Pros
$40K-$45k max first year to two years. Not terrible if you’re coming out of college and need experience/money. Or need something in between jobs - 8-5 Monday-Friday. No overtime or after hours work. Not having to take work stress home with you - Opportunity for cash bonuses and gift cards for performance - Possibility of raises and increased salary overtime - Possibility of $90K+ after 4-5 years and advancing into slightly better projects
Cons
No substance: - The product you sell is advertising slots into various magazines and online buyers guides that typically have only around 3-6K members/subscribers. - For the online buyers guides, there is no tracking as far as how much traffic it actually gets - Business owners seldom actually see any return of investment, so it takes a lot of manipulation and convincing to keep a consistent residual client base - No relationship building or filling any customer need, just pushing ads - The script they distribute in training is an entire page long. The script essentially consists of you running through a pitch and asking one yes or no question instead of engaging in a conversation or asking open ended questions. It is a very pushy and “telemarkety” approach. - There is no coaching or help after the initial training, which mainly entails reading verbatim from a piece of paper out loud. If someone is having a hard time (or start spending your time there job searching like I did), they will just tell them to do better or they will have to “part ways” with you. Micromanaging: - They have cameras and microphones in the office that monitor your every move (NO JOKE) - Mid/upper level Management will micromanage your leads and activity by reading the notes you take and at any given time will question you about each one and even the structure and content of your notes - Aside from the notes you put in the CRM software, they also have you write down on a piece of paper everyone you talked to each day, what their title is, whether or not they were interested, and rate them from 1-10 on how interested they seemed. Negative and Dry Environment: - Overall the reps were decent people, but like any office there are a handful of people that love to constantly gossip and say judgmental and negative things behind coworkers backs. - No recognition for achievement, no team building activities, no encouragement, and really no commission (for the first 2 years) - Emulates something similar to a 1990s telemarketing call center with small monitors and handheld corded phones. - Within the 3 months I was there, over a dozen people quit, which is a lot considering there were roughly 20 people in the office when I started in January. They constantly hire new reps at about the same rate of people that quit. Revolving door company. Lack of empathy/Treating employees like garbage: - Nobody likes being sick. It messes up your schedule and has you feeling down for several days. However, if you do happen to get sick and miss more than a couple days within your first few months, they will threaten to terminate you or will even literally revoke your insurance benefits for a certain amount of time. - I sat next to one of the senior reps in the back of the room, and I couldn’t help but notice how poorly he and other senior reps were treated, some of which ended up leaving despite making decent money. - Since the only people who actually get paid commission are the ones that work here for 3+ years, guess who they don’t give any repeat clients to? The people that would make commission to save their bottom line. - As an aspiring rep who wants to do well and advance, I would imagine that would be a little discouraging. - No maternity leave. If you have a baby they’ll temporarily let you go and take you off insurance until you’re able to come back - They rarely fire people to avoid having to pay unemployment, only after harassing them to quit.