if you have two beliefs 

that conflict with one another, your mind 

will put them in separate compartments, 

and will let you act out on one of them, 

without you having to deal with a lot of 

internal conflict or guilt while you are committing 

that act.” 

Sound familiar It should, since Allstate 

seems to be using compartmentalization 

as a business strategy these days. 

Consider the following: 

We want to grow, yet we have cut the 

sales force 35 to 40 percent over the past 

5 years. 

We claim to have a great opportunity 

for agents, yet we are cutting base compensation 

to 9% while Allstate-owned 

Encompass has raised theirs to 20%. 

We want customers to be completely 

satisfied, but we are making significant 

cuts to policy coverages with products 

like House & Home. 

We find and approve great business 

people to buy our tenured, underperforming 

agencies, but our own bank 

won’t loan the money needed to finance 

the purchases, making it seem that the 

company is approving people who are 

just good enough to buy an Allstate 

agency, but not good enough to extend 

credit to them. 

Agents are our future, yet we spend 

time and resources buying, advertising 

and cultivating direct channels like Esurance. 

Although looking at the list above 

would make most logical people conclude 

that the concepts are diametrically 

opposed or mutually exclusive, the 

company somehow believes otherwise. 

They have either convinced themselves 

through some bizarre form of rationalization 

or mental gymnastics that the 

concepts listed above are accordant with 

one another. It is either this, or they have 

chosen to stick their heads in the sand 

and ignore reality. 

Consider the following as an example 

of what I mean. The TV commercial depicting 

Mayhem making a snow angel 

on a roof laden with heavy snow is one 

of my favorites. He blows a strong breath 

of air skyward, causing just enough snow 

to fall onto the roof to collapse it. Then 

Mayhem declares, “Cut-rate insurance 

many not pay for this.” Hmmm…. if that 

customer had Allstate’s House & Home 

policy and the roof was of a certain age, 

they could also be in for a financially 

devastating surprise. So the very thing 

the company is celebrating in their advertising 

is what they are taking out of 

their policies. We won’t even get into 

the fact that this ad is deceptive because 

infers that Allstate customers would be 

made whole in this instance, when in fact 

they may not be. 

The problem with all of this stuff is 

that it’s hard to trust a company like 

this and even harder to figure out where 

they’re headed, which could be by design. 

As the company recently found 

out when it lost more agents than 

planned, getting rid of too many agents 

in one fell swoop would likely cause a 

mighty uproar and disrupt customers to 

the point where the company may not 

be able to recover. Now it appears that 

the company wants to slow the agent 

exodus from a flood to a trickle. This 

revision to slowly reduce the overall 

number of agents, increase the percentage 

of new agents, and undermine existing 

agencies with inferior back office 

support, will make it easier to pull the 

plug if needed. Nobody is sure what the 

company will look like in ten years, but 

it is crystal clear that its loyalty to and 

reliance on agents is a thing of the past. 

For now, the company will simply 

compartmentalize their conflicting and 

illogical strategies so that they don’t have 

to deal with another psychological concept 

– cognitive dissonance. Pretty soon, 

the company may find itself lying on a 

couch receiving corporate psychoanalysis. 

Perhaps by then, the couch will no 

longer be covered by insurance because 

it might be more than ten years old. Ef 


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feature 

Agent Pension Plan Information for 

Former Allstate Employee Agents 

By Nancy Fish 

For the most part, Allstate stopped 

hiring employee agents in 1990. 

Then in the year 2000, the company 

terminated all its remaining employee 

agent contracts, except for those located 

in certain jurisdictions, such as the state 

of New Jersey. 

At the time, the company had 6,171 

employee agents who were affected by 

the “Preparing for the Future” initiative, 

wherein agents were allowed to continue 

their careers only if they agreed to become 

independent contractors and suffer 

the loss of their employee benefits. 

Most of those affected were over the age 

of forty. 

Of the 6,171 affected agents, 3,772 

converted to the EA agreement and continued 

their agency relationship; 2,399 

selected another option, and parted ways 

with the company. Virtually all 6,171 

employee agents were vested in the Allstate 

Agent Pension fund at the time 

their employment contract was severed, 

and many of those are now approaching 

retirement age. 

Vesting in the pension plan required a 

minimum of five years as an employee of 

Allstate. Employment at Sears prior to 

1995 could also be counted towards vesting 

eligibility for Sears employees who 

left and became Allstate agents. Vested 

former employee agents who were not 

yet 65 when employment ended became 

“terminated deferred vested Participants.” 

Who is eligible to withdraw 

benefits under the plan 

Normal retirement age is 65. Agents 

hired before 1989 are eligible to receive 

early retirement benefits payable at age 

63. In addition, agents with 20-plus 

years of continuous employment can receive 

early retirement benefits at age 55. 

Early retirement benefits – paid prior 

to age 65 – are calculated at a reduced 

amount based on your actual age. 

Current Allstate Exclusive Agent independent 

contractors can take their 

retirement benefits as soon as they are 

eligible based on age and years of employment. 

In other words, you may collect 

your benefit while still under contract 

as an EA independent contractor 

agent. 

The deferred vested benefit is payable 

as an annuity. While several annuity payout 

options are available, it is important 

to note that monthly payout amounts 

are “frozen” and will not change as the 

participant ages. Currently, a lump-sum 

payout option is still available, but the 

plan is under no obligation to continue 

it. The lump sum is calculated by applying 

a conversion factor – which includes 

interest rate and mortality assumptions 

– to the straight life annuity benefit. 

Consequently, the benefit amount under 

the lump sum option may increase 

or decrease depending on the prevailing 

assumptions in effect at the time a lump 

sum is requested. 

The Pension Protection Act (PPA) of 

2006 changed the interest rate used to 

calculate lump-sum payouts of the Agents 

Pension Plan from the 30-year Treasury 

Bond Rate to a corporate bond segmented 

yield curve. As a result, there is no longer 

a single interest rate used for lump-sum 

payments. As a general rule, if the average 

interest rates decrease, the lump sum 

equivalent increases, and vice versa. 

If you receive your pension benefit in a 

lump sum, you can “roll” it into an IRA 


to maintain the tax deferred status. This 

must be a direct transfer or the Agents 

Pension Plan will withhold 20% of the 

payout for income tax purposes. 

Social Security offset 

Agents who became participants in 

the plan prior to Dec 31, 1988 should be 

aware that pre-1989 benefits contain a 

Social Security offset which is calculated 

based on estimated compensation earned 

from 1951 through 1988. 

You have the option of having your 

actual compensation from 1951 through 

1988 – as recorded by the Social Security 

Administration – used in the calculation 

instead of your estimated compensation. 

Using your actual compensation in the 

calculation of your pension benefit may 

produce a higher pension benefit. More 

importantly, using your actual prior compensation 

will never result in lowering 

the pension benefit you are entitled to 

receive and will not affect the Social Security 

benefit you are eligible to receive. 

You can obtain your actual 1951 

through 1988 earnings history by re- 

questing your “Social Security Statement” 

from the Social Security website 

at http://www.ssa.gov or by contacting 

your local Social Security office. The information 

is free of charge. Remember to 

request your “Social Security Statement,” 

not your “Detailed Earnings Information.” 

Then you must forward your compensation 

history to the Allstate Benefits 

Center before requesting the distribution 

of your pension. The Allstate Benefits 

Center must receive your compensation 

history no later than four months 

from your Payment Start Date. 

Death Benefit 

If you die as a terminated deferred 

vested participant, a death benefit will 

be payable to your spouse or other designated 

beneficiary. Participants should 

be sure all beneficiary information is up 

to date. 

Estimated Death Benefit 

Amount 

Your estimated death benefit amount 

– stated as a lump sum form of payment 

– is payable if you die before commencing 

payment of the Plan benefit. You 

can access your estimated death benefit 

amount – calculated as of the prior yearend 

– by calling the Allstate Benefits 

Center at 888-255-7772, where you will 

be connected to an automated system. 

Following the prompts, select the “Retirement 

and Investments” option and 

then the “Pension” option. You will then 

be connected with a benefits representative 

who will assist you with your request. 

The value of your estimated death 

benefit could increase or decrease from 

time to time because the interest rate the 

Plan uses to calculate lump-sum benefits 

fluctuates over time. 

Eligible agents can learn more about 

retirement benefits at the Your Benefits 

Resources website at http://resources. 

hewitt.com/allstate or by calling the Allstate 

Benefits Center at 888.255-7772. By 

creating a log-in, agents can view the Summary 

Plan Description, project retirement 

benefits, compare the payout options, and 

start the pension payment process. Ef 

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Reinventing an Unloved 

Marketing Strategy 

By Scott Brodbeck 

Have you ever heard that direct 

mail is one of the worst ways to 

spend your marketing dollars 

With an average response rate between 

1 and 2 percent, it would be difficult to 

argue that the rate of return justifies pursuing 

this form of marketing. It would 

be even more difficult to advocate using 

direct mail as your primary method of 

marketing, but that’s exactly what this 

article will attempt to do. 

Before dismissing this idea and moving 

on to the next article, let me clarify 

a few things. I agree that direct mail in 

general isn’t a very good way to market 

your business, but the reason response 

rates are so low is because direct mail 

usually takes a carpet bomb approach 

in order to reach as many prospects as 

possible. As a result, the vast majority 

of people receiving a solicitation from 

you aren’t aren’t likely to be interested in 

whatever it is you’re selling, and depending 

on what your mail piece looks like, 

they may not even open it. 

Therefore, instead of using the saturation 

method, where everyone in a particular 

geographic area receives your direct 

mail piece, it makes more sense – and 

costs less money – to gear your marketing 

efforts toward prospects who are most 

likely to be interested in what you’re selling. 

This is referred to as targeted direct 

mail. Ideally, you want to find a group of 

people who either are looking for what 

you have to offer or who are open to 

hearing what you have to say. 

