The Allstate Corporation Message Board

Let me direct your attention to the Pfizer
website!!!!!

As for dismal equine failures I hope it wasn't one
of our old
standardbreds that cost you $$$. Your
wife has the right
idea - buy low / sell high.
Good luck w/ her future ventures.

First of all MKA, the QLMS survey is pure
garbage. That is why many agents refuse to take it. It
measures none of the real concerns that agents have. As
for using it to help the immediate supervisor, who
cares! QLMS needs to be totally revamped to include
direct issues that relate to how the frontline employees
deal directly with the company and how the company
deals with them. Years ago there use to be a comment
section, no more. Why, probably due to the fact that
frontline employees would express their real feelings which
management neither cared about or wanted to
hear.

Next, as for the managerial shake-up, I for one don't
really know the main problem in home office. How can I,
other than what I hear and read. I don't live it and I
am not immediately involved with it. However, as one
great mentor said to me years ago, "The fish stinks
from the head down". Liddy appears for all practical
purposes to be following in the Russian governmental
mentality. That is, shake up all those underneath you, fire
those who don't agree and then see if there's light at
the end of the tunnel. When you're the one in charge,
the head honcho, aren't you suppose to take
responsibility for what goes on? Are scapegoats and fall guys
still necessary for Liddy's ego? Come on Ed, be
thankful for the time you had and step aside. This company
needs new bold leadership from an outside source. Oh,
did I say leadership? I meant to say management
because that seems to be all that this hierarchy knows
how to do, MANAGE! Leadership is a quaility that few
possess including Mr. Liddy. Management is more his
style. What made ALL a great company decades ago can
still make it a great company today and well into the
future. That is, the front line employees belief and
faith in this company. ALL management either doesn't
want to acknowledge that employee/agent moral is in
the TOILET or they are to blind to see it. I can't
believe that the latter is a possibility. Therefore,
management either needs to win back their front line
employees/agents or quit with this B.S. about being in good
hands...mine. The fact is that the frontline employees/agents
do care about their clients. But management has also
got to realize that if it's not cost effective for
the individual employee, it ain't gonna happen! They
operate with this philosophy, why shouldn't we! The upper
powers that be in ALL, have now for years pasted
expenses down, down, down to the front line. What they
have failed to see or they do see and don't care
about, is that each one on the frontline makes a
business decision to do or not do what is best for
themselves. Who cares about ALL. I need to survive. Do they
actually think that a new contract is going to change
this? It will only worsen the lack of trust (if there
is any left) between agents and management. I have
been around long enough to see that when ALL offers a
new "agreement" to it's agency force, the agents do
agree on one thing, it's always in the best interest
for ALL, not the agent.

Where am I going with
this? Grip? Complaining? Hardly! This is a fact of life
that we each have to deal with. It appears that Mr.
Liddy has shown us his strength and responsibility as
to where the buck stops! Unfortunately, it's not
with him. It trickles down until it reaches the last
possible stopping point. So as one who takes
responsibility for his own actions, I'm glad to say that blame
will not be shuffled to another where I'm concerned.
The Buck Stops Here! I would emplore Mr. Liddy and
any other upper level managers to adopt the same
philosophy. Unfortunately, I don't have to be political in my
motives, but they do.

CEO

ay Workload increase has been enormous and then
when sales decline the bozos act surprised.

It
will take management more than 5 years in Sales to
understand our plight..........but 1 or 2 years of meeting a
payroll and expenses should do it. It would teach them
more than Allstate math 101 and should be required for
the mathmetically challenged.

Bulletin: Any
positive and welcome news we get out of Chicago won't be
from the present management. It will be about
it!
Barleycorn

Hasn't this been fun. Maybe tomorrow we will get
to know who MA really is. My money is on a high
level exec who is fed up with the regime. A true
"deepthroat" in the best sense of the word, right out of the
Nixon era. I like MKA, I think the posts are well
articulated and very informative and have a lot more of what
is really happening upstairs than we have ever seen
before. There have been a lot of good posts by many
people and some not so good. I cant wait to see what
tomorrow, actually, later this morning, will bring.
Frankly, I dont think it will make a lot of diffebefore.
In all the history of insurance actuaries could use
the law of large numbers to come up with the premium
needed to pay for an estimated number of claims and make
a profit. In their wisdom they have added a new
law, now they think they know WHO is going to have the
claims. Ive been here 32 years and I Back in the early
seventies, State Farm and Allstate were not that far apart,
but State Farm soared ahead providing their agents
with the products needed for all their prospective
clients. They became a real insurance company while we got
draconian underwriting rules that takes a Philly lawyer to
understand and the most absurd pricing structure in the
industry. Over the years I have seen a lot of mistakes
made, more programs than I care to remember and so many
acronyms Websters would have difficulty catalouging them
all. But getting back to why we became so successful.
We sold to the masses. Those thousands and tens of
thousand prospects that streamed by our booths in Sears
stores every day all across the country were the average
folks. They needed the insurance basics, car house,
renters, fire and then life insurance. We wernt there to
seek out the rare bird who needed lloyds, just mr &
mrs average and there was a whole lot of them. This
was the beauty and the brilliance of Allstates
success. When we were put out in the neighborhoods the
prospects were no longer streaming by our booths seeing us
all year long and then stopping over when their x
date was approaching. We now had to go to them with
whatever method works for a particular agent but we dont
have the tools. The mmgs and ridiculous pricing has
eliminated any oportunity to grow. Add to that the departure
of the long time customer who can no longer afford
to stay with you even though your open with a
licensed person at all required times and they like you
too, I wont even mention the line 19 fiasco, this is a
sinking ship. They dont understand that this is a sales
game and great service and 24 hour availability isnt
all thats needed to power the ship. Not everybody is
in a megopolis with sky high premiums or in a
booming growth area. Without the right tools the job cant
be done. A new agent will never survive the time
required to build a book. Whatever the announcement I
suspect the end result will be mega agencies and super
mega agencies owned by insiders and favored agents or
outsiders who can cough up enough dollars to reach the
agency size to provide for a proper staff and shoulder
all the expenses. But unless the agency is provided
the tools needed to grow, then in the long run they
will be picked apart by truly independents whose
companies provide them more than Pablum. Its been a good
ride could have been much better but thats life. Good
luck to you all. Nail.

