Pros
Discount on your own death items after one year. Some good coworkers.
Cons
Starting there was okay transition, I understand sorting paperwork for new hires is hard for some people. Was excited because the death industry is pretty neat. Credit check on hire, unsure why, perhaps to see how far they can mess with your pay before they push you to file with collections, or to calculate your debt ratio to see what the minimum pay they can give you to just barely scrape by, or just to ding your credit a little. Managers treat you with smiles during mediocre online training and minimal verbal sales training at slightly better than minimum wage for two months. They promise you once you’re in the field it’s hard at first but is fairly quick to get going. They said most reps make $60k-$70k first year and second year is +50% of that, mind you those stats were pulled from before they made changes to who qualifies to be on the desk for walk-ins (based on a set amount sold per quarter per rep and from what I hear these qualifications vary per branch.) Memorization of archaic sales objection handling. Little to no actual sales training. Any sales help in field you need, they will treat you like a small child. They will require you to call after every appointment to coach you but will highlight everything you’ve done ‘wrong,’ while disregarding any positive aspects. Even if you make a sale, they will ‘coach’ you on how they could have sold more. Managers don’t micromanage you, but will require you to micromanage yourself with spreadsheets so they may review and hold records, use any information given against you, and dictate what you may submit for weekly pay if you are not making sales. (35 hours per week max at min wage only allowing hours submission on meetings, prospecting, and appointments.) They will tell you wages are on draw but are actually hourly with clawback. *Watch commissions paid!* Managers not trained in management (building up employees in a positive manner) but rather manipulation tactics. They seem to fall into the category of the old dictatorship style of management, most likely due to them being exposed to that style when they were starting out and feel it is necessary to perpetuate the system. They feel it’s necessary to break people down like a horse, mentally and financially so you feel you have nowhere to go but stay to potentially earn anything to make ends meet. Maybe it works for some people, but not all people need to be broken down and on the verge of homelessness to be inspired to make harder sales. Any requests you make to managers will be immediately shut down by pulling and twisting something you may or may not have said a few months ago (or years ago if you make it that long.) If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. All leads that are “loaned” to start with are ones from a substantial time ago who couldn’t be sold, said they weren’t interested, or don’t answer their phones. Besides friends and family, you will have mall shows to rely on to collect leads located in the less frequented areas of town, where there are plenty of drug addicts and mentally handicapped persons to approach. Sometimes you will be allowed to have a shift at a trade show which are the better lead generators. Incoming leads are funnelled and fed to the managers favourite employee, not delegated evenly. Managers will tell coworkers to not speak with new hires because “they do not know your learning style” but feel it’s more on the tactic of ‘divide and conquer,’ or keeping the realities of the job secret. Managers known to gossip about employees. Regional manager said to me “oh what do you know, you’re just a millennial.” When meeting with the other new hires, wouldn’t look at me or ask same questions that were directed to other new hires. Watch out for mood swings, managers have trouble channeling negative emotions, feel entitled to snap due to company ranking. Managers will set up 3 on 1 meetings where they ask questions where they know how employee will respond to ‘keep you in your place.’ From what I had gathered, these meetings were enforced to solidify in employees mind that managers are far superior to peasant employees and want to see what your buttons are to push to make you hypothetically kneel for them. If they act like they care, be wary of them information collecting. Three mandatory meetings per week that have little to no value, other than to call out the employees for whatever reason or any negative aspect the managers want to poke at, maybe will have a review on a vague article on how positive attitudes = sales kind of thing. I found out too late about all the lawsuits and investigations against the company.
