Why am I still an Agent?

[kevinraz]

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And I don't have any plans to go back to the agency side. I truly enjoy the insurance business, enjoy selling and am pretty good at it but the combined pressure of the "low price" ads and companies now selling their products directly is going to make it more and more difficult for a standard agency to exist.

I'm surprised no one has written in this topic about how national brokers are gobbling up so many mainstreet agents. These large brokers are all purchasing good sized, older, well established agents around the country. This trend is not slowing down. If you are a good old mainstreet agent with 10 or less employees good luck competing with a national broker when they take over the agency down the street. They will outspend you on advertising, have better technology and have the best markets.

Y'all have fun with trying to keep your client with a $350 home policy on the books. I gave that up long ago. Your services are needed but are sorely under appreciated and under compensated. Another thought: why sell health insurance any longer? The coming model is for the government to handle all of the health care process including insurance/payment. I predict the agent being able to sell health insurance will largely disappear within 10 years.

Beyer1, I hope things get better for you. Independent Guy, you have been putting up wise posts for years, I appreciate your perspective & you must be good at what you do. Sports_Agent, attitude is important but if you don't have a good product to sell attitude does not help much.

Signing off for now,

Underwriter

[jjb]

Quite crying....the opportunities for a professionally run agency are endless. Sure I agree about much of the rant regarding the commoditization of our products but that is where we have to have the heart of an educator and explain things differently that the "call center" people. Build relationships with your clients. I was a captive for 14 years and have been an IA for 2.5 years. I did get a jump start because my IA was up and running for 10 years under my wife's name. As for the captive's who are setting up IAs...they aren't "breaking the rules" as you started....they are solving problems. My captive company knew my setup.

I'm not trying to kick you while you are down but if you don't change the attitude quickly you will drown in it. I got the same attitude about my captive situation and couldn't turn it around so I finally sold it.

You have to find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors. My office offers free notary services. We support local charities, we have a referral program, we send out Welcome Packages to new clients. What do you do? We DON"T advertise in the yellow pages. Times have changed, industries change, they way people buy changes. We are the only ones to go through this. Record stores, travel agents, real estate agents and others have gone through it. The internet was supposed to be the end of real estate agents....not even.

As someone else wrote, if price where everything Walmart would be the only store left in town. Mercedes would be out of business, Women would get their hair done at Pro Cuts.

Opportunities abound. May I suggest you go to this site and sign up. www.darrendaily.com It a FREE motivation series that just started this week and it's put together by the publisher of Success Magazine. Each day you'll get one email that takes only 5 minutes and has an actionable step.

Good luck.

[agent14]

Is online auto insurance shopping on the way out?

http://www.ibamag.com/news/is-online-au ... 18216.aspx