EOM

"Hope we all are treated like professionals and
human beings again someday."

I believe that this
would go a long way towards reestablishing the
communications that are necessary for a "partnership".

QLMS, is a total waste of time as it is corrupt
because of the implied threats to front line employees to
conform to good survey results. Most non sales employees
don't want to hurt their immediate manager who one way
or another is judged partly by results compared to
prior year or compared to CSA or RO wide results.
Repeat... QLMS is a total waste of time and money but
because non sales results look good, senior leadership
feels vindicated. A real catch 22 situation that is an
absurdity. Sales QLMS is a total joke and serves no
purpose.

BAD AGENTS, someone earlier mentioned management
shouldn't tolerate wife stealing in our so called midwest
christian value system, or something to that effect. I
presume that was a subtle reference to re-acquired Phil,
formerly Sales VP. Two reponses to that. First, you don't
know the whole story. Second, during my underwriting
and HR filed trips when assigned to the RO, I had to
visit my assigned agencies. You talk about christian
values and good old heartland agents. Well let me tell
you how many of these so called "good" agents wanted
nothing more than to get in my pants. These phony two
timing MCP's with ego's bigger than their putters were a
sorry lot. Usually it was the loudest mouth lazy agents
who were the first to make their move. I am no feeble
woman's libber and don't belive in tattling, but these
pigs never pulled their shit a second time. On the
other hand their were a lot of good decent hard working
agents who really cared. So don't start moralizing to me
about the sins of management.

BLUE MONDAY, got
an e-mail late today concerning the news shortly to
be made public. Got to say one thing, Liddy is
taking no prisoners. This is only the first of the
shakeups. More to follow in PCCSO, LIFE, CNA and
Corporate.


MKA

Thanks for the kind words, but GoodStallion might
be considered false advertising.

Barley and
other agents who responded to my power sales post,
thanks. The funny thing is most of us will continue to do
whats is in the customers' best interest and in time
the pendulum of corporate thinking will swing our
way.

BP
BTW Goodfella, today was a good
day; we sold a little quarter horse mare my wife
bought for $600 2 month ago. She got $2500 for her. She
just needed a little retraining. Sweet.. I won't tell
you about our dismal failures.

except for the fact I sold my agency almost a
year ago!! You see, you being out of touch with
reality really strikes a sore spot with me. I wasn't one
of your fu fighters or a dog agent. I've won honor
ring 10 times and went to conference on several
occasions. Belonged to the agent concil for 6 years and even
was on the national agent concil that flew to Chi
town a couple of years ago. You may have even met
me!!

No, my point is this stock and whats needed to get
the company going again. The downfall of this company
is really pissing me off because of the awesome
pontential it has and the total wasteland that it's become.
I still have a large block of ALL stock tied
directly to my retirement funds. Nothing would please me
more than seeing ALL knock the cover off the ball.


The problem is pointed directly at the people at
Northbrook who you have your smokes with. Consider the track
record Mr. Liddy has and take it from somebody who seen
him in action first hand when him and cronies took
Sears apart. His vision needs glasses.
But, while
we're at it, I hope your RIF'd and the offer you an EA
contract and you take it. Then you can see first hand how
"easy" it is to be an agent..

I know that I'm a little behind in this
conversation but MKA is a jerk. a jerk who is well versed in
management scientology and rhetoric and short sighted views.
His defense of QLMS is interesting but laughable. He
still is missing one major point: QLMS was originally
presented as a forum for upward communication. Now it is "a
way to let the employees know the direction that the
company is moving in"- from TAM letter.
What the hell
does that mean?!
I thought you'd appreciate the
thought.
PS Our region has not had a single QLMS meeting
since mid '98. When I questioned our so-called "Human
Resources" about the survey results I got the biggest run
around you have ever seen, but I still have no idea what
the results were.
JERKS!
Hope that you get
answers. Hope we all are treated like professionals and
human beings again someday.