Working Before Being Officially Hired???

[xrac]

If I am hiring a couple agents. They have to wait a week to get their number. Neither is working for pay now.

One comes in for training on their own dime. The other say "no" I'll wait till you start paying to teach me. In a week when they both have their numbers. Which one am I going to offer more help?

This is commission sales. Not some Federal jobs program.

If you want to learn to sell and to make this a career (not a job) then you should be eager to get a head start. Based upon your question I do not think you have a mind set that will allow you to succeed in this industry. Hopefully I am wrong. I can think on one or two people that I would be happy to work for for free if I could just shadow them and learn.
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I just passed my insurance exam and am waiting for my insurance license number to be issued by the state in order to be officially contracted as an agent by a local (very large) insurance company. Eventhough I am not officially contracted and am not getting paid my training salary, the insurance company is asking me to report to the office for training. The companies view is that the training pay is more of a draw and needs to be paid back with sales and so I should get done with training so I can start selling as soon as I am licensed. Does this sound fair? Is this a common practice in the insurance insustry?

If I were your agency manager and I knew you were thinking like this I would probably terminate you.

 

[scagnt83]

Toolcat, you will hopefully eventually come to a point in your insurance career where YOU have to pay for training, not someone else.

Take most all the free training that you can!

And if you are green to the industry, a classroom setting will benefit you a lot more than remote forms of study.

 

[BNTRS]

If I were your agency manager and I knew you were thinking like this I would probably terminate you.

If you were my agency manager and I knew you thought like this, I'd probably quit before you had a chance.

I'm laughing at all the "you're an entrepreneur" BS. And a lot of you guys claim you don't drink kool-aid...ok

The insurance companies that offer up no compensation and appoint you as a broker with a production or pre-contract requirement can leave it at that, and management at the agency can tell you to attend training meetings or else they do not want to continue with contracting you because they never hired you in the first place.

In other words you are still in the interviewing process.

There are some companies that will hire you and pay you during a training session. If you choose to leave once the training session is over, that's their problem--well yours too if a future employer finds it odd that you were only there for a few weeks, explaining to them that you were only there for the training pay might not be the best way of navigating that explanation.

This is one of the most violated functions of the industry, and I think a source of ill will among those who leave. Granted there are some very well intended individuals who try and convey the message that if you want to succeed you must be a self starter who seeks success out autonomously, but there are far more "sales managers" who would rather sit back and check their e-mail accounts all day while their agents run around making sales. Sure they'll offer up the helping hand of accompanying those agents on appointments if they can set them. But then if production is low they sit around bitching about their crappy agents.

Seriously, what other function does a career agency offer other than to be a crutch for those who need/want the support?

@ the OP

Is it a common practice? All too common.

Is it a good practice...probably not.

 

[VolAgent]

I'm laughing at all the "you're an entrepreneur" BS. And a lot of you guys claim you don't drink kool-aid...ok

@ the OP

Is it a common practice? All too common.

Is it a good practice...probably not.

You ought to reread your signature. The "you're an entrepreneur" BS is used to get managers at career shops out of a lot of the training and hand holding they promised. However, at the end of the day it is his drive and determination that is going to determine whether he succeeds or fails. If attending one week of unpaid training is going to scare him off, what is he going to do once that draw stops and he goes a couple of weeks or months without a sale? Even if he never fails to validate his salary/draw, it will eventually end.

In fact, it might be the best thing for him. If it is a shop that throws around a lot of BS, it might become evident that first week, saving him tons of grief down the road. Unfortunately, he probably won't be able to sense the real BS this early on.

 

[Larry Tew]

I'm laughing at all the "you're an entrepreneur" BS. And a lot of you guys claim you don't drink kool-aid...ok

Agree with me or don't, but I don't appreciate you referring to my post as BS. I disagree with most of the rest of your post I quoted from, but I don't feel the need to disparage you by referring to it as BS.

 

[Fisher]

At the end of the day, you won't care about this week. Either you'll be successful and it was well worth it, or you'll fail and it was just another week in your life.

Words of wisdom right there. I printed that out, Vol, and stuck it up on the wall. Sometimes I need that exact reminder.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Most people need a "job-like" environment to succeed. It takes a special kind of person to work from home with no accountability.

Sometimes those of us working from home tend to wrongfully look down on those who need the office and "manager" environment but basically the entire insurance profession works in an office environment.

I have no stats on how many insurance agents are completely independent and work from home. A good guess would be 5%.

 

[VolAgent]

Words of wisdom right there. I printed that out, Vol, and stuck it up on the wall. Sometimes I need that exact reminder.

It is like ol' Yoda said. "Do or do not... there is no try."

Either we will do the work necessary, combined with a little bit of luck and succeed. Or we fail to do the necessary work and have some bad luck and fail.

And I firmly believe that luck, at least in this business, comes to those that work hard. Ask Wino how many cases have just fallen in his lap over the years. Gifts from the gods, but in reality is was the reward for all his hard work over the years.

