New Light Marketing

So here's where I stand. I started out in August with selling insurance for a company called American Income Life. The expected first year income through this insurance company was $45,000-55,000 for the first year. Well, the only problem with that is it's commission-based sales, and if you don't get sales, you don't get paid. When the sales aren't coming in, they sit you in the office, and an ex-high school football coach who is a manager tells you why it's all your fault. Their sales model is calling people at home from a list of "leads". Each agent gets 1 or 2 lists of 100 leads. 1/3 of these are wrong numbers, most are people who already have policies with the company and you're expected to sell them more insurance. Then you spend Monday and Thursday setting appointments. Then on Tuesday,  Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday you burn up your gas meeting with these people... if they're home (football coach tells you that the no-shows are your fault too). Then you show the people you can set up an appointment with these videos that explain "no-cost benefits", then explain why they need insurance right in their own home. When they feel like they've been had, you're expected to sell them overpriced life insurance. I went at this job for months thinking it was my fault I wasn't getting sales, and ran myself broke. I had invested in the licensing for the sale of the insurance and a computer to do the job.

When I knew the end was nigh, I started pounding the pavement looking for a real job. To this day, none of the staffing agencies have gotten back to me. Then I applied for a place called New Light Marketing.

New Light Marketing hires people with the idea that they'll be selling DirecTV at Best Buys and other retail locations. This didn't sound attractive at all, but in the interview, applicants are told the job pays a base wage vs commission,  ie if your sales are less than the base, you'll still get a decent paycheck. WRONG!! You're first day of work, they explain the "claw back", where if they have to pay you the hourly wage, they'll take from future commission gain that's higher than the base. Shitty,  but doable. I took this job thinking I'd at least have an income. WRONG!!

After the first week, if you don't have enough sales, and they have to pay the base, they tell you you're "not a good fit", and you're given the option of leaving, or working commission only. THEN, if you still don't have enough sales to make Mr Leigh Jackson happy, they let you go anyway. Basically, unless you're a whiz at ambush-sales, you don't stand a chance.

They have a plaque in the office that has a Best Buy logo, but I only worked at Sam's Club and Menard's. The job is to stand in the store "pitching" customers, or bugging every customer possible to try and get them to switch to DirecTV. You stand in these stores for hours doing this. You're expected to put in over 60 hours a week at this as well. When showing them what it'll cost for DirecTV, you're not telling them that you are going to give them a discount of $30 or so. They'll get this discount either way, but it's reserved as a bargaining tool, where you tell them you'll give them "my employee discount to earn your business today". The customer DOES save about $10 a month more than if they buy DirecTV over the phone or online, as well as receive NFL Sunday Ticket for a year, and a gift card for the store they're in (which arrives weeks after installation).

In training, they show you to do a side-by-side comparison showing them what they are paying for on one side, and what they'll get with DirecTV on the other. When doing these comparisons, you're encouraged to lie, for example: U-Verse offers HD in 1080, but employees are supposed to say they're only getting 720 pixel rating. One "manager" said that this was old information and we could still use it. Being a bit of a techy, I knew this was false, and U-Verse has always offered HD at 1080.

Also, keep in mind, people got burned in the early days of DirecTV with dishes losing signal. These people won't be persuaded.

To make a living wage, you need to get 3-4 sales a week, and they expect 2 sales a day during the week, and 4-6 on the weekend. Wednesday is the only day off, and you're expected to stay in a store from 1:00-ish (this time depends on when Leigh Jackson is done with his horrible pep-talk), until whenever the store closes (usually 8:00 or 9:00).

American Income Life technically isn't a scam, but runs an antiquated sales model that makes no sense and exploits people. New Light Marketing is a SCAM. Unless you have the sales, they're not even paying minimum wage (my coworker who shall remain nameless figured out he made $.60 an hour the previous week). One "manager" made these outlandish claims about how much money he was making, but then depends on other coworkers for rides, and lives on the Near-North Side...

So I'm broke at this point and am in DESPERATE need of a job. I have one place that I'm waiting to hear back on at the end of this week (this is a customer service based job for a mega corporation with an hourly wage, a real job), and my sources tell me it's looking like I've got the job, just waiting for corporate to give the final nod. I don't know where I'll be living in the next couple weeks, but I'll work something out.