I have recently started job searching again and feel it's a different beast than even 5 years ago. Since putting my number on a job searching site, I have been getting streamlined with Multi Level Market "opportunities". I'd seen the craze picking up among friends when I was on Facebook, but thought I'd share a personal experience from years ago.
Came from a small town in Indiana and wanted more for my life. I graduated college in 2008-09 during the height of the financial crises and landed a job in retail management and hated it so started looking for a different opportunity. I get a call from Northwest Mutual asking me to come in for an interview as a financial supervisor. As an economics major with some finance background, this sounded perfect.
I get to the interview and they explain it's entirely commission based. Ok, not my ideal, but I'm not afraid to work hard. Then they explain you'd be selling life insurance to people and explained what products are best to sell. Automatically think of the terrible reputation life insurance salesman have. They never really gave you an overall path to success, but just the next steps just to get you going.
The first step was to get a state producer license and they provide you office space and study materials to do that. So that added to the legitimacy for me. Since it was not for pay, I spent a lot of time studying. Was a very simple test in that all of the questions matched the study materials word for word. I also did the P&C test because it made me more versatile, but they didn't care about that
So with my new producer license I had, I met with the office leader to discuss my financial supervisor role. The supervisor gives me my first task: Give him a list of 200 names of people I can sell insurance to and he'll hand it off to one of their agents and I can watch their style on how they do it. Once I get a good feel, if the Agent feels I'm a good fit, I'll join his team and start getting my own clients.
I don't know 200 people at the time, let alone more than 200. I talked to my step-dad about it who was a legit salesman for a company and he said sales is a great job because if you have limitless potential and usually flex hours. Also, insurance is a legit product, not like Cutco knives, so it passed his smell test.
I after a week of no pay and talking to people, I accrued 100 names. And had a meeting set for the agent. Day of the meeting came, I got dressed up, went to the office to meet the Agent and we headed to the the meeting. On the drive he asked me personal questions about the client which he said was for underwriting purposes. Such as recently divorced, how many kids, but then personality traits, are they timid, how do they deal with pressure.
Started the meeting and after some small talk, right to business. It was obvious this person was doing this out of a courtesy for me and had no intention of buying. When the client stated he wasn't interested, the Agent would use lines like "You don't want to leave your family with nothing, that would make you look like a bad parent" and many other aggressive lines. The client would look at me kind of confused and I just sat there nervously not really knowing what to do since I was told not to do any talking. Finally, he dragged me into it saying that this sale would mean a lot to ME, not him. That if the client purchased the goods, it would jump start my career.
After that, I had enough and told the Agent to leave and apologized to the client who was a family friend. I said I didn't know they would be that mean and aggressive. Got a call from Northwestern Mutual the following day asking what happened and I said I was no longer interested in that type of business practice. He stated that I just didn't have what it takes to be successfull and "thanks for the leads" at least and I about threw up. Good month of no pay and a lot of work for nothing. Then had to spend the next week calling everyone up that I had gave into to apologize and tell them not to accept discussions with Northwestern Mutual as I figured they'd use my name as an ice breaker.
Terrible company, and terrible client business. I've also heard horror stories from the client end when they try cancelling their policy. Agents rely on residual pay and are trying to get to the point where they can live off residuals alone, hence the MlM. They don't care about selling insurance, it's about bringing others in to get leads for them. Why do cold calls yourself when you can find a recent college grad who likely knows 200 people and sell to their family?
Edit since can't comment own post: Another example. Not quite MlM, but a scam none the less.
I went back to school in 2010 for mathematics. Midway through that, my step-dad had an unexpected stroke that the hospital ended up handling horribly and he passed away. He had a couple life insurance policies, but my mom wasn't set financially for life at the time. She has always been a house wife her whole life so does not have much experience working.
A week after my step-dad passed away, she got a call from a guy about a business opportunity. He would help her set up a website and she could sell her own pet supplies through her site. They would order through her site and it would be sent from the warehouse to the person purchasing. I'm not sure if it involved hiring other people to help you out with your sales. As soon as I took over my mom's finances, I saw the $5k charge and asked her about it.
Directly out of that, I was so furious, but I sat in on one of their meetings where he helped her work on her website for an hourly rate. It was atrocious. I cussed him out for targeting widows and immediately did a chargeback on the account.
Looked up his info and to no surprise wasn't really him or any sign of a legitimate business.
Submitted June 06, 2018 at 11:50AM by predict_for_work https://ift.tt/2HmWsBv