Let’s think about that from the perspective 

of a landlord who owns multiple rental 

properties. When all the properties are 

rented to stable tenants who pay their rent 

on time and rarely call with maintenace 

issues, the landlord is on top of the world 

and any issues associated with the properties 

are not top of mind. But when a tenant 

moves out, the landord’s relaxed mindset 

suddenly shifts to “dealing with a vacant 

property.” This means making repairs, 

slapping on a fresh coat of paint, advertising 

the property and showing it. Every day 

without a tenant is a day without rental 

income, but that’s not all. Continuing expenses, 

such as taxes, mortgage payments, 

insurance and utilities must be paid, as do 

costs to make the property rentable again. 

Could there be a better time to approach 

this individual about saving money on their 

property insurance I think not. 

I’ve always been a fan of the Landlords 

Package Policy (LPP) – not because the 

premiums are the best in town, but because 

the multi-policy discount for having 

home and auto is pretty substantial in 

many states. Typically, local newspapers 

run ads for house rentals, which almost 

always include the landlord’s telephone 

number. What if you cross-referenced 

the phone numbers to find out the mailing 

addresses of each landlord Presto, 

now have a mailing list of landlords who 

may be at their most vulnerable – when 

their expenses are high and who are in 

the throes of finding tenants. It is beyond 

the scope of this article to go through the 

logistics of transforming phone numbers 

to addresses; but it can be done if you’re 

tech savvy and if not, you may want to 

consult a tech consultant. 

Now let’s move on to targeted homeowner 

opportunities. Many people buy 

their property insurance from their car 

insurance agent and never give it a second 

thought. Sending a letter out of the 

blue to someone about their homeowners 

insurance will likely result in the normal 

1 to 2 percent response rate. But if you 

specifically target homeowners who are 

coming up on the anniversary of their 

purchase date, and if you have a quote in 

their hands prior to the receipt of their 

dec sheet, you will significantly increase 

the likelihood of a response. Keep in 

mind that many policies are billed to the 

mortgage company. This creates a couple 

of obstacles: the first is that you must time 

your mailing so it arrives before the motgagee 

pays the premium, and the second 

is to get your prospects to pay attention to 

what you’ve sent them. 

When mortgage companies pay the 

premium, policyholders don’t tend to 

notice rate increases because they aren’t 

the one writing the check. When they 

receive a notice that says, “Do not pay, 

mortgagee has been billed,” they typically 

file it away, oftentimes without ever 

looking at the premium. Your job as a direct 

mail marketer is to give them a reason 

to shop. Send a mailing that makes 

them question their existing coverage 

or policy premium. For example, what 

if your mail piece asked, “Will you see 

a $20 to $50 increase in your monthly 

mortgage payments because your homeowner 

insurance rates have gone up” 

The idea is to pique their interest with 

an attention-grabbing headline. 

The new House & Home product 

has rates that have disappointed many 

agents, and true to form, the company 

has continued its tradition of putting the 

majority of the insurance buying public 

into non-competive IS scores, leaving 

only a tiny segment of prospects with 

a competitive rate. However, there is a 

better than average chance that those 

in this segment live in close proximity 

to one another – in neighborhoods 

with higher than average credit. Your 


challenge is to identify homeowners in 

specific Zip Codes whose policies are 

coming up for renewal based on the anniversay 

date of their home purchase. To 

find the Zip Codes that may contain IS 

friendly prospects, keep a log of the bestscoring 

prospects from your saved quotes 

file and from policies you’ve already written. 

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to 

launch a monthly direct mail campaign 

targeting your intended audience. Just 

think how powerful this could be if you 

were to deliver a competive quote into 

your prosepects’ hands a week before 

they received the renewal premium from 

their current carrier. 

The good news is that the information 

you need for this type of targeted mailing 

list is most likely available. Many agents 

are familiar with their county assessment 

office, where properties are officially recorded 

for tax purposes. These offices 

generally make this information available 

to the public online. 

What many agents may not be familiar 

with is another county office that records 

data specific to deeds and mortgages. 

Whereas the assessment office records 

building ownership and characteristics, 

the recorder of deeds office records information 

detailing when deeds were transferred 

and when mortgages were issued. 

Oftentimes, the assessment office will 

list the date of a property’s sale as the last 

date the mortgage was refinanced, presumably 

because when refinancing, an 

owner must go through a process similar 

to that of a new property purchase. 

Now this is where the boys get seperated 

from the men. If an agent doesn’t 

dig for more information and mistakes 

the re-fi dates for original purchase dates, 

he will likely have expended a lot of effort 

for meager results. The information 

you want is the month and year when the 

owner first bought the property, not the 

date the mortgage was last refinanced. 

This is because the original purchase 

date will likely be the best indicator of 

the date the homeowner policy will renew. 

The recorder of deeds office will allow 

you to search for deeds or mortgages 

specifically. And since the issuance of a 

new mortgage doesn’t transfer the deed, 

you are able to get the true purchase date 

rather than a refinance date. 

What the county recorder of deeds office 

makes available online varies from 

county to county and some are easier to 

search than others. If your county’s records 

are not search-friendly, there are 

other ways to get the information you 

need, but it may require the services of a 

knowledgeable consultant to “scrape” the 

pertinent data from their system. Sometimes, 

the data from the recorder’s office 

will have to be combined with data from 

the assessment office in order to get the 

information you need. This may seem 

like a lot of trouble and expense, but 

that’s actually a good thing because your 

fellow agents are not likely to follow suit, 

leaving you with a great source of leads 

and little or no competition. 

Now instead of randomly sending direct 

mail to the masses, you can target 

your solicitations to prospects that have 

real potential and you can time your 

mailings to land in their mailboxes when 

they are most likely to act. 

When I was an agent and I used some 

of these methods to generate targeted 

mailing lists, there were months when I 

would see response rates as high as 10% 

to 12%. And because I was very specific 

in my targeting, I was able to close a high 

percentage of those prospects. This was 

because I was selective with my mailings, 

which were all based on how competitive 

my products were in each market. If you 

know where your rates are competitive 

and where they’re not, you’ll save a lot of 

marketing dollars and wheel-spinning. 

Early on in my career, I learned that 

nothing worthwhile comes easy. It’s the 

same with developing and executing your 

marketing efforts. In my case, the amount 

of time I spent obtaining and refining my 

targeted prospect list exceeded the time I 

spent in preparing the mail piece, which 

included things like printing, signing, and 

stuffing envelopes. You will know that you 

are truly creating a targeted list when you 

find this to be the case. 

When it comes to targeted direct mail, 

there are two components of equal importance. 

What we’ve discussed so far is the 

first component, which is selecting a very 

specific audience. The second is getting your 

audience to open and read your correspondence. 

Having the perfect lead list is fruitless 

if 90% of your prospects throw your mail 

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piece away before opening the envelope. 

Avoid company-approved mailings 

and co-op opportunities. For the most 

part, these mail pieces are designed and 

witten to drive business to the company, 

not necessarily to your agency. Therefore, 

your objective should be to create a 

piece that makes the customer think your 

agency offers something that they’re not 

going to get through another agency. 

Maybe it’s the quote that you’ve included 

in your mailer, or the the superior customer 

service that comes with being a 

customer of your agency. The biggest 

reason you want to avoid co-op mailings 

is because of their cookie cutter appearance 

– they almost always look like 

junk mail and are filled with disclaimers. 

Have you ever noticed the fine print at 

the bottom of a co-op letter Most of it 

goes along with footnotes in the text of 

the letter and deals with exclusions, legal 

notices, etc. While they may be wellmeaning, 

but they look like one thing – a 

junk mail advertisement. 

As a recipient of these one-size-fits-all 

insurance mailings, I am disappointed by 

the lack of originality in them. Unfortunately, 

these mailings reveal something 

about the agents who send them out. I 

know an Allstate customer who – because 

of the mass agent firings in recent 

years – has three different Allstate agents 

and all of them send him the same bland 

letter on his birthday. He doesn’t even 

open them anymore because the letters 

are the same every year. 

This same problem happens when 

multiple agents solicit the same Zip Code 

using company-approved mail pieces. In 

instances like this, it is common for prospects 

to receive the exact same solicitation 

from each agent. There is absolutely 

NOTHING personal about form letters 

that look like advertisements. Many recipients 

simply throw them away, wasting 

the agent’s hard-earned marketing 

dollars. 

Co-op mailings often include your signature 

in the closing of the letter. At some 

point, you signed a camera card allowing 

the company to digitize your signature 

and use it on various documents, including 

co-op mailings. Unfortunately, it looks 

like a digitized signature and it’s blatantly 

obvious that you didn’t sign the letter. A 

properly targeted direct mail campaign 

includes letters that are actually signed by 

you. Your actual signature on a letter says 

a lot about you. It says that the content of 

the letter is something that is specifically 

meant for the recipient. It also says to the 

people receiving the mailing that they are 

important to you. 

The time it takes to sign each letter 

in blue ink is a good investment of your 

time because it tells the prospect that 

what they’re reading is personal. A real 

blue-ink signature will never be confused 

with the artificial black-ink signature 

found on co-op form letters. 

I know there are those who will disagree, 

but I don’t recommend using bulk 

mail or putting postage on envelopes 

with a postal machine. Instead, use a 

first-class stamp. Does this make your 

mailing more expensive Yes, it does, but 

it significantly increases the likelihood 

of the envelope being opened. I would 

much prefer having each of my individually 

stamped envelopes opened and pay 

the associated postage than save a few 

dollars and have 6 out of 10 envelopes 

thrown away unopened. At that rate, you 

would have to nearly double the number 

of letters in your mailing – significantly 

increasing your postage costs – to get the 

same response as your first-class mailing. 

I call this working smarter, not harder. 

Do you know the difference between 

First-Class Mail, Express Mail, Priority 

Mail, Certified Mail and Registered 

Mail Many people don’t and that can be 

used to your benefit. With all of the options 

available when you go to the post 

office, it can be easy for people to confuse 

First-Class Mail with Priority Mail 

and mistakenly believe that anything 

sent first-class is special or otherwise important. 

