AIL Midwest Employee Reviews about "commission"

Cons

Cold calling lead favoritism driving

Cons

No relationship based sales. Its a numbers game.

Cons

starting a sales job at only commission is either sink or swim. The management pressures work life over personal.

Cons

ALMOST EVERY top agent is lying to customers or at the least being very misleading with how they describe things to clients. The leaders at the top are aware of it but care more about numbers and growth than having integrity. Leadership will lie to you during interview and training until you’re already in to deep. The leads are hostile due to the company assigning multiple agents the same leads over and over. So many customers have been contacted 2-4 times already THIS YEAR. Not to mention year after year. Leadership will just blame it on you not getting refs from the bad leads, aka you’re making your own leads anyways. The contract is terrible. You get 60% BUT only on one product. Everything else is lower percentages and if that isn’t enough you only get 65% of the 60%(meaning you’ll get 39% commission on your paycheck IF you sell whole life). The rest of the money goes to your “back end” which most people will never see a dollar from and if you do they still withhold thousands from you in that account which they will pay out to your leader when you leave. I.e. why they don’t care about the turnover bc they’re getting the rest of your contract money.

Cons

The business model is based on a bait and switch sales concept that many true sales professionals will find offensive. You will be treated like an hourly employee with mandatory meetings, mandatory office time, extensive control is exerted over your schedule down to when you are allowed to take a break at ten minutes till the top of the hour. Training program is ineffective and not thorough. You will feel completely unprepared when they are done training you and you will be expected to perform and complete tasks they never told you about or provided training for. Insanely long hours. Typically six days a week, anywhere from 10-14 hour days. Forget about this job of you have a family or any kind of social life. Insane amount of turn over because the system is difficult to make money at, the incredibly long hours, the tight control over your every action and the long drive times to get to your territory. They claim to give you leads. That's part of their recruiting sales pitch. However, the leads are simply names of people in the organization's the company has sold their 'benefits package' to. They are not qualified leads and the majority either will not even see you because they know your ploy or they won't buy thinking they have to meet with you in order to get their free stuff. There are also a large number who just won't qualify based on their health. Once you sign on with them they tell you you need to get referrals in every home or you won't be able to maintain your business. This is after they tell you while recruiting you that they provide leads so you'll always have someone to call and somewhere to go. You are given names of union or organization members that sent back a response card asking for no cost 'benefits' from a letter sent to them from this company. You call those members telling them you are trying to deliver those no cost benefits and set the appointment. Once in their home you are expected to deliver a memorized script designed to build up concern in the member and allow you to sell them insurance. They coach you on the words to say, how to act and how to create enough fear in the members that they will buy your insurance. Explain little to the client and stay away from the word insurance. Instead use terms like protection program, important benefits and tell the members that their union set these benefits up for them. The compensation isn't bad but they will tell you it's the best in the industry. The effective commission rateission rateission rate is around 30% which is fairly low for the industry. The weekly bonus pushes that up to closer to 40%+ However the bonus is based on production and will vary dramatically. The company only wants to approve those in very good health. Anyone with health issues are held and scrutinized harder and then charged a higher rate. That affects your commission and bonus as well. These are called trial applications and rated policies. Once you sign up a member and make a sale, they are fair game for anyone in the office to call on and upsell. You then change your job title from benefits specialist to policy service manager and call on existing policy holders over and over again until they finally sit down with you and you sell them more insurance. Of course if the client gets irritated that they keep getting harassed and cancel, you might lose the prepaid commissions you received and will definitely lose the renewal commission you earned. I have seen an incredibly small handful of people make it more than 3 months while a very large number of people quit during that time. This is the reason for this post. Not to discourage but to enlighten before you quit your job based on what the recruiter said over the phone.

Cons

The pros play into the cons. The atmosphere in the building is infectious and will draw you in. That's what intrigued, the energy within the workplace was always up beat because of the demand for effort and time.To make any money, you will need to put in 60 hr weeks, for a young professional that may the way to go, but for a full-time college student or parent it will be impossible to get anywhere. As a full-time college student I was brought in as an 'intern' which really meant I sat at a desk 'recruiting' people. I would sit at a table calling 50 numbers an hour, more than 90% of those people had no business in an environment such as Surace Smith. You are independent because you are 1099'd meaning you work for yourself and your only income is your commission. With that being said, a lot of ill advised health care applications are given to people that can't either afford the coverage or do not meet the requirements. I was pretty much lied to when I went through the hiring process, told that I would be making $10 an hour with commission for setting interviews, I never saw any money for the people I scheduled. Their intent was to hook me into the company and turn me into a salesmen once I finished college, which would have made my 4 years of education pointless because the position does not require a degree. They told me the higher executives would be there all day aiding me and helping be the best employee possible. They were there everyday but showed zero attention towards making me better. This is business structure is comparable to a PYRAMID SCHEME that is hidden behind sketchy health insurance sales.

Cons

They micro management and manipulate you every single day. If you miss a text message at 10pm at night they freak out. You will get forced to work 12+ hours a day ever though they say you are 1099 and a business owner and has a flexible schedule. But if you aren’t working for the 12+ hours a day, they are trying to make you feel guilty to work or they threaten to demote you or take away “free leads” which leads you stranded. The leads are trash. Used and recycled month after month from agent to agent. After working 12 hours a day you are lucky if you make $500 a week. It’s bait and switch leads. Telling the member you got free benefits then trying to make them feel bad to buy insurance. The people who already bought from you gets bombarded 6 months later from other agents until they get mad and cancel their policy They have a department thats only job is to steal new agents deal. Which results in the new agent getting a charge back and could loose their bonus. They are trying to help people. They are only looking out for their own pockets. It’s a revolving door of people. New agents come in. Spend every dime they had saved trying to make it to all these promises they were told and they quit 2 month later. Cause they don’t make any money The commission scale is trash. They are basically stealing money from you. Being captive by a contract they make you sign. If you do book an appointment and they show up. They aren’t happy you are there. They are confused and frustrated. Because it bait and switch Toxic work place. We were told if we had kids and we couldn’t be on a zoom call at 8 am to recruit then they would have to be demoted to an agent. They don’t care about your family. They expect to be a robot and work 24/7. If you want to plan a vacation you have to ask permission. Which is weird if you are a contractor and not W2. Now getting told you have to buy your leads on a low commission plan. 40 hours a week of unnecessary meetings about nothing or something pointless. So have to listen to them preach. But the worse is they stop paying people their residual income… Bottom line. Awful.