Pros
Allstate has state of the art sales training, although it can be like brainwashing and a little cultish, you learn some good techniques.
Cons
The company itself seemed a bit unethical. I felt like this mainly because the agent I worked for and a handful of others were running the show in our region. The state managers are really supposed to be running the show and these agencies are getting special treatment based on past relationships with higher ups. Although the agency I worked at, and a few others benefitted from this, it was still unethical. They are intense on some of the sales training. Although it is always good to practice, practice, and sell, sell... it is regularly drilled into your head. You are required to watch what's called "Whoople" with Paul Cummings and friends (EVERY DAY) and required to come into work early to do so, constantly telling you how to think, act... One member of our staff returned from a bootcamp style training course where they kept people up all night and made them disclose personal things about their lives to "dig deep" into themselves. He had to learn a Creed, comperable to the SNL skit's Stuart Smalley speech about I'm good enough, smart enough - except with some extra wierdness. Like, I will always be at level ten, every day, no matter what, nothing can stop me, blah blah. When he returned from this trip he announced that all the staff would have to learn this overnight or suffer consequences. It was four paragraphs long. This was an Allstate bootcamp. I was glad I never went to what I ended up dubbing the brain washing camp. Training. When I got hired with the company I was sent to a month long crash course about Allstate products. I was told "Forget what you learned in your licensing studies because you need to learn it the Allstate way". That made sense, but then all they ever tought me was how to make sales. Yes they brushed on the subjects of what insurance products, and how to use the systems, but not enough to get me started in my position. I felt very untrained when I started selling because no one wanted to talk about the products, only how to sell them. With all that said, I genuinly liked each manager or higher up I met withing the company. I spent lots of time in crash courses in GR training with the honchos on AFS products. Again, didn't want to talk about the products. Said, "Sell the AFS guy, don't worry about the products". THere was lots of pressure to do so, but if you weren't actually closing the AFS deals you weren't getting compensated for it, unless you count the contests they had for those who sent the most referrals - regional competitions. So in other words, you are being prodded with a stick to sell the AFS guys to the customer, and this takes finess, like convincing a client to go with a particular financial advisor. If you aren't and advisor you shouldn' be discussing it if you aren't educated about the products. The incentive for getting daily proddings to sell AFS were that you could compete with the rest of your region for an ipod or something. Okay if it's worth harassing all of your P&C or Life customers - sure. But I did start that comment with saying I liked the managers. They were just doing their jobs. They were all pretty nice folks (a lot of ex agency owners that got into mgmt later). It is corporate who is wiping up messes for hand picked agents, and the nature of it is not desirable.