If you put a stamp on a letter 

and drop it in the mail it will be sent via 

First-Class Mail. There is nothing that 

says you can’t include the words “First- 

Class Mail” on the face of the envelope. 

Since it’s going to go first-class whether 

you specify so or not, I recommend you 

invest in a self-inking red stamp that says 

“First-Class Mail” and that you stamp it 

on the envelope to the left of the address 

of the recipient. Why Because it looks 

more important, and since many people 

associate “First-Class” with something 

above and beyond normal mail, their first 

inclination is to open the envelope when 

they receive it. 

One final trick is to include a photo of 

something that belongs to the customer 

on the envelope. I used to take photos of 

contractors’ work trucks when I was out 

and about and would send them a letter 

about commercial auto insurance. In the 

lower left corner of the envelope I would 

print the photo on the envelope along 

with a line of text that read, “Important 

Information Enclosed.” This increased 

the amount of time it took to print the 

envelopes, but after setting up a special 

template, all I had to do was drop the 

photo into the template and hit print. 

If you’re sending a mailing about homeowners 

insurance, many county assessment 

websites include photos of houses 

on the parcel’s webpage. It is almost 

guaranteed that when someone receives 

a letter with a photo of their house or vehicle 

on the front of the envelope they 

will open the letter – you can’t get more 

personal than this! 

Hopefully, you will now agree that 

what many consider to be one of the 

worst ways to advertise may actually 

be one of the best, especially if you put 

some thought into who your prospects 

are, what your envelope and letter look 

like and the timing of when you send it. 

Targeted direct mail is more complicated 

than just stuffing envelopes and sending 

out mass mailings. Finding the right target 

audience and sending personalized 

and meaningful correspondence to them 

at a time when they are most likely to 

act on it, will open the door to increased 

sales. Then, when they respond to your 

letter – and you will be pleasantly surprised 

at how many will – make sure that 

when all is said and done, you have taken 

every opportunity to cross-sell every line 

of insurance they need and you’ll be well 

on your way to growing your book! Ef 

Scott Brodbeck is a Microsoft Certified 

Systems Engineer and a Master Certified 

Novell Engineer who is also a former 

EA and IA. Currently he develops technical 

marketing tools and provides marketing 

consulting services specializing in the profitable 

growth of insurance agencies. He can be 

reached via email at scott@scottbrodbeck. 


feature 

The Saboteurs 

By Dave Thorpe 

I 

wanted to write an article describing 

how low-level employees can sabotage 

a company in the eyes of its clients 

and do more harm collectively than an 

incompetent CEO might. I thought I’d 

start with a few personal experiences and 

build from there. First, let me say that 

I didn’t want to limit my study to just 

the insurance industry. And rather than 

limit this article to my own personal experiences 

and those of people I know, I 

decided to use statistics compiled by JD 

Power for credibility and to add a national 

perspective. Easier said than done. 

Before we get started on this endeavor, 

I have always found it interesting how 

few retired Allstate agents have kept 

their personal policies with Allstate. As a 

case in point, I know of no retirees – other 

than me – who have done so. They’re 

now with AARP, USAA, State Farm 

and others. In other words, they are insured 

with anyone but the company that 

feathered their nests and nurtured them 

during their insurance-selling years. Clients 

don’t simply leave companies for a 

few dollars after a 35 or 40 year relationship. 

They leave because they’ve been 

badly treated. Personally, I would love to 

switch to State Farm, but because I sold 

my agency to another agent – who still 

owes me a bunch of money – I don’t want 

to rock the boat. But let me tell you what 

got me going on this disloyalty kick. 

Twenty or so years ago, and during 

some national conference or another, the 

company awarded me a Rolex watch. It 

was recently stolen and I decided to make 

a claim. Because there were personal issues 

involved, including the fact I couldn’t 

remember exactly which Rolex model it 

was, I decided to make the claim directly 

to Allstate via myaccount.allstate.com. 

When I hit the claims link, a popup informed 

I had to make a phone call and 

provided me with a number to call. 

Let me digress for a moment so I can 

explain that I’ve been deaf for more than 

ten years. It may or may not have been 

due to my Marine Corps experience. 

To continue, the popup on the screen 

didn’t offer any options for the hearing 

impaired or deaf. Since I didn’t want to 

trouble anyone else with the claim, I decided 

to try conversing with claims using 

my closed captioned phone. I asked them 

to speak slowly so the captions would 

catch up on my phone screen. Instead, 

they tried talking over me and we ended 

up getting in a shouting match due to 

the deafness as well as mutual frustration. 

Finally, I got one particularly rude 

person to give me an email address. Four 

emails covering ten days and he never 

responded. I obtained the claims manager’s 

email address and tried again. Still 

no response. Then it occurred to me that 

if a company treated its deaf and disabled 

in such a cavalier manner, how were they 


treating the typical garden-variety client 

I remember as an agent the company’s 

ridiculous thesis that low retention ratios 

were caused by rude agents and their 

staffs. Now really, how much sense does 

that make Agents rely on new and renewal 

commissions, not only to exist, but 

to invest for their retirement, pay their 

health insurance premiums and keep 

their businesses running. The last thing 

they want to do is offend their customers. 

Regional employees – including claims 

personnel – are on salary and have their 

pensions and health insurance provided. 

A little digression with those thoughts 

in mind; company employees think 

agents earn outlandish incomes. They 

mistakenly equate gross agency revenues 

with take home pay. Nothing could 

be further from the truth; not only do 

agents have to fund their own benefits, 

but they must also pay rent, utilities, staff 

salaries, insurance and much more. The 

truth is, many company employees net 

more in benefits and salaries than agents 

do. But are they paid to run clients off 

My contention is that intelligent people 

don’t bite the hand that feeds them. 

Conversely, claims adjusters don’t care 

about commissions or retention ratios. I 

know that our renewal ratios are below 

national average, but what about customer 

claims satisfaction I punched up 

the stats published by JD Power. On an 

industry average of 833 on a 1000 point 

scale, Allstate scores 829, which is below 

average. Chubb Insurance, another publically 

traded company, scored 859, well 

above average and a full 30 points higher 

than Allstate. I dialed in their website 

as if I wanted to make a claim. Immediately, 

I was given a choice of an email 

address or a phone number. See folks, if 

you’re going to make a theft claim, Allstate 

wants to ‘talk’ to you personally and 

grind you down. Chubb seems willing to 

let the facts speak for themselves. That is 

but one of the reasons why their retention 

and claims satisfaction are so superior 

to Allstate’s. Agents see the company’s 

dreadful PIF numbers; just imagine 

how many clients Allstate agents lose 

every year to these overbearing and inept 

employees. Yet the company sees no 

evil and hears no evil when it comes to 

regional employees; it only speaks evil of 

its favorite corporate whipping boy, the 

Allstate agency force. 

Allstate isn’t alone in allowing inept 

employees to run off clients and prospects. 

Consider Quicken. They allow 

you to apply for a refinance loan entirely 

by email. This is good for deaf folks, like 

me. As wonderful as it sounds, the process 

is tedious and takes time – lots of 

time. In fact it took so much time that 

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I had to postpone work on other projects 

due to all the minutiae they wanted. 

With all the hassles I was experiencing, 

I thought there must be a better way. 

Surely there were other companies I 

could deal with, so I gave up on Quicken 

and dialed into the JD Power website to 

find out. 

Guess what In terms of customer satisfaction, 

Quicken was the best. So you 

see folks, it’s whether you’re buying or 

selling. Insurance companies are begging 

for new clients and mortgage companies 

can afford to pick and choose. 

In another example, I wanted some 

information from Prudential Skandia 

on an annuity I’ve held with them for 

years. My questions were complicated 

and esoteric to people within the industry. 

I’d sold the plan to myself years 

ago. Being deaf, I didn’t want to involve 

my wife on the call because we would 

have to hand the phone back and forth 

and something might get lost in translation. 

So I carefully explained this over 

my closed captioned phone to various 

people throughout a 60-minute ordeal; 

it was doubly arduous because they were 

offshore and spoke with foreign accents. 

Finally, they agreed to email me 

an email address, promising to answer 

my questions electronically. So a day 

later, I got a response from a do-notreply 

source which apologized for their 

ineptitude. In their email, they gave me 

a phone number to call. Go figure. 

I hope Allstate and some of the folks 

hiring these people are saving enough 

money by keeping them employed to 

make up for the clients and prospects 

they’re running off. Oh, and my claim 

As it wasn’t for a lot of money, and I 

didn’t want the hassle, I simply gave up 

on it. Just like one day in the near future, 

I’m going to give up on Allstate. 

I’d like to do an article about the reasons 

why agents and clients are forced 

to deal with inept employees while our 

best and brightest move up the ladder or 

move on to bigger and better opportunities 

at Chubb, State Farm or elsewhere. 

If you have any ideas along these lines, 

I’d love to hear from you. But don’t call 

the deaf Marine. Email me at Daverotundo901@ 

msn.com. Ef 



Should Your Agency Have 

its Own Website 

By Robyn Sharp 

for your agency and for your internet 

marketing. If there is a chance that you 

might decide one day to go independent 

or to change companies, then you need 

to start now by creating your own website 

with a strong local online presence. 

As thousands of former Allstate agents 

have discovered, it’s never too early to establish 

your own brand identity. Think of 

it as a form of career insurance. 

Let’s make it simple. Your website is 

your home base. It’s a place where you 

make the rules and control all of the content. 

It’s the online face of your business 

to the world. 

If you don’t own it, such as the case 

with your Allstate website, then you 

don’t control it. You may have a nice 

company website, but you’re at the mercy 

of their marketing, their brand, and their 

decisions – not yours. 

Internet marketing can be overwhelming 

for a beginner. Websites, blogs, 

social media, search engine optimization, 

and pay per click advertising are 

completely different from the traditional 

marketing techniques to which you are 

probably accustomed. It’s a whole new 

world to learn about, and it’s filled with 

lots of new technology, skills, software, 

and buzzwords. 

