Exclusivefocus Spring 2013 - National Association of Professional ...

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
48 — Exclusivefocus Spring 2013