provident agents [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

agent001

jeanm wrote: »

I have hit my 10% threshold for the first 8 weeks, then it jumped up by 19. I managed 9% on the 9th week and that was a battle going back out on Tuesday morning to try for some of my fortnightly tuesday evening payers early before paying in so the week after was a shocker. That was purely to make sure I got the extra 1% until the end of September (9 out of 13 weeks).
I fully agree this seems a great start to the new system and I did not expect to get 10%.I would have been happy with 9% ,plus an opportunity to get to 10% and expected the odd decline to 8%. But what bugs me is that an agent can do their best every week and they will be penalised with impossible thresholds in the future. By my understanding of how they will calculate thresholds, my average number of payers so far is 74 out of 120 customers. they then use this average of 74 to set the 7% base threshold. plus 2%,5% and10% for the upper thresholds. So by doing my best and going back over and over until I get results, I got 74 payers. Now I have to get 74 to get 7%.
I have the added uncertainty of taking on 25 customers from a split agency last week. these weren't factored in last week so I hit my 10% target fine but I have no idea just how it will work this week. The info says they are looking into a fair way of calculating that. of those 25 customers, there are a few don't pay regularly and quite a few fortnightly and monthly, mostly in arrears. I doubt I will get more than half of them to pay on a regular basis
if anybody has a different interpretation on the way they calculate, please give me hope. I have made it clear to my manager I wasn't after getting 10% every week but I would only tolerate 7 or 8% for a short time so I hope I win the lottery before the end of September!

I am exactly the same as you. In the first month I got a managable target for threshold 3 but I was only just doing this by 1 customer. When the targets changed the next month I was getting threshold 2 and again the following month I was scraping by, by just getting threshold 1. Now you know what I am going to say next??? this month I am now getting NO thresholds and getting a basic 7%. Ive got quite a large book of around 240 customer. 72% quality and an average of 22% everyweek so how come I am only getting 7%. I try so hard every week and its so dissappointing to see people getting threshold 3 and there books are nowhere as good as mine.
By the end of my Mondays im so stressed trying to catch a few more customers that have missed just to try and get threshold 1.
There is only so long I will also tolerate 7%

demoralised

The secret to achieving the 10% seems to be get all bad payers waivered to a rate they can comfortably afford every week! for example if they are struggling on £30 weekly rate get your manager to waiver them to £10 weekly, stress to the customer that they need to pay this every week to keep the new low rate and provided they pay £10 they will count as payers. Some agents in our office have waivered half their books. Why do they insist on bringing in these tiered commission schemes, all it does is focus our minds on how to earn the best for us, instead of what is best for the company. Things will never improve until someone at HQ sees sence and goes back to the same flat commission for all, we can then get on with the job instead of spending precious time trying to work out if we can eat that week.

jeanm_2

trouble is, if you have them all on waivers, your threshold targets will increase on the next assessment.we were told to make sure before the new scheme started that everyone was on informal reduced rates that needed to be.
I have converted some of my monthly payers who are good regular payers but not perfect so sometimes not always the full month in advance. they now pay weekly so at least I get the chance to count them as a payer for maybe 3 weeks per month. That helps but chances are they will run out of cash before payday. And, it pains me to say, I keep a very close eye on my targets and once achieved I sort of give up. if a customer asks me over the weekend to come on Monday or Tuesday, that is heaven cos I can go if I need the payer count and leave it for the following week if I don't. I found that, for two weeks, I was around 4 or 5 off my threshold. I can tell by a Saturday if I am going to miss it completely,so I simply didn't try one week. I was 29 payers short of threshold 1 (mine were 105, 107,107), so I left it as that. I gave up, took the hit on my commission, and my thresholds dropped at the next assessment, making them just about achievable.so I am doing that once a month. So far,it has meant I have kept my 1% bonus but I have to watch it every week.
I havent resorted to unmentionable solutions yet, but, believe me, if a fiver means my £2k+ collections will reach that 10%threshold instead of 7%,then one lucky customer will find that fiver on her floor!
they have got exactly the reaction they were after. we are all running around on Monday night and Tuesday morning, trying to get those last few payers to attain the targets. The info that was produced at the start of this said that thresholds would account for monthly trends in individual agencies- nope, we get one high week and three lower but the same. it said they would account for bank holidays etc-nope, no difference there for the august bank holiday. I wonder what Christmas and new year thresholds will be.

demoralised

I agree jeanm we are all playing a game, how this helps Provi is beyond me, it is very tempting to stop when you have achieved the top figure and give yourself a bit of help for the following week, and equally if it looks unacheivable why would you continue to collect and get paid at 7% instead of 10% for doing the same job, when you could arrange to go on Tuesday instead of Monday and achieve 10%. As I said earlier to much of our time is taken up with trying to get the best commission possible, time which could be spent finding sales, new doors etc. bring back the good old days, when the only thought you had when you went out was to collect as much as you could, sell as much as you could and find some new customers. Now why continue to collect if all you will get that week is a paltry 7%, why roll a loan if a large chunk will be paid at 2.33%, why do a new door you have reservations about if it will end up costing you dear if they don't pay. Where is the motivation in this system?????