As an Allstate agent, you already have a 

host of internet marketing tools provided 

to you by the company. To their credit, 

they’ve done an excellent job of helping 

you get prepared. But is it enough The 

answer is complicated but, for the most 

part, it depends on what your long-term 

agency goals are. 

Allstate provides you with a basic 

agency website and the tools to create 

your own social media profiles pursuant 

to their guidelines and rules. They also 

provide social media content to use in 

your status updates and to promote your 

agency. But who is it intended to promote 

Your agency or the Allstate brand 

While it is customized to your individual 

agency, Allstate’s marketing materials 

primarily promote the company brand. 

Of course, it’s a great brand, and is probably 

a large reason why you became an 

Allstate agent! 

But there comes a point where you 

must decide what your future plans are 

What Do I Need To Get Started 

For most agencies, a great starting 

point is a simple blog-style website. 

Blogs are not much different than regular 

websites. A blog is like an online journal. 

You write articles, called blog posts, and 

they are shown on your website in reverse 

chronological order with the most recent 

being first. 

A blog allows you to continually share 

information and ideas with your readers. 

And most importantly, it allows you to 

showcase yourself as an insurance expert 

in the industry. Basically, you are creating 

a platform to educate your clients and 

establish your brand online. Blogs are 

also recommended because they are extremely 

helpful in building traffic to your 

website. Google consistently ranks blogs 

higher in search engine results because 

the content is always changing. 


Think about this. If you create a standard 

brochure-style website, nothing 

ever changes. It is stagnant. There is no 

reason for Google to keep coming back 

to your site. But with a blog, you are always 

updating with fresh content. There 

are more keywords, more information, 

and more reasons for people to find your 

website while searching. All in all, blogging 

is a great way to build search engine 

optimization (SEO), which can help get 

your website ranked higher. 

High search engine rankings also require 

time. The longer your website is 

established – especially with regular 

blog posts being added each month – 

the stronger your website will be in the 

search engine results. 

Another great benefit to blogging is 

that it is easy to get started, even without 

hiring a web designer and spending 

lots of money. You can use a website like 

Wordpress.com to begin your blog and 

start creating content in less than 15 

minutes! 

What Do I Write About 

Many agents worry about blogging because, 

like social media, it requires time 

to come up with topics, writing blog 

posts, editing them, and posting them on 

to your website. But it doesn’t have to be 

difficult. In fact, blogging once or twice 

a month will give you a great start. By no 

means does it have to be daily. You can 

even delegate the task to a staff member 

with strong writing skills. 

Then if you are comfortable being on 

video, you can create a video blog too. 

Make short two to three minute videos 

sharing insurance tips and education. A 

good way to do this is to use those questions 

people ask you every day and answer 

them. While you can write a script, 

it is not necessary, especially if you are 

adept at ad-libbing. Like anything else, 

the more natural you come across to your 

audience, the better impression you will 

make. And uploading the videos to your 

blog can be done quickly, even with a basic 

smartphone. 

When it comes to ideas for what to 

share on your blog, think about what 

would establish you as an expert and 

what your readers would find interesting. 

For example, you can talk about budgeting, 

saving money, family asset protection, 

and financial planning. And the 

more you share about your local community 

the better. Organizations you’re 

involved in, volunteer opportunities, and 

community events all make great blog 

content. They are interesting topics that 

are shared in your area and spread your 

name as a local supporter. 

Why Is All This Important 

In the insurance business, your name 

and your brand are everything. They 

make or break your success. People absolutely 

must know who you are and 

what you do. Internet marketing – either 

through a website or social media channel 

– is a highly effective way to make 

this happen. By utilizing online tools, 

you are able to take control of your message, 

build your own agency brand, and 

demonstrate your expertise and authority 

in the insurance world. 

As with most things in life, you 

can’t trust someone else to do it 

for you. 

Yes, you can rely 100% on the Allstate 

marketing tools and you will be fine. 

You’ll have the basics covered. But, if 

you decide to change companies five or 

ten years from now, you’ll wish you had 

started your own website much sooner. 

The same thing goes for social media 

networks like Facebook. Create your 

page and build your fans using your 

name, not Allstate’s, and you’ll have a 

marketing tool that you can use for years 

to come. But if you include Allstate on 

your page name, you’ll likely need approval 

from them and if you ever decide 

to leave, as many agents have, you’ll have 

to delete their name. Wouldn’t you rather 

hold on to those thousands of loyal clients 

yourself 

Remember that online marketing is a 

long-term process. It doesn’t have to be perfect 

right away, it’s just important that you 

get started! Make 2013 the year that you 

establish your own brand and start building 

and promoting it online. Ef 

Robyn Sharp is an insurance marketing 

consultant and a former agency owner. Visit 

www.agencyupdates.com for insurance 

marketing tips and to get a copy of Robyn’s 

free checklist “59 Ways to Attract All the Insurance 

Clients You Need.” 



opinion 

From Intangible Product 

to Intangible Company 


Allstate Agents used to sell an intangible 

product. We all understood 

that fact and accepted it, 

even though it was harder to sell than say, 

a household appliance that people could 

see and touch. But these days, Allstate 

agents are selling an intangible company. 

Not long ago, agents were proud to be 

a part of Allstate. It was a great brand 

name with very competitive products. 

The company’s employees would go out 

of their way to help an agent if a customer 

was involved. In fact, one of the 

company’s favorite catchphrases was 

“Nothing happens until a sale is made.” 

This meant that every employee in the 

company basically owed their job to the 

agents who sold Allstate’s intangible 

products. Back then, the company did all 

it could to support agents, and there was 

mutual respect and appreciation for each 

party’s role within this great company. 

I’m not sure exactly when the respect 

and appreciation part began to erode, but 

the products started to erode when the 

infamous Tropical Cyclone Deductible 

(TCD) was introduced in coastal areas. 

This immediately put Allstate agents at 

a disadvantage with their competitors 

because we were the only major player 

with the requirement. Although some 

companies followed suit with their own 

hurricane deductible, they are nowhere 

near as severe as ours. 

Thus began the company’s profiteering: 

to the detriment of the consumer 

and at the expense of agent integrity. I 

remember feeling pangs of guilt whenever 

somebody switched their homeowner 

policy from State Farm to Allstate. 

While I was careful to explain Allstate’s 

TCD, I’m sure there was a great deal of 

misunderstanding and indifference on 

“ 

Changing 

such an ingrained, 

authoritarian culture 

would take a 

Herculean effort and 

require sea change in 

the attitudes of those 

at the top. 

“ 

the part of the insured at the point of 

sale – after all, what were the chances of 

an East Coast hurricane making landfall 

anywhere but Florida or the Carolinas 

Then came the outsourcing. The 

company put its toe in the water with 

commercial, a product line in which 

Allstate was never a big player. More 

than a decade ago, Allstate figured out 

that it would never really be any good 

at commercial, so they decided to let 

agents write the risks they didn’t want 

through certain brokers, such as Northeast 

Agencies. 

Allstate agents from the 60s and 70s 

used to say that the only things Allstate 

wanted to insure were “riskless risks.” In 

recent years, they took this philosophy a 

step further when they started allowing 

agents to broker commercial. Essentially, 

the company gets money for doing nothing. 

You see, this was when the company 

began to shift its focus from supporting 

agents to preying on them. We all know 

that agents earn a measly 8% commission 

on these brokered commercial policies. 

When independent agents write 

the same policy through the same carrier, 

they earn between 12 and 20 percent. 

So, if you’re an Allstate agent you 

might wonder, “What happens to the 

commission in excess of 8% Why, Allstate 

pockets it, of course. If you think 

about it, they have no claims to pay or 

advertising expense, so it is pure profit – 

earned on the backs of agents, who are 

struggling to eke out a living. Then, instead 

of looking for brokers with great 

products for agents to sell, the company’s 

focus always seems to be on brokers who 

are profitable for the company – not the 

agency force. 

Once commercial brokering took hold 

and the company saw how easy it was to 

make money without risk, they created 

many other Expanded Market opportunities, 

especially in coastal states. These 

included Couch Braunsdorf to broker 

home insurance in “no write” zones, 

and a slew of other commercial brokers 

like Butwin, Northwest Agencies, etc. I 

would be remiss if I failed to mention 

Florida, the mother of all property brokerage 

states. The ability of Florida Allstate 

agents to broker property policies 

was born after Hurricane Andrew devastated 

many parts of the state in 1992. 

Allstate was overexposed and has been 

trimming back its market share there 

ever since. 

Next, the company started outsourcing 

claims and all internal support functions’ 

such as tech support, customer 

service, billing support, etc. This is 

when the mutual respect part started 

to disappear. Before then, when agents 

tried to resolve customer problems, they 

always had adequate help. All of a sudden, 

agents found themselves wasting 

hours on the phone trying to decipher 


complicated concepts through the filter 

of a foreign accent. As an agent, it was 

at this point when I felt like the gloves 

were off – the company no longer cared 

about its agents or customers. 

While the company was making money 

off of brokering partnerships, they 

were also peddling marketing programs 

such as Business Builders and TAG, at 

healthy profit margins. Even the Allstate 

logo paper is expensive – so much 

so that it wouldn’t surprise me if they 

were profiting from it and other branded 

office supplies. As you can see, the focus 

has clearly shifted from wanting a 

professional, knowledgeable, sales force 

to wanting a captive group to which it 

can hawk its wares for a profit. In days 

of yore they would have called this “The 

Company Store.” 

Woople is an example of what happens 

when the company’s plan to make money 

off of the agency force fails. Someone 

in the company purchased the Woople 

marketing program and was convinced 

it would make money for the company 

when agencies purchased it individually. 

When very few agencies purchased 

it, the company tried to salvage their 

investment and offered it for free, but 

there still weren’t many takers. So the 

gloves came off, and the company forced 

the agency force to use Woople against 

their will. When it came time to renew 

the contract, the company finally saw the 

futility of its folly and ended its relationship 

with Woople. Good riddance to bad 

rubbish! 

