Pros
I worked for AIL as an agent from March through August 2012. The commission package seems pretty good for this type of business, and apparently some agents make good money at it.
Cons
There were seven agents hired in my class; I was the last to quit five months later. The two classes after me was gone, too. Instead of having "lots of good union leads" as promised, toward the end they were having us put out Child Safe boxes in town to try to get new leads - in effect, borrowing a few inches of shelf space from existing businesses to try to generate free leads for the company, on the ruse that they were working with local law enforcement to help protect kids from kidnappers. The CS boxes offered to give a free Child Safe kit - a trifold with places to put names, phone numbers, and fingerprints of children to help find them in case they are abducted. These, in reality, are a come-on to get in the door and change the conversation to life insurance. Same applied to a discount card to save money on prescriptions. None of the agents with whom I worked made enough to cover their fuel costs for their vehicles - and I probably saw thirty to forty agents come in and out the door during my five months with the company. Some had Ph.D.s and some had sales and insurance experience; others were fresh out of high school, but they were all treated the same - in other words, it just wasn't my inadequacy as a sales person, EVERYONE was failing to succeed. Apparently the driving force is to jin up some sales with fresh blood, wear them out, and bring on new recruits as quickly as possible (by trolling on Monster.com); residual commissions of agents who left stayed with the company or the manager. As a result, manager had no motivation for agents to stay long enough to keep retention commissions; if they did, they took money away from the manager. Management promised to help, but then didn't keep promises. Zero support, zero advertising - wouldn't even let us set up appointments at union halls with union members we were supposed to be serving.