Beeincontrol

I have heard that we will be having advertising on prime TV time from Nov. We are changing to the colour purple. And they have spend over a million doing this. Well now we Know where the money is coming from. You calculate how many agents are in your section, for each % you loose, per agent, per section across the country thats where our commission has gone.:mad:

demoralised

Beeincontrol wrote: »

I have heard that we will be having advertising on prime TV time from Nov. We are changing to the colour purple. And they have spend over a million doing this. Well now we Know where the money is coming from. You calculate how many agents are in your section, for each % you loose, per agent, per section across the country thats where our commission has gone.:mad:

More to the point where will the agents go??? most have used up all their goodwill towards Provi, rebranding will do them no good if they lose any more experienced agents, instead of wasting money rebranding, who cares what colour we are, they should make sure every agent is earning a living wage every week. The weeks you earn less commission are usually the weeks you have worked the hardest. It's great there will be more TV advertising, but they will only hive off the best leads for satsuma, leaving us with the more problematic leads. They made a point of saying " you spoke we listened" but they didn't listen, we all said we wanted 10% for all, with no deductions, not yet another complicated tiered system of commission.

teamspirit

"you spoke we listened"...I would love to know what agent said "I've got a brilliant idea, bring in a commission system where an agent can run themselves ragged, be stressed out to the point of wanting to quit, manipulate the targets to the point where they are unachievable and penalise them even when a good customer misses the odd week (even if they pay double the following week)...that would be great!" This latest system is ludicrous. I have been an agent for many years, seen different comm systems come and go but this one is one of the worst. sold to us with the emphasis on 11%. What seems too good to be true usually is and in true Provident style , it was too good to be true. Alot of agents were getting the 11% for the first few weeks and the targets started creeping up and then one big jump that has never been explained. We never know from one week to the next what our comm will be and the uncertainty alone is a major headache. I dont expect to be paid a higher rate of comm if I'm not doing the job properly but I resent the fact that I'm doing the job as I always have, calling on everybody, challenging misses, selling etc but I'm penalised for someone not paying. Even under the old points system you didnt get penalised for a 100% quality cust missing as long as they paid double the next week. And under the shambolic deductions system ,you could at least stand a small chance of getting back what had been deducted. But this??? it takes all the enjoyment out of the job, I used to like going out on my round but now I dread it, dread the phone ringing or texts saying 'sorry etc etc cant pay you'. Well...as its been mentioned before by someone
, no more rollovers from me, go home early if I'm too short of the target and stop as soon as I hit it. Sales will drop, collections will drop and the business will suffer even more than it has done lately. No amount of rebranding will solve anything. There has been too much 'tinkering' by people who thought they knew best and clearly didnt. The saying 'why fix something that isnt broken' springs to mind. Greed is at the root of it and we'll all pay the price in the end.

Poor_Agents

They only do it for one reason - GREED !

I feel sorry for all of you working your butts off for nothing .

jeanm_2

does anyone remember the part in the info on this scheme when it was rolled out that said they would adjust thresholds for bank holidays etc? how did that turn out for everyone? my targets went down slightly this week for 9%. I found myself getting a little short-tempered with customers who said they couldn't pay this week. I am rather too easy going sometimes for this job. when some were saying they couldn't pay this week due to high bills or simply over-indulged, I got a bit shirty. it isn't just one bad week to endure now. I used to think of it as the low after the few highs from settle and renews the past few weeks. but this could have longer lasting consequences.
Also, what happens when you cover another agent? I am due to collect part of an agent's round for her while she has an appointment. I can't expect her to pay me more than the earned rate but why should an agent work for 7% to do another agent and the company a favour if they are earning more on their own round. It seems impossible as you cant even say to your deputy what rate they will be on.

Roundthebend_2

Not a provident agent, but an S&U agent, we've had 2 new agents into our branch from Provident and reading this thread gives me an idea as to why.


No advice I'm afraid, just empathy

RTB