That’s the kind of climate the agents 

continue to face in their relationship 

with the company. Will it or can it 

change Possibly, but changing such an 

ingrained, authoritarian culture would 

take a Herculean effort and require sea 

change in the attitudes of those at the 

top. And based on my past experiences, 

our beloved CEO is just not willing or 

able to be that kind of guy. 

A side note here is that agents are being 

told that if they don’t sign up and 

pay for an Allstate-sponsored “marketing 

package,” they won’t be eligible to 

participate in any future marketing programs 

for the rest of the year. But when 

an agent in my area wrote and asked 

what those future marketing plans were 

so he could plan his year-long marketing 

efforts, the company failed to respond. It 

sounds like they really don’t know what 

their plans are from day to day. It also 

sounds like a high-pressure sales job to 

me, so I can only assume the company 

is putting pressure on local employees to 

sell this stuff to the agency force. 

There’s even a rumor that the company 

will start offering lines of credit to agents 

at an adjustable interest rate. Once again, 

they want even less risk than a bank does! 

By offering an adjustable rate rather than 

a fixed rate, they’ll make more money as 

interest rates rise. Something tells me 

this will fail the way Woople did. Agents 

just aren’t that stupid. 

The upshot of the changes I have described 

is that Allstate agents are selling 

many other brands under the Allstate 

umbrella and many functions associated 

with an insurance company are being 

outsourced. Thankfully, the Claims Department 

hasn’t been outsourced to a foreign 

country, but I throw it into the same 

category because of the CAT teams. 

Have you noticed that any time the wind 

blows it’s now labeled a “catastrophe” 

That saves the company lots of money. 

Not only do they have fewer people in 

the claims department, but it helps when 

it’s time to report “normalized” losses by 

backing out the CAT losses. Sure, customers 

aren’t served as well when people 

from other states have to interpret our 

policies to pay a claim – but this is no 

longer about serving customers. 

My only conclusion is that Allstate 

wants to be anything BUT an insurance 

company. They don’t want to price it, underwrite 

it, service it, or handle claims. 

They don’t want any risk at all, and they 

don’t value the quality of their sales force. 

They just want scads of profit. 

Of course, as business people, we all love 

profit. In addition, we aren’t naïve enough 

to think the company is in business for 

charity. All I am suggesting here is that 

Allstate earn its profits by going back to its 

roots – the insurance business. Ef 

Join the “ALL Agents Page” 

on Facebook 

All New Group for Allstate Agents 

and Former Allstate Agents Only 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/304988616263352/ 

Click JOIN 

once you’re a member, the link will be under 

Groups on your Facebook page. 


feature 

An Unsung Heroine 

By Jim Fish 

This story should have been written 

long ago because it’s about 

someone who has supported and 

believed in NAPAA since before she 

became an Allstate agent some 19 years 

ago. She has served on the NAPAA 

Board of Directors, and for the past eight 

years, has worked for NAPAA as its Association 

Manager. In addition, she has 

bravely and confidently stood toe-to-toe 

with Tom Wilson and Ed Liddy at Allstate 

shareholder meetings, challenging 

their decisions that have adversely affected 

large majorities of Allstate agents. 

Nancy Fish is a former award-winning 

Allstate manager who has an exceptional 

understanding of the agent contract and 

good grasp of the inner workings of regional 

management and the departments 

they oversee. 

NAPAA members who call headquarters 

for help are in awe at the level of her 

knowledge and expertise and oftentimes 

express their gratitude by sending or 

emailing notes of appreciation – some of 

which appear in Exclusivefocus magazine 

from time to time. 

Background 

Before I tell you how I first met Nancy 

Broussard and how she became Nancy 

Fish, I have to explain the circumstances 

that led to our first meeting in an elevator 

at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin on a frigid January morning 

in 1990. 

At that point in time, the National 

Neighborhood Office Agents Club 

(NNOAC) – which would later become 

the National Association of Professional 

Allstate Agents, Inc. (NAPAA) – was 

just in its infancy, having been formed in 

1989. In those days, email did not exist 

and fax machines were a new technology. 

The only method of mass communication 

was the U.S. Mail. And since 

Allstate had no website, approximately 

14,000 agent mailing addresses had to be 

painstakingly gleaned by hand from local 

telephone directories from around the 

country. As a result, not all agents, including 

me, were aware of NAPAA’s existence. 

NNOAC/NAPAA was founded 

in response to problems associated with 

Allstate’s Neighborhood Office Agent 

(NOA) program. And while I was not 

aware of the growing agent unrest around 

the rest of the country, leadership in the 

old Milwaukee Region – comprised of 

Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas 

– began to pressure agents by demanding 

more from them. 

In particular, Territory leadership 

mandated that agents inspect, measure 

and photograph every new property to 

be insured, including brand-new homes 

and homes under construction. This 

mostly nonsensical chore added an hour 

or more to each property sale. Before 

then, Allstate paid outside vendors, such 

as Hooper-Holmes, to perform the inspections. 

In exchange for Allstate outfitting 

us with Polaroid cameras, nifty 

real estate-quality measuring wheels, and 

an endless supply of film, we got to drive 

far and wide to measure and photograph 

each property we insured. There was no 

compensation for our time and no mileage 

reimbursement, which only incensed 

us more, especially since at least 99% of 

us were employees. Adding insult to injury, 

the inspection program penalized 

big property producers the most. At the 

time, I was writing a lot of property insurance 

throughout the state and it was 

clear that the new requirement would 

add several hours to an already long 

workweek, which was averaging 60 to 70 

hours a week. 

Had I been an EA instead of an employee, 

the dilemma, while still distaste- 


ful, would have been less problematic. As 

I saw it, I had three choices; cut back on 

property production, kill myself trying to 

complete the inspections, or mount an 

agent protest, which is what I decided to 

do. It was this protest that led me to my 

first encounter with Market Sales Manager 

Nancy Broussard at the regional 

kick-off meeting on that cold January 

morning in 1990. 

It was pretty simple. I hired a button 

maker to make some campaign-style lapel 

buttons that said things like, “I LOVE 

MY JOB BUT NOT ENOUGH TO 

WORK FREE – Support Compensated 

Inspections.” All told, there were six different 

catchphrases with similar messaging. 

I then went to the public library 

and located copies of all the major phone 

books in the state and began to look up 

as many Allstate locations as I could find. 

When I had the addresses, I mailed an 

anonymous letter to the agency force, 

asking them to show up at the regional 

meeting wearing the buttons that I had 

enclosed in the envelope. That was it. 

I arrived at the meeting hotel and 

stepped into the elevator and there was 

Nancy. She was with some agents from 

her district who were not wearing their 

buttons, so I asked, “Where are your 

buttons” As I recall, their excuses were 

pretty lame and it was clear they didn’t 

want to rock the corporate boat. But they 

would be in the minority that day. 

A majority of the agents wore their 

buttons and senior management seemed 

genuinely surprised. When the RVP got 

up and spoke, he was visibly shaken and 

pleaded with the agents to remove their 

buttons. Since the agents had made their 

point, they slowly began to remove their 

buttons in deference to his wishes. The 

intent was not to embarrass or humiliate 

local management; instead, it was a way 

to show our collective displeasure over 

the mandatory inspection program. Believe 

me, they got the message… 

It would be years after that chance meeting 

that Nancy revealed that those agents 

in the elevator had asked her beforehand 

whether they should wear the buttons or 

not. She didn’t tell them not to, but that they 

should decide for themselves. 

Two years later, Nancy was transferred 

to my market and became my Market 

Sales Manager (MSM). We got off to a 

rocky start, but with the passage of time 

I came to understand that she was actually 

a friend and defender of the agents, 

and I grew to appreciate her. As a manager, 

she would zero in on each agent and 

determine what she could do to assist 

them. For some, it was developing and 

implementing processes and for others it 

would be something else. For my good 

friend Terry Hanson, she volunteered to 

inspect and photograph homes. And because 

I was so fastidious about proper app 

completion and service work, I rarely let 

anyone else handle it for me. As a result, 

I pulled scores of customer files a week 

for information and they would pile up 

in stacks until I could re-file them on the 

weekends. Nancy saw this as a way she 

could help me and offered to come to the 

office on weekends to put the files away. 

It helped me tremendously. 

Converting from employee status to 

the EA Agreement was a big step for me 

and I spent several months preparing for 

Reporting “Questionable Business Practices” to Allstate 

NAPAA receives many inquires from agents who call to complain about unethical conduct by other agents. It 

seems unethical behavior is becoming more commonplace, which is why it is up to the agency force to police 

itself. And reporting bad behavior is easy and will help protect our rates. Following are selected excerpts from 

the www.AlertLine.com website, operated by Global Compliance, a third-party provider contracted by Allstate. 

“The Allstate i-Report process is designed to allow employees and non-employees to report potential compliance, 

unethical business practices and/or raise business issues.” 

“The Allstate i-Report Process is based on these principles: 

• Fairness: Every concern will receive individual consideration and be evaluated consistent with the commitment 

of Allstate to the employees. 

• Promptness: Concerns will be promptly directed to areas within the company that have the authority and 

responsibility to review, investigate and resolve the issues. 

• Safety: Concerns can be voiced without fear of retaliation. 

• Confidentiality: Concerns will be kept confidential. Information will be disclosed only to those who need 

to know in order to review, investigate and respond to your concern.” 

“Global Compliance Services (“GCS”), pursuant to an agreement between its clients, provides a website to 

collect from employees and others wishing to report information. This information includes but is not limited to 

allegations of misconduct, questionable business practices, violations of a company’s code of conduct or other 

events and behavior which may result in harm, injury or liability. The information collected and submitted is forwarded, 

without review or modification by GCS, to the client’s designated contacts.” 

To file a report, agents should go to www.AlertLine.com or call 800.427.9389. 


Direct Writer magazine cover circa 

1995. From left to right: Frank 

and Jane Piatt, Jim and Nancy 

Fish, Mirna and Bob Lynch and 

John Lindsay. 

the transition. I had been a Neighborhood 

Office Agent (NOA) in a threeagent 

office for several years. As partners 

we got along great and every agency decision, 

including staffing, was a mutual 

decision. I was fine with this arrangement, 

but it was against company rules 

for me to convert to EA and share an 

office with two agents who were under 

a different contract. Everything worked 

out well; my former partners moved to 

another office and I stayed put. 

