Pros
Good place to start if your just out of college and didnt have a clue about what it takes to be a so called professional sales/ account representative.
Cons
While I was there they acutally cut our salaries in HALF ! Then they barelly increased the commision structure. Trying to sell advertising in a phone book in this day and age is like trying to be a telegraph salesman in 1950. Its just a dying industry. Sure you have your web products that there trying to convert everyone too but the search engine is horrible compared to google and yahoo. In fact your charging people to do something on google that you the consumer could do yourself for FREE or a lot cheaper from Google themselves. Sorry to get ahead of myself but lets start with the training.It was 3 weeks long and was totaly useless once I got to the office. How they train you is not how its done in the office and doesnt remotelly work with customers. You will run your car into the GROUND. I had to drive 1 1/2 hrs ONE WAY for 3 months to work on one of the books during the winter and had to come to work in blizzards.You will easily put 30K on your car in a year working there. Manegment does not care about anything but your numbers. They want you to meet with contractors an hour away at 6 am and then meet another contractor at 8 pm that night if that what it takes. Forget about 9-5 for this job it doesnt exist. They totally overstate there marketplace penetration. There sales techniques are horribly outdated and your one step ahead of being and sounding like a used car salesman I should know I use to be one. Turnover is easliy 70-80%. They constantly have new hires coming into the office 5- 10 at a time. I worked in an office of 35 -40 salespeople and within a year of working there maybey 5-6 of the origional workforce was there. Management is horrible. While I was there they micro-manage you like crazy and expect you to telemarket from getiing business cards in diners EVERY week till 7:30 at night which they never tell you about in training. They also make you do bill collecting from your old customers which isnt part of your job description and they tell you in training you dont have to do. I just cant say enough about how horrible a company this is. You have meeting upon usless meeting all the time that you HAVE to be at even though your job is suppose to be out in the field getting appointments and making sales. How can I make appointments and get my numbers if I have to drive to the office all the time to do stupid role playing ? They could care less about the customer once you have the sale until next year when the new book is being put together.
