Exclusivefocus Spring 2013 - National Association of Professional ...

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feature The Psychology of a Company By Brian Spillman 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 30 — Exclusivefocus Spring 2013
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Page 3 and 4: L APPROVAL We’re lending to Allst
Page 5 and 6: Grow your business. Hear what our a
Page 7 and 8: “Is your agency planted in good s
Page 9 and 10: INDEPENDENCE IS A CHOICE • Put Yo
Page 11 and 12: Spring 2013 Exclusivefocus — 11
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Page 15 and 16: fice in order to attend company mee
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Page 37 and 38: feature The Saboteurs By Dave Thorp
Page 39 and 40: sales and marketing Should Your Age
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Page 49 and 50: READY. AIM. SUCCEED. Right on targe
Page 51 and 52: Confidential NAPAA Membership Appli
Page 53 and 54: the NAPAA market place Agencies for
Page 55: Insurance Professionals: IS IT TIME

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