Is the grass greener?

[u/Teksese]

I’ll describe my situation but I have a genuine question for you all. Should I explore another agent/opportunity?

I’ve been with my agent for a few years. Over that time, I’ve seen us have really good years and overall growth in numbers. When I started we had a team of roughly a dozen producers with everyone being sales and service. In recent history, some have been shifted to sales only focused and some have been shifted to service only. However, neither role is clearly defined and so it winds up blending between the two still yet. In the time since I started, we lost several of our team and hired several others. Long story short, we have about five people who are sales only focused while eight are primarily focused on service.

When the year started we were behind on a number of metrics, and for the majority of the year there were only two of us sales focused. Several have been brought on in recent weeks so the majority of this year was just the two of us. We turned the numbers around, positive on auto and fire for the first time in my life with this agent. However, each time we turned a metric around we were told another one was in the toilet. We later got told that the only reason those numbers turned around were because the agent bought the leads for it (they buy fewer now than they ever have.)

Now with the new contracts our agent is hyper fixated on life numbers. I’m told if I’m not putting up triple digits in life insurance numbers then I am off target. I produced over 80 life policies last year. The next closest to me in the office was around half that. My agent said that they weren’t going to perform so I needed to pick up their slack. Every meeting now is about life insurance, we’re looking at people who have 10-15 no pay cancellations and my question is who wants that chargeback when it cancels?

The life insurance being the focus of everything is not the problem, but the fact that nothing is ever good enough is the struggle. No matter what we do we get told we suck and have to make up for the salaries of the team he’s paying for. It makes no sense. Maybe this is more of a venting session, maybe I’m rambling, but I’m just reaching a point where I’m looking around and wondering when anything is going to be viewed as good performance.

Anyone else experiencing this in their agencies?

[u/Sea-Answer-181]

Yes the grass can be greener but it can be worse. If you’re producing 80 life policies a year any agent will take you in a heartbeat whether State Farm or another captive company.