One of my top priorities was to develop 

an agency procedure manual for 

the employees I was about to hire. From 

start to finish, this process took countless 

hours and Nancy was there every step of 

the way; taking notes as I paced the floor 

churning out my thoughts. I wanted it 

to cover everything from closing-out the 

daily remittance to producer compensation. 

When work on the manual was 

complete, she offered to organize it and 

type it for me. This was just another example 

how Nancy always goes beyond 

the call of duty, never asking for anything 

in return. She is the most unselfish, giving 

person I have ever known. 

I had good, bad, and mediocre managers 

during my Allstate career. While 

I eventually became close with some of 

them, it always took time to develop a 

level of trust where I felt comfortable. 

My relationship with Nancy was no different. 

But in time, I realized she was not 

like the others. She deeply cared for the 

agents in her market and went to bat for 

them when necessary, a no-no and posible 

career killer for an Allstate manager. 

You see, defending agents is not politically 

correct at Allstate. Maybe it is because 

they want managers to be devoid of 

compassion so they do not appear weak. 

There are a lot of good people in management, 

but many lack the courage of 

their convictions. To climb the ladder 

of success, one must always be willing 

to sacrifice their personal ethics for the 

sake of the corporation, no matter how 

contemptible. It is this group who are the 

weak ones; they willingly take unprincipled 

actions for the sake of the corporation 

and close their eyes to their sins 

when the day is done. 

Nancy Fish is full of compassion and 

an ardent believer of doing the right 

thing. These traits are not weaknesses, 

but powerful strengths that motivate her 

each day of her life. The agents of Allstate 

are lucky to have her on their side. 

Nancy earned my respect one good 

deed at a time. Over time, we became 

friends and then good friends. And ultimately, 

before going to the next level 

– and final stage – of our relationship, 

we became – and still are – best friends. 

We are cut from the same cloth, we hold 

each other in high esteem, and we trust 

each other implicitly. What’s more, our 

values are virtually identical. 

Tired of the deceitful and adolescent 

games of regional and senior management, 

Nancy decided there was no future 

for her as an Allstate manager so 

she resigned to become an EA. This 

was after I converted to EA and after 

she had earned the coveted Key Manager 

Award a couple times. Nancy joined 

NAPAA the day after becoming an EA 

and shortly thereafter, we attended a 

NAPAA convention in Atlanta, Georgia. 

At that event, NAPAA held a sockhop 

and everyone dressed in fifties garb. 

We and some other attendees were chosen 

to pose for a photo next to a vintage 

car. We didn’t know it then, but NAPAA 

would use that photo on the cover of 


DirectWriter magazine, the forerunner 

of Exclusivefocus. Like many other 

NAPAA members, our membership was 

a private matter, so when the magazine 

came out it was a surprise to many, especially 

to us. Most of the agents in our 

territory thought it was hilarious, but we 

were told that top regional and territorial 

management did not find it the least bit 

amusing. After all, Nancy had been one 

of their own – a decorated Key Manager 

– and there she was gracing the cover of 

NAPAA’s DirectWriter magazine. It was 

blasphemous! 

Nancy’s EA office was located a couple 

of miles from mine and we helped each 

other in many ways. As we grew closer, 

we decided to combine our agencies, 

merging her book into mine and closing 

her location. She became the agency 

manager in our agency and was primarily 

responsible for staff training and support. 

This meant she was the go-to person for 

the staff, answering all their underwriting, 

claims and operational questions. 

As a management trainee at Allstate, she 

had gone through the management rotation 

program, which was a process that 

gave future agency managers exposure to 

each department in the region, including 

claims, underwriting and human 

resources. This training, along with her 

intimate knowledge of company procedures, 

made her perfect for her new role 

in our agency, allowing me to focus on 

agency growth and marketing, which I 

pursued relentlessly. 

We were writing business hand over 

fist and we topped the charts in our Territory 

and the Region month after month 

and year after year. And unlike some big 

producers, we wrote clean business and 

our loss and retention ratios were spectacular, 

considering the amount of new 

business we wrote. 

In 1998, Nancy and I attended the 

NAPAA Convention in Reno, Nevada. 

It was part of what was called a “Great 

Convention,” which was when all the 

major captive agent associations held 

their conventions at the same time at the 

same venue. This event occurred every 

three years, giving each association an 

opportunity to interact with other associations. 

In theory, the concept was a 

good idea, but the conferences lasted far 

too long, leaving attendees who might 

not want to attend every session with 

blocks of time to fill. In Reno or Las 

Vegas, that is not a problem if you’re a 

gambler, but if your not, it can lead to 

filling your time with unplanned activities 

– such as getting married – which is 

exactly what happened to us. We were 

scheduled to leave for home on Sunday, 

but by Friday, we’d had enough. That 

night we stayed in, ordered pizza and 

watched The Big Lobowski starring Jeff 

Bridges. We decided to play hooky the 

following day and skipped the meetings. 

As we lounged around the room the 

next morning, the subject of marriage 

came up. Neither one of us can recall 

who first broached the subject, but there 

we were, getting hitched a few hours 

later. It is really easy to do when you’re 

in Reno. No lavish wedding or complications 

– just a simple ceremony performed 

by the Commissioner of Civil Marriages 

and you’re done. Fifteen years later our 

bond is stronger than ever. 

After we returned home, our agency 

continued to write business at a recordsetting 

pace. At the same time, we 

stepped up our commitment to NAPAA 

to support the agents, who were undergoing 

painful changes at the hands management. 

The company was intensifying 

its efforts to exert more and more control 

over the agency force. At one point, they 

attempted to force agents keep their offices 

open all day on Saturdays, even on 

major holiday weekends when the rest 

of the working world was off playing. 

Mercifully, the bulk of this effort failed, 

thanks to a spirited and nearly unanimous 

outcry from the agency force and 

NAPAA. Remnants of this ill-conceived 

plan still remain today, as agents must 

maintain a 44-hour workweek and keep 

their offices open the day after Thanksgiving, 

and on Christmas Eve. 

In 2000, I was elected president of 

NAPAA. It wasn’t that I coveted the job; 

it was because nobody else wanted it. It 

was a tumultuous year; the company was 

forcing its remaining employee agents 

– except for those in certain areas – to 

convert to the EA contract or leave the 

company. It was a time fraught with uncertainty, 

anxiety and anger. Many agents 

felt betrayed by the company, which took 

away their pensions, health insurance 

and other benefits in exchange for what 

has turned out for many to be a bag of 

empty promises. 

Newer agents may never understand 

the scope of this initiative and how disruptive 

it was for the agency force. The 

same holds true for what has happened 

over the past few years wherein thousands 

of agents have been terminated 

or forced to leave because their jobs 

were threatened by the insatiable greed 

of senior management. Newer agents 

have been led to believe that the agents 

who were forced out deserved their fate. 

This may be true for a small percentage 

of agents, but it defies reason that more 

than a third of the agency force – should 

have been targeted for termination. 

As many of you know, I was among 

the first agents fired for something other 

than lying, cheating or stealing. This 

happened in 2002. It certainly wasn’t 

because I was unproductive; it was because 

I “failed to maintain a professional 

relationship” with the company, which 

is corporate speak for “we don’t like you 

anymore because you challenge management 

and advocate for agent rights.” 

The following year, I stepped down as 

NAPAA president because I thought it 

best to have an active Allstate agent serve 

in that capacity. At that point, Nancy and 

I had decided to ride off into the sunset. 

Nancy went to work in furniture sales 

and I affiliated with a national brokerage 

that wrote business in 47 states. 

Our self-imposed hiatus away from 

NAPAA didn’t last long, however. The 

NAPAA Board of Directors was unhappy 

with the firm managing its day-to-day 

operations and because of a declining 

membership base. In the spring of 2005, 

I received a call from board member John 

Lindsay asking if I would consider serving 

as NAPAA’s Executive Director. I 

gave it some thought and agreed, subject 

to certain terms and conditions. Then 

when the association management contract 

came due, NAPAA put it out for 

bids. Nancy submitted a proposal for the 

job and it was accepted. Eight years later, 

we’re still going strong. 

Nancy tackled her new job with great 

energy and passion, even in spite of us 

losing everything we owned in Hurricane 


Katrina. Unable to find reliable contractors 

to gut and rebuild our home, we got 

up each morning at the crack of dawn 

to do the work ourselves. On weekday 

mornings, we met her dad at our property 

and worked until it was time to open 

NAPAA headquarters for the day. Then 

once our day with NAPAA ended, it was 

back to work on the house. When the 

weekends came, the three of us spent every 

waking hour at the property to make 

it livable again. Finally, a few weeks before 

the first anniversary of Katrina, we 

were able to move back in, albeit without 

a working kitchen. There was still much 

to do, but we were finally back in our 

own home. 

You learn a lot about someone during 

a crisis and we all learned things we 

never knew about each other. One of the 

things I learned about Nancy is that she 

doesn’t like to put things off. Like her father, 

when she’s confronted with a project, 

she dives right in and doesn’t come 

up for air until it’s finished. But she’s not 

satisfied to simply complete the project; 

it is a learning experience for her. She educates 

herself by scrutinizing every step 

along the way so she fully understands 

the process. So, whether it’s a quarterly 

earnings report or a new agent program, 

she scours company documents, dissecting 

and piecing together information as 

she looks for clues that provide insights 

into the company’s reasoning and direction, 

especially as they relate to the 

agency force – a quality that has served 

NAPAA well. 

Since Katrina, thousands of Allstate 

agents have come and gone, many of 

whom were terminated for missing 

their quotas. Fearful of losing their jobs 

and desperate for advice, they turned 

to NAPAA for help and Nancy bore 

the brunt of the incoming calls. As you 

might imagine, the majority of these 

conversations were not brief and many 

agents called time and again. The inbound 

call volume became so great; we 

were forced to limit calls to dues-paying 

members. But even then, the calls were 

relentless. 

