-You are not the Corporate Verizon. Anyone at a corporate store will be sure that you know the difference and will not recommend customers to come to Cellular Sales (CS for short). In addition, you are limited to the type of deals you can work on because you are an authorized retailer (i.e. large business accounts off 100+ lines). There have been many occasions customers will return items to us because they went to a corporate store (thinking all Verizon stores are the same) and were turned away or told to return. It is tough to work a shift off walk-in traffic in addition to knowing there are 1000's of potential customers being turned away from the 'real-Verizon' bashing us(customers words, not mine).
-You split commission with everyone in the store you work with. While this can be great at location you only split 2 or 3 ways, there are location you split up to 8 ways. Selling an iPhone worth about $50 in commission? Divide that by 5, 6, 7 +. Some items like aircards or accessories you do not need to split.
-You have the ability to sell phones to your already existing friends and/or leads you acquired not in a store which yield 100% of the commission to only you. While this can be a benefit, it also leads a lot of your colleagues to become suspicious or try to vulture potential clients. (Example: Offering a customer a better deal if they come back to you during off hours. While this is frowned upon and not allowed, it happens.)
-Certain management staff want you to push phones/etc on people, regardless of their actual needs. These usually result in returns, that another co-worker has to spend time with to take care of.
-In my market, the top 2 or 3 commission guys usually worked open-close, 6-7 days a week. They would usually finish around $5000 in commission for the month (pre-tax).
-Any customer that signs up for service and within 6 months decides for whatever reason they want to:
A) quit paying their bill
B) switch to another carrier (some carriers like Tmobile will pay for the customers cancellation fee to switch)
C) cancel their plan at any time
You will be subject to a 'Deact fee'. You will lose any commission you made on the transaction plus 1/2 the cost of the phone up to a certain amount. You end up losing more than you made.
Often those same $5000 commission reps (pre tax) would see $1000-$2000 in deacts being deducted.
Remember, you also share commissions. You can be the best salesman/woman in the world but you are subject to deact-fees from commissions you were shared in also.
Every market is different. Management in each market is different. This is just my experience from almost 4 years with CS in the Charleston market.
I would not turn anyone away from applying. I would however, look over some of these potential 'cons' and discuss how they work in the specific market you are applying for.
