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Be a Good Neighbor-Become a State Farm Agent

By Matt Prete, Alberta Agency Recruiter, State Farm Insurance

As I contemplated writing this article I decided I wanted it to be more than a bunch of facts and figures about how State Farm is a great company to be associated with and how Agency is a great opportunity for not only financial success but a rewarding career as well. I want to share with you the State Farm culture and why I ended up here.

I sold Life Insurance and Mutual Funds for nearly 6 years and was having a moderate amount of success but was somewhat frustrated with the Broker that I was working with. I had made the determination to start my own Agency so I embarked on the process of writing a Business Plan to do that. In general the Financial Services Industry is an exercise in survival of the fittest, other than some product training companies do not offer any financial support for Brokers and Brokers actually charge their Agents to work there. I was determined to do it different and quickly discovered as I wrote my plan that it would take about $600,000 of start-up capital to survive the first 3 years of business in order to properly train a sales force and support them financially.

During that time I was looking on an Internet job board and I see that State Farm is looking for an Alberta Recruiter. I always said that if I could just talk and get paid for it that would be the perfect job. This looked pretty close so I applied and I ended up getting an interview. During that interview they described to me what State Farm Agency looked like and how it operates. I was surprised to note that their vision of how an Agency should operate was starting to look a lot like the business plan I was writing. It wasn’t exact but it was amazingly close. Then they took me by surprise! They talked about a 7 month paid training program, about how Agents are re-imbursed $30,000 for their office start-up costs and how they would support a new Agent financially for the first 4 years of business to ensure that they were successful. Overall they would invest approximately $500,000 in cash and training in a new Agent.

At this point I am thinking to myself that I am planning on spending $600,000 to open my own Agency and brand my own name which I will have to pay back or I could open with State Farm and they would invest a half a million in me that I didn’t have to pay back and I would have the State Farm brand name which is one of the top ten recognized brands in North America. I stopped the interview and said “if I don’t get this job, I am interested in Agency myself”. They told me they were looking at me both ways and hadn’t decided yet which way they wanted me to go.

In the end they asked me to come on as the Recruiter for at least a couple of years and then if I wanted to go to Agency I could, then they made me an offer I couldn’t turn down. I can say unequivocally that it is the best offer I have ever had. I have been treated better by State Farm than any other company I have ever worked for. The respect they show for their Corporate Employees, their Agents and their Policy Holders has been impressive to me and my association with State Farm has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Agency is certainly not for everyone but if it is a fit for you, I believe State Farm is the best place in the industry to ensure success.

Contact Matt Prete, Agency Recruiter at (780) 233 – 1712 or matt.prete.mqzx@statefarm.com for more information on opening your own State Farm Agency.