Nancy views the NAPAA membership 

roster as her book of business. To 

her, each member is a customer and she 

does everything in her power to assist 

them when they call for help. Like an 

agent’s book of business, some members 

are more interactive and call often, while 

others never call at all. Never wanting to 

offend anyone, Nancy is sometimes overly 

accommodating, which can increase 

the wait time for other callers. But they 

all seem to take it in stride because they 

know she will give them straight answers 

when she calls them back. 

I’m not sure if Nancy’s deep-seated desire 

to help others is an inherited trait or 

a learned behavior, but it seems to run 

in her family. Her immediate family is 

amazing and all share this same attribute. 

Her dad was raised on a small farm in 

South Louisiana where he toiled in the 

fields picking cotton by hand. But while 

the family was financially dirt poor, they 

were rich in social values. And unlike 

children from similar backgrounds who 

abandoned such values, Nancy and her 

sister soaked them up and put them into 

practice, making the world a better place 

for humanity. This value system is not 

something they feel as an obligation, it 

simply comes naturally. They are an industrious, 

loving and caring family. Getting 

to know them has been a source of 

great joy for me and has helped change 

the way I deal with my own family. I am 

so fortunate to have had them in my life. 

Members who speak to Nancy fully 

understand her value. They know they 

can call her and get the right answers every 

time. It is rare for her to be stumped 

by a caller’s question and if it does happen, 

she becomes a heat-seeking missile 

in her quest to find the answer. Being 

a former manager is also very helpful 

because she is a great resource for new 

agents, whose FSLs are likely to be significantly 

less knowledgeable about contract 

issues and other job-related matters. 

In recent years, the FSLs’ primary area of 

responsibility has been to hire agents to 

replace the thousands of agents that have 

terminated. Most do not act as an agent 

advocate or as a source of reliable information 

for the agents in their markets. 

Still, there are some who proclaim 

to know all there is to know about the 

R3001 Agreement and Supplement, yet 

they often offer incomplete or inaccurate 

advice. In reality, few people in the 

company can match Nancy’s knowledge 

of the R3001 contract and the R3001 

Supplement. She is so well-versed that 

attorneys from across the country call to 

pick her brain about contract issues and 

other Allstate matters. 

In a recent conversation with an attorney 

friend of ours, I commented that I 

often defer matters requiring an understanding 

of the law to Nancy because she 

is “more lawyerly” than I am. The attorney 

laughed and said, “She’s more lawyerly 

than me too!” 

The point is: if there was only one reason 

to join NAPAA, it would be to have 

access to Nancy and her comprehensive 

level of knowledge. 

In addition to her one-on-one work 

with NAPAA members, Nancy wears 

many other hats. She maintains the 

membership database, posts payments, 

keeps the books, sets up and coordinates 

NAPAA meetings and conferences, processes 

member-to member referrals, updates 

the NAPAA website and handles 

an assortment of other duties. In her 

spare time, she writes articles for this 

magazine and for our weekly memberonly 

newsletter, DirectExpress. 

Besides always going the extra mile 

to help our members, she is smart – 

some say brilliant – highly organized, 

dedicated, and extremely hard-working. 

Whether a business matter or a personal 

matter, she is consistently focused and 

always gives 110%. In addition, she is serious-minded, 

and takes none of her responsibilities 

lightly. What amazes me is 

her ability to juggle so many tasks at the 

same time and do them all equally well. 

There is much more that could be written 

about Nancy Fish and her many qualities. 

All I know is that I am the luckiest 

guy in the world, not only because Nancy 

is my wife, my soul mate and best friend, 

but because we share the same values, 

one of which is a deep-seated desire for 

fair treatment and reasonable compensation 

for Allstate agents and other captive 

agents. NAPAA is the vehicle that allows 

us to achieve this just goal. 

Through thick and thin, Nancy has 

never waivered in her support for the 

agency force. Allstate agents are fortunate 

to have someone like her on their side. 

I am so glad we spent that $70 to get married 

in Reno, it was money well-spent. Ef 


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Exclusivefocus — 49

Affiliation with OPEIU 

It Pays to Belong! 

NAPAA recently affiliated with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), 

AFL-CIO to help provide our membership with reliable communications on issues that affect Allstate 

Exclusive Agency Owners and their customers by promoting professionalism and ethical practices. 

OPEIU will also assist NAPAA in its mission of being dedicated to the success of Allstate agencies 

and to advancing the independence and entrepreneurial spirit of its members. 

The affiliation means real benefits to NAPAA members, who are eligible to participate in all OPEIU 

membership benefit programs at no additional cost. These benefits include: 

E&O deductible reimbursement of 20% of the deductible for any paid E&O claim up to $500 per 

member per year. 

A healthcare and Rx discount program through WellDyne. 

Up to $50 payment for continuing education every two years. 

Up to 2 towing/service calls per year (valued at up to $100 each) for all family members living in 

the same household. 

An identity theft service through the United Nations Federal Credit Union Financial Services. 

Welcome Home – a real estate commission rebate program that includes first-rate real estate 

companies such as Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s. 

PerksCard – a national discount savings program. 

Eligibility for three scholarship funds that could mean up to $6,000 for children and dependents. 

Participation in the AFL-CIO Union Plus program that provides a better than competitive MasterCard 

rate, travel and entertainment discounts, legal services, auto discounts, and a financial 

education service. 

OPEIU brings NAPAA the strength of its membership base, making our voice even louder in the 

legislative halls at the national and state levels, and in our efforts to affect Allstate’s behavior and 

treatment of agents. 

We urge all Allstate agents to join NAPAA, not only to receive great membership benefits, but also to 

help us grow stronger and more effective in our industry. 

Please fill out and complete the NAPAA application form in this magazine or sign up online at 

www.napaaUSA.org. NAPAA dues are $350 per year, which pale when you consider the benefits 

and protections it provides. 


Confidential NAPAA Membership Application 

Name:______________________________________ Off Ph:_______________________ Cell__________________________ 

Street:________________________________________________ E-Mail:__________________________________________ 

City:________________________________________ State:_____ ZIP:__________ 

Agent since__________(year) Comments 

MEMBERSHIP SECTION 

Regular (Gold) Membership q Annual: $350 q EFT: $29 /mo 

PAYMENT SECTION 

q CHECK – Annual: Please make payable to NAPAA. 

q CREDIT CARD – Annual: I authorize this amount to be charged to my credit card. 

(Please complete the information below) 

Card type: q VISA q MasterCard q Discover q American Express 

Name on account _________________________________________ Amount to be Charged: $__________ (Annual only) 

Account Number __________________________________________ Expiration date __________ Security code________ 

Address on Card _______________________________________________________________________ 

ZIP____________ 

Signature of Cardholder ______________________________________________ Todays Date _____________ (12/12 EF) 

q EFT (PAM) - Monthly (attach or fax voided check) 

I understand that the amount stated above will be deducted from my checking account every month until instructed otherwise. 

I have enclosed a voided check and understand that the withdrawals will occur on or about the 20 th of every month. 

Authorization Signature: _____________________________________________________________ 

Date ____________ 

PLEASE FAX or MAIL APPLICATION TO: 

National Association of Professional Allstate Agents, Inc. 

P. O. Box 7666, Gulfport, MS 39506-7666 

Call Toll-free: 877.627.2248 • E-Mail: HQ@napaausa.org • Fax Toll-free: 866.627.2232 

Please consider including a generous donation to the NAPAA Action Fund! 


letters to NAPAA 

Continued from page 10. 

tactic by Allstate And what about production 

credit, where it is close to triple 

for annuities – Allstate annuity, of course 

– vs. mutual funds 

In my opinion, customers, regulatory 

bodies, and media outlets should all be 

made aware of these unsavory practices 

at Allstate. They should also be aware 

of the company’s recent history of firing 

agents who don’t make their quotas. 

Either way the agents are screwed. Either 

they resort to unethical sales practices, 

for which they could be punished, 

or they do the right thing by the customer 

and jeopardize their jobs. I hope that 

most will choose the righteous path and 

pick door number 2. 

I enjoy your magazine so much. Hope 

things are settling down at Allstate for the 

agents. At American Family, we are losing 

them not only because they’re being 

terminated, but because they are resigning 

out of fear of being fired. It’s so sad. 

Harriet Stahl 

Business Manager 

National Association of American 

Family Agents 

I have finally had time to read some of 

your magazines from beginning to end. 

They are full of information and there is 

a nice variety of articles. Thanks for all 

the work you guys put into them. 

By the way, I recently filed a claim 

through NAPAA for reimbursement of 

my E&O deductible. The turnaround 

time was fantastic! I was surprised 

how fast and easy it was. If nonmembers 

were aware of this benefit, I’m sure 

they would reconsider their reasons for 

not joining NAPAA. Also, I’ll soon be 

filing for my CE subsidy reimburse- 

ment. These benefits alone pay for my 

NAPAA membership. 

I am a member of NAPAA and am 

interested in selling my agency. I have 

been in business for eight months under 

the new agent contract. I tried to buy an 

agency but it fell through, so Allstate 

ceded it to me and now I’m getting 3.5% 

renewal commission. Unfortunately, that 

just isn’t cutting it. I am managing a $2.4 

million book with two full time staff and 

I’ve decided to sell it. I have been reading 

the information about selling a book on 

the website and now I am just looking 

for some more direct information on the 

process and how to start. Any help would 

be greatly appreciated. 

Editor’s response: Thanks for writing. 

We would be delighted to assist you! I know 

you understand that you have no economic 

interest in the ceded book, but we can help 

guide you through the sale process of your 

own book. Feel free to contact us by phone at 

877-627-2248. 

Letters and articles submitted 

to NAPAA may be edited for 

clarity, space, grammar, syntax 

and suitability. 

Names of agent contributors 

will only be published with 

writer’s permission. 

