zergkiller
Expert
- 63
I was in Federal Financial for several months. At the beginning, I thought it was going to be a super company and that I had found the last company I would ever work in. You have to do an absolutely HUGE amount of wrote memorization. ALL of the conversations you will have are practiced scripts, and at the sales meetings, you drill on them and practice voice inflections and body language. In effect, you become a stage actor. If you can't memorize or don't do it very well, you'd better not pay the money.
The entire company is a cookie cutter approach. Everyone memorizes the same scripts. The appointments are in two stages, and the scripts are about 17 pages long EACH! And there are about two other pages of responses for calling the appointments.
The idea of FFG is that the company is being built to sell. To AVIVA or anyone else who is in the market. Their key feature is that they have about 9 calling centers in the US who set the appointments for you. You get your leads via email.
When you are finally enrolled, there are contests for rapid memorization of the scripts. Some people could do that in a week or so. If you do, you get bonus leads.
I was told by everyone that all I had to do was to provide 8-10 appointments to go on with my trainer, and memorize the script, and then I would get free appointments. I finally did all that, but in the process, I found that I am almost completely handicapped when it comes to memorization, and it took me about three months. When I finally completed the (for me) HUGE task of memorization, and had turned in my video and gotten it approved, I was told that "When it took so long, we do something else" and I was only given 18 appointments, some of which were bogus, and none of which resulted in a sale. So that was it. No more appointments. In the meantime, the company had passed a new rule that said that if you didn't sell anything for 90 days, you could no longer go to the training meetings! I had believed that the main focus was the script, not prospecting, and had only sold one policy at the beginning. I had thought that all would be well if I only fulfilled the requirements.
I think that FFG is a good idea. I think it is totally legitimate, although planning on AVIVA buying the concept is problematic and I hope the people there aren’t counting on it totally. Getting set appointments is a great way for people to assign the hassle of cold calling to professionals. In fact, hiring people to do that for you is a way to make big money in sales. The story I got was that the mechanized calling machine might dial 1200 numbers to get one appointment, so doing that kind of work and visiting people is quite a task. If I had known the real facts before I got in, I might not have tried. OR, memorized the script before paying the money. All in all, my lesson was to never work for intermediaries.
The entire company is a cookie cutter approach. Everyone memorizes the same scripts. The appointments are in two stages, and the scripts are about 17 pages long EACH! And there are about two other pages of responses for calling the appointments.
The idea of FFG is that the company is being built to sell. To AVIVA or anyone else who is in the market. Their key feature is that they have about 9 calling centers in the US who set the appointments for you. You get your leads via email.
When you are finally enrolled, there are contests for rapid memorization of the scripts. Some people could do that in a week or so. If you do, you get bonus leads.
I was told by everyone that all I had to do was to provide 8-10 appointments to go on with my trainer, and memorize the script, and then I would get free appointments. I finally did all that, but in the process, I found that I am almost completely handicapped when it comes to memorization, and it took me about three months. When I finally completed the (for me) HUGE task of memorization, and had turned in my video and gotten it approved, I was told that "When it took so long, we do something else" and I was only given 18 appointments, some of which were bogus, and none of which resulted in a sale. So that was it. No more appointments. In the meantime, the company had passed a new rule that said that if you didn't sell anything for 90 days, you could no longer go to the training meetings! I had believed that the main focus was the script, not prospecting, and had only sold one policy at the beginning. I had thought that all would be well if I only fulfilled the requirements.
I think that FFG is a good idea. I think it is totally legitimate, although planning on AVIVA buying the concept is problematic and I hope the people there aren’t counting on it totally. Getting set appointments is a great way for people to assign the hassle of cold calling to professionals. In fact, hiring people to do that for you is a way to make big money in sales. The story I got was that the mechanized calling machine might dial 1200 numbers to get one appointment, so doing that kind of work and visiting people is quite a task. If I had known the real facts before I got in, I might not have tried. OR, memorized the script before paying the money. All in all, my lesson was to never work for intermediaries.