I'm not saying to do pointless activity, but if you kiss enough frogs, you'll find your prince. Some frogs just take longer to turn into prince and require a few more kisses.

 

[xrac]

If you were my agency manager and I knew you thought like this, I'd probably quit before you had a chance. I'm laughing at all the "you're an entrepreneur" BS. And a lot of you guys claim you don't drink kool-aid...ok.......

That a lot of captives and agencies take advantage of recruits is too widely practiced to ever be disputed. However, my point is that unless an agent understands that if they sell they succeed and if they don't sell they fail they will never make it. A new agent has two jobs in my opinion and those are to learn all they can and to be seeing all the prospects they can or fighting to see all the prospects they can. A training salary or no training salary is meaningless as to whether one will make this a career or not other than it may ease one through the start up phase.

If I can get two extra weeks of training prior to my launching my career whether I am paid or not paid would seem to be a plus in getting me off to a successful launch. To be worried whether I am getting paid during that period to me reeks of pikeritis. Here are the facts. No pay until the individual is licensed. No pay whether sleeping all day or whether playing computer games, or whether I am under going training. Now if one is serious about this being a career and not a job what choice would they make?

 

[BNTRS]

Yup, I knew that was going to get a bunch of people's panties in a bunch, but I did it anyway. Why? Because I'm a terrible liar and a huge cynic. But, I'll do my best to address everyone.

You ought to reread your signature.

I don't follow your logic. I'm not sure what "if you want to be rich you must follow one simple rule...do what rich people do" has to do with this. I know your too smart to suggest that successfull agents spend their time sitting in free training classes. I'd also hazard the guess that your too smart to suggest that successfull sales managers spend all their time teaching free training classes.

Why then would a quote whose (I know inamimate objects don't typically take on that pronoun but apparently I'm not smart enough to come up with something more grammatically correct that doesn't sounds awkward to me right now) message is if you want something that you see others' having the simplest way to get it is to mimick what they do or did have to do with the notion of unpaid pre-training requirements?

Agree with me or don't, but I don't appreciate you referring to my post as BS. I disagree with most of the rest of your post I quoted from, but I don't feel the need to disparage you by referring to it as BS.

And how do you know I was speaking to you directly Larry? My thought is if you felt compelled to make that comment based on mine, there's a part of you that feels vulnerable in regards to what you said potentially having a BS element to it. Remember, I never said anything about your comments being BS, you did. Chances are good your subconsious was trumping your consious mind.

But let's not partake in something so trivial as "he put me down" being the focal point of our discussion, we're both way too old for that. Here's an opportunity to address this idea head on. Fight me on merit not on prose. You've been around for a long time, you ought to be able to come up with more than I don't like your abrasive attitude. And I'd enjoy the thoughtful conversation, I'm rather certain your more than capable of it.

That a lot of captives and agencies take advantage of recruits is too widely practiced to ever be disputed. However, my point is that unless an agent understands that if they sell they succeed and if they don't sell they fail they will never make it. A new agent has two jobs in my opinion and those are to learn all they can and to be seeing all the prospects they can or fighting to see all the prospects they can. A training salary or no training salary is meaningless as to whether one will make this a career or not other than it may ease one through the start up phase.

My issue isn't with training agents, far from it. My issue is with the notion of paying a training salary that is a draw against future commissions, or telling the agent they must produce a certain amount and essentially telling them the difference between products and then sending them out to fight for dinner, all the while keeping a significant portion of what they produce anyway. And when questioned about it hiding behind the notion that "hey, you need to be a self-starting entrepreneur to make it in this business" coupled with the "you want money? Sell something" mentality. Simply put, if that's your training model, why not just go indy from the beginning, my chances for survival are about the same, and at least I'll probably make a little more on the business I do pay for since I don't have agency overhead and a sales manager to pay for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest that there's a flaw behind finding people who are, or turning people into agents who value the task of producing business. You only get paid for doing one thing, paying for business. And I totally agree with the idea that new agents ought to be willing to take extra time--even on their own--to learn about their products. What I'm more concerned with is the huge split in who is committing to this thing. The agency and sales manager have a tiny commitment to all this, while they ask the agent to be very dedicated. I was always told that if you don't have skin in the game, you won't appreciate what you're doing, and likely won't commit to it like you should. I maintain that a large portion of agent failure--though not all by no means--is the lack of commitment that career shops make to their new agents. They are more interested in turning through as many bodies as they can in hopes that they'll find some good ones. I understand that not everyone is a good match, but I think a lot more effort could be put into this. The most successfull sales manager I know has a huge degree of dedication to his new agents, and it seems to work, very low turnover and he's has the highest producing sales team in the entire company (very large and well known insurance company).

And on the paycheck note. Entrepreneurs need to be bottom line thinkers. They need to be doing things that make them money. I've heard a lot of sales managers and fellow seasoned agents utter those words. It seems as though some of us only like that notion when it suits us.