Letters and other 

submissions can be 

e-mailed to 

Exclusivefocus@napaaUSA.org 

or mailed to: 

NAPAA, P.O. Box 7666, 

Gulfport, MS 39506 

I want to thank you both for all that 

you do for the Allstate agents. You’ve 

kept those of us in the trenches informed 

of what is on the company’s horizon and 

shared the struggles and trials that other 

agents face in their relationship with Allstate. 

Trust me, that has helped me a ton. 

As I’ve gone through the ups and downs 

of being an Allstate Exclusive Agent, it’s 

always been a blessing to me to know 

that I ain’t alone! 

Nancy and Jim, I want to thank the 

two of you from the bottom of my heart 

and I wish you both well as you continue 

on in your work. I will continue to “talk 

up” NAPAA to my fellow Allstate brothers 

and sisters, as I really believe those 

that never joined NAPAA have really 

lost out on all the benefits and knowledge 

your organization provides. God 

bless you both! 


the NAPAA market place 

Agencies for Sale Agencies for Sale Agencies for Sale Agencies for Sale 

Arizona 

Tucson 

Harold Broc Broccoletti 

A070725@allstate.com 

520-744-3994 

Asking Price: $375,000 

PIF: 1,518 Premium: $1,515,114 

May qualify for New Outside 

Buyer Incentive Program - enhanced 

commissions, education 

bonus. Prime area, only 2 

other agencies nearby. Same 

location 10 years, low rent. 

Colorado 

Canon City 

Bob Rundell 

bobrundell@allstate.com 

719-275-5762 

Asking Price: TBD 

PIF: 3,000 Premium: $3,000,000 

Retirement community, only 

Allstate in area. Owner retiring. 

Florida 

Cape Coral 

Peter Look 

PeterLook@allstate.com 

239-699-2401 

Asking Price: $3,600,000 

PIF: 12,000 Premium: 

$14,000,000 

Number of Staff: 7 

Experienced, high credit 

score, clean record, able 

to get financing, must have 

$600k liquid cash. Willing to 

hold second. Two of the best 

locations in fast growing cities. 

One of biggest and best 

agency systems in country. 

Saint Cloud 

Marilyn Cochran 

MaJaPa10@AOL.com 

407-922-9471 


PIF & Premium: Please call 

Serious inquires, info upon 

request 

Haines City 

Carol Eddy 

CarolEddy@allstate.com 

863-860-9555 


PIF: 1,740 Premium: $2,400,000 

Option to purchase/ lease 

building (location since 1995) 

Miami 

Arnoldo Arguello 

ArguelloArnoldo@gmail.com 

786-499-3415 

Asking Price: Please call 

PIF: 3,000 Premium: $4,000,000 

Number of Staff: 3 

Ideal agency! Great retention, 

profitable book. 

Kissimmee 

Dale Revels 

dalerevels@gmail.com 

407-924-5336 

Asking Price: Please call 

PIF & Premium: Call for details 

Paperless office. Hall of Fame 

Life Specialist. 

Georgia 

Leesburg 

Private 

GaAgency4Sale@gmail.com 

229-376-8655 


PIF: 866 Premium: $1,000,000 

Great opportunity for Incentive 

Program, enhanced commissions, 

education bonus 

Several locations Georgia 

mel@sammconsulting.com 

678-223-7397 

Asking Price: Negotiable 

PIF & Premium: call for details 

Seller Rep, several locations 

Tyrone 

Brad Gohsman 

gohs31392@msn.com 

770-487-1112 


PIF: 1,850 Premium: $1,450,704 

25 year agency, near Atlanta. 

good retention and LR. 

Indiana 

New Castle 

Janet Begley 

jbegley1127@att.net 

765-623-6432 


PIF: 1,305 Premium: $1,320,918 

LR 51, Retention 82.2. 25 yr 

agency 

Maryland 

Several locations 

Ed Hogg (Rep) 

ehogg9@gmail.com 

703-862-8168 


PIF: Premium: Call for info 

Seller Rep, several locations. 

New York 

Bronx 

Daniel Bosque 

danielbosque@allstate.com 

917-834-2326 

Asking Price: $1,500,000 

PIF: 4,740 Premium: $6,000,000 

Includes assigned risk auto, 

brokered business and 26 yr 

location on Broadway. 

Brooklyn 

Barbara Shamah Leeds 

barbararose583@aol.com 

917-301-2477 


PIF: 1,758 Premium: $4,600,000 

Best location in Brooklyn. LR 

47, retention 89.7. 30 yrs, I want 

to retire! 

Pennsylvania 

Pittsburgh 

Lawrence Ross Agency 

LarryRoss67@gmail.com 

No Calls, Please email 


PIF: 2,636 Premium: $2,522,201 

Retention 91, LR 45.27. 23 

years, located in professional 

area. Premium does 

not include brokered business 

(American Modern, NEA, 

Butwin, Flood). 

Texas 

Grapevine 

Benny Robinson 

BennyRobinson@allstate.com 

817-421-7495 


PIF: 1,107 Premium: $1,400,000 

Qualifies for enhanced commissions. 

Denton 

Steve Sullivan 

steve@thesullivanagency.com 

940-566-2234 


PIF: 1,156 Premium: $1,600,000 

Good location, signage, low 

overhead. Growing area. 

Austin 

Blake Simpson 

BlakeSimpson@allstate.com 

512-923-3004 after 5:30pm only 


PIF: 1,400 Premium: $1,800,000 

Retention +90, LR 55. Low expenses. 

May be able to qualify 

for new enhanced commissions. 

Utah 

Taylorsville 

(West Valley City) 

Neil Whicker 

NeilW@allstate.com 

801-968-6852 


PIF: 1,175 Premium: $1,200,000 

LR 37.9, Retention 89.7. 35 

year agent retiring. Business 

qualifies for new enhanced 

commission program. 

Virginia 

Roanoke 

Betty Kosko 

BettyKosko@allstate.com 

540-362-4806 


PIF: 1,316 Premium: $1,096,927 

Great location. Qualifies for 

enhanced commissions. 

Springfield 

Larry A Bronstone 

lbronstone@gmail.com 

703-967-8287 


PIF: 2,286 Premium: $2,939,736 

SOLD! 

Several locations 

VA and MD 

Ed Hogg (Rep) 

ehogg9@gmail.com 

703-862-8168 


PIF & Premium: Call for details 

Seller Rep, several locations 


NAPAA Board 

of Directors 

2012-2013 

Administrative Offices 

Jim Fish, Executive Director 

P. O. Box 7666 


Ph # 877-269-3474 

Nonmembers: Call 563-564-1800 

ExecutiveDirector@napaausa.org 

Nancy Fish, Association Manager 

P.O. Box 7666 


Ph #877-627-2248 

Nonmembers: Call 563-564-1800 

Fax #866-627-2232 

hq@napaausa.org 

Gerry Flores, Membership 

Development call 563-564-1800 

Please email HQ@napaausa.org to 

contact our officers and directors. 

Include the name of the person in 

the subject line. 

OFFICERS 

Bob Isacsen 

President 

Hoboken, NJ 

Dale Revels 

Immediate Past President 

Kissimmee, FL 

Debe Campos-Fleenor 

Executive Vice President 

Tucson, AZ 

Ismael Melendez, Jr. 

Treasurer 

Federal Way, WA 

Judy Ost 

Secretary 

Battleground, WA 

DIRECTORS 

Al Bullard, Floral Park, NY 

Ed Hogg, Fairfax, VA 

Greg Thompson, Burleson, TX 

Lezlee Liljenberg, Arlington, TX 


National Association of 

Professional Allstate Agents, Inc. 

P.O. Box 7666 

Gulfport, MS 39506-7666 

Phone Toll Free (877) 627-2248 

Toll Free Fax (866) 627-2232 

Web Site www.napaausa.org 

Email HQ@napaausa.org 

Nonmembers: call 563-564-1800 

Jim Fish 

Executive Editor 

P.O. Box 7666 


Phone (877) 269-3474 • Fax (866) 627-2232 

Exclusivefocus@napaausa.org 

Nonmembers: call 563-564-1800 

Exclusivefocus and DirectExpress are official publications 

of NAPAA - The National Association of 

Professional Allstate Agents, Inc. No part of this publication 

may be reproduced without prior written permission 

of the publisher. It is the policy of this publication 

to reflect the professional thoughts and attitudes of 

our members and to advance the professionalism of the 

insurance industry to the ultimate benefit of the insuring 

public. 

The views expressed by NAPAA, or any of its positions 

relative to its activities and those of its members’ actions on 

behalf of this organization, are expressly those of NAPAA, 

and do not reflect the views or the opinions of Allstate Insurance 

Company, or any of its affiliates. 

Letters to the Editor: All letters must include an address 

and a daytime and evening phone number. We 

reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and space. 

This issue of Exclusivefocus magazine may contain 

articles of interest submitted to NAPAA by outside authors. 

NAPAA is not responsible for the opinions, advice 

or accuracy of any information provided therein. 

NAPAA’s Mission Statement 

NAPAA is dedicated to the success of Allstate 

Exclusive Agency Owners and to advance the 

independence and entrepreneurial spirit of our 

members. 

NAPAA’s Goals 

Our goals are subject to alteration, influenced by 

a constantly changing environment and the needs 

and wishes of our members. 

NAPAA encourages its members to actively 

participate in the process of defining and refining 

our Mission, Goals and Positions. 

Our General Goals: 

• To provide an organization specifically tailored 

to benefit Allstate Exclusive Agents 

• Monitor legislative and legal issues pertinent 

to Agents and their clients 

• Maintain an Action Fund to support issues 

beneficial to agents and clients 

• Provide reliable communications on all issues 

that affect Agents and the ability to call upon our 

members to act 

• Provide Agents with a distinct voice on issues 

that affect them, continually exploring options and 

solutions 

• Make tools and resources available for members 

in an effort to increase agency value and success. 

For more information, 

please visit 

www.napaausa.org 


issue of Exclusivefocus 

brought to you by the 

National Association 

of Professional 

Allstate Agents. 


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