Pros
- Great coworkers - Direct manager is personable and cool - This is a good place to get your foot in the door with sales/insurance - Licensing & leads are paid for - Good location
Cons
___Changes in Compensation___ Agent commission was sliced in half, from a tiered system where top earners could make ~5.45% of their month’s premium, to a blanket 2.5% no matter how much you sell. The salaries were raised, but only by about $2500/year. This is laughable when considering you now make thousands less per month. Agents have been turned down raises that they more than qualified for, being given poor excuses that boiled down to it being “out of budget“. However, 10+ new sales reps have since been hired (right out of college, as is their new target demographic), making up 10 new salaries that we pay, and ~$6k each in licensing costs. Several strange ways have been devised to avoid paying agents out whenever possible. ___PTO___ Unlimited PTO was taken away and reduced to 10 days, but ONLY for the sales department. It was reported that agents “abused” it, but the time-off had to be approved anyways so who is really at fault? Not to mention, it was one or two agents that “ruined” it for everyone. There has been nothing done for retention, and several agents have quit in response to cuts to pay and time off. I’ve never seen sales agents treated as the lowest caste before. ___Sales Operations___ The president has said that an increase in volume should make up for that cut in commission percentage. However, they bid on the cheapest leads, and require us to take everything that comes over the phone. It will be slow for hours while they wait for lead costs to drop, then slam you with back to back calls, and also get onto us when calls are missed. Never mind that many of these businesses are not serious, with revenues of $15k and less. Training is fast tracked because the sales trainer makes a bonus when new agents sell within their first 30 days. This has led to a lot of bad policies being written, and frustration from tenured agents who have fewer leads coming to them, and are also constantly being asked questions by the trainees (who should be able to consult their trainer). Rather than promote a lead sales rep to take over the sales trainer position, our QA was moved into the role. The reps from our lead gen partners are some of the most incompetent people you will ever work with. Micromanagement, which is ramped up when numbers are down (aka, CEO is walking the floor, ignores us, sees the board, then harangues our manager). After successfully getting a few tenured agents to quit, they have started hiring fresh college grads en masse who do not know any better about what they're getting into. The training they receive is extremely subpar, and it's not uncommon for them to become bitter and burnt out very quickly. ____Leadership and Management Issues____ CEO walks the floor several days a week. In my time there, he’s never once stopped to ask how anyone is doing, or be personable in any way. I would be surprised if he knew any of the agents by name, besides maybe those HR makes him eat with for the quarterly top agent lunch. He also seems to be incredibly out of touch. At quarterly town halls, he boasts that the average agents sells $170k a month. Only our top 3 agents do that, and definitely not every month. President is snarky, rude, and talks down to agents that voice concerns with changes. That’s when she’s actually in the office, as she resides in another state and has no real idea of what we deal with on a daily basis. HR mishandled filings for taxes. Several agents got a shock when they found out they owed unpaid state taxes. It was insisted that those agents had to have gone in themselves and elected not to pay them. Who in their right mind would do that? Not to mention, when they showed us how to go in and fix it, it was not a page anyone would have found on our own. No apologies, no blame taken, nothing. Typical amongst our leadership. Stereotypical corporate daily goal post changing. “Hit x premium for x reward”, then they sometimes try to back out of that reward (usually just a work from home day, which they hate giving out, mostly because our CEO thinks you have to be at the office to sell). ____Policy Changes____ Management made an overnight change that required agents to use their in-house software in order to get paid on a sale. This software is broken in many ways, even after nearly 10 years of development. There was no grace period for those that forgot to use it, after years of not being required, and management happily took away the premium from their commission. They acted as if the policies were not valid if we did not use their quoting software, and instead went to the carrier directly. Mind you, they did not cancel the policies, but stripped the premium from agent payouts. This software, years in the making, is touted as being industry-changing, but is something any major insurance company with the desire could produce easily in a few months if they so chose.