- 477
john_petrowski said:
LOL! That's too funny! We'll have Assurant and other things in common too on of these days if NYL just doesn't make it for me.
DS-MAX was a very strange and interesting company, started by that Canadian guy that had an interesting success story. Ultimately, the thing was almost like a pyramid scheme, in a sense. You had a room full of people that showed up everyday for a morning meeting where you all danced around like a bunch of morons and did the stupid cheer. You tell the whole room that their focus should be on moving towards leadership and management (WTF? Are you going to expand to every backwoods town in America? 40 people in the room and they all need to be managers?), then send them out for the day. Then you send them out to sell the gas service. A good day might bring home $120 or more, before taxes of course, but there were poor days when I was sent out to territory that had been mined already and made like $35 for the day.
I believe I got like $10-$12 per gas contract signed. When you averaged the good days with the bad days, it was McDonald's wages on steroids. Not a bad summer job or something, but far short of a living wage job. For that money, I hit the office at 7:00 AM and never left any sooner than 7:30 PM or I wasn't a "team player". That was Monday through Friday, although they wanted me to work weekends too. On Saturday night, I fell asleep by 9:00 PM because I was just exhausted from the week.
Had they worked a more reasonable day where one had a little bit of a life and been able to pay their sales reps a little more too (take a little more off the owner) it would have been an okay operation. But my manager interviewed like 100 people per week or something outrageous like that. If your sales force cannot make a good living just by selling, then your business model is built on a flimsy house of cards. Let's be honest--there's only so much need for managers to open new offices, and that need is a small fraction of the people you sell the dream to. Those people were recruited with goofy ads that talked about "sports-minded" people and other nonsense.
I left after a few weeks. I called my manager that morning and told him it just wouldn't work for me anymore. I said "Who wants to make a living interviewing 100 people per week?" He told me if I stuck with it I could make six-figures in a couple years. I said maybe he was right, but I would find another way to do it, or come as close as I can.
BOTTOM LINE: I think it could have been a more workable concept for more people with some tweaking.
Maybe I'll have to steer towards calendars.
