In Business / December 2008-January 2009
The Woman Behind Alawat Insurance
There are many people who go searching for their perfect career. Some people browse through online advertisements, post resumes on the Internet, and maybe even consult the horoscopes. But for Robin Alawat, the perfect career found her.
Before 2006 Robin made a living selling Mercedes at the Astorg dealership in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Robin was exceptional at customer service. So exceptional in fact, that on two separate occasions customers asked if she ever thought about getting into insurance. Robin said she didn’t think about selling insurance until she was confronted by her own car customers. “The one person who told me to get into insurance was a branch manager for West Virginia. His mom came in to buy and car and he was with her,” Robin said. “He thought I would be good at it because he thought I had a good way of explaining things to people.”
It took two years before Robin made the decision to leave the car dealership and start her own insurance agency. Robin said the deciding factor for the career change was her son Caleb, who was only one year old at the time. “The car business involves a lot of hours and at that time I missed out on a lot of his life,” she said.
Robin determined that she wanted to be more involved in Caleb’s life and decided that owning her own agency would allow her to do that, she said. In 2006 Robin became appointed as an Erie Insurance Agent and started her own business later that year.
Robin said she is glad she made the decision to own her own agency. “At the time my husband Anthony and I decided we were going to run [the agency] together as a family business,” she said. Unfortunately, Anthony passed away four months after opening the agency. “At one point I thought I was going to close,” Robin said.
But the thought of her son Caleb kept her motivated. “I knew in the long run I had to keep on with my agency and try to learn how to be a single parent,” she said. Robin also said that keeping busy with the business helped her overcome the difficulty of losing her husband.
It took some hard work and trying times, but Robin was able to build her agency from scratch.
“I built my book of business from the ground up,” she said. “I had to go out and get those customers.”
Robin did her own marketing and convinced her friends and family to switch insurance providers. “I’ve always worked in customer-service related jobs, so it’s kind of my niche,” she said. Robin holds licensing in Property and Casualty and Life insurance.
Now remarried, Robin envisions her son eventually taking over the family business after he graduates from college.
Alawat Insurance is located at 3205 Grand Central Avenue, Vienna, West Virginia. For more information, call (304) 865-2434.
Copyright © 2001-2009 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
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