I busted my hump and hustled like crazy for two years and nine months before finally getting a decent slice of opportunity.
As a starting District Manager, you are lead generation for upmarket divisions (Retirement, Total Source, etc) and you remain as such for as long as you are in SBS. Don't have any illusions to the contrary.
They tell everyone during the hiring process that they will be a manager, everyone. Just ask the people you meet at corporate training. That reminds me, if you take the job be sure to get the contact of the other DMs you meet at training, 90% of them will have better jobs in under a year and you will also be looking to jump ship.
The starting salary (35 grand I think?) is NOT a lot of money, even for a recent grad, especially when you're constantly belittled and taking flack from "leaders" that only had to sell 20% of your quota in their day, which happened to be during a booming economy with less competitors and many more competitive advantages.
Most successful DMs are clumsy frat boys that develop into overconfident and ineffective managers after they play politics and stroke egos long enough to get a territory that gives them the opportunity to succeed. When they get their management position, they think they're Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross and refuse to provide any actual support, they were successful at this job and if you aren't it's only because you are an unmotivated slacker.
This really gets bad when they miss their quota as managers, because again, it's your fault, not theirs.
Management's mantra is, "It's not the territory, it's the rep" by this logic it follows that, "It's not the rep, it's the manager"
Meetings are a complete waste of time, terrible music for ten minutes while everyone files into the conference room, two minutes of actual product/promotional information, then 45 minutes of individual reps reporting their sales figures for that week, terribly inefficient use of valuable selling hours.
I learned more about sales selling watches with a great mentor during college in LA than I ever did at ADP.
