Pros
It can be fun at times. It's a wild ride, just not in the way you would hope for.
Cons
They will work you to the absolute bone and use every trick to get the last penny out of you. Only the top 10% of sales agents really see any benefits out of this job. Think that's you? Give it a try, but just remember, I would say at least 75% of people that take on this job see no benefit from it when they are done the "season". Hope you like staying in the cheapest motels possible when travelling, and what they don't mention is you will have at least one roommate in your motel room with you. Fun! The managers are extremely moody and will turn on you on a whim, and berate you for failing to make sales. Literally made us work in the worst downpour storm I have ever seen. Last summer, in 2014, when the Prairies totally flooded? When Manitoba was pretty much shut down due to rain? Imagine going door to door in THAT rain storm. Cause we did. No regard for the well being of the sales team, the way they looked at it I'm sure was "well, we might get one sale today out of the team and that's better than none". And yeah, they got two sales. So big win for them. Oh, and the most fun part? Half of every sale you make is designated to what is called your "back end". This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow they will dangle in front of you all summer, and when you are ready to quit (and you will be) they will remind you of how close you are to your back end (to half of the money you have rightfully earned). Here's how a sale works - once you get someone to agree to have the security system installed in their home, based upon the package they sign up you now have a set amount of "points" to give to them for their home. So, a door sensor is 2 points, motion sensor is 3 points, etc. Here's the catch - if they have anything above your average sized home, or if they want pretty much any extra bells and whistles, you will go over on the points you have available to give out. So, for every point over your points available, you will lose 30$ off of what you got paid for the sale. Now, what OFTEN happens is you will lose so much, that a 500$ sale got dinged down to say, 250$. But check this out, the 250$ you should have been paid, is your BACK END pay. So, you don't even get that money until the end of the season. Quit before the season is over, for any reason? No back end. Don't meet your seasonal sale quota by the end of the season? No back end. They will tell you this is rare, but I can tell you from working an entire season, it happened to QUITE A FEW people, and it happened to me as well. You only need 55 sales to meet your back end, and the people I saw that didn't make it they made it SO CLOSE but just not quite there. I bet that they have figured out the perfect number to set it at so that you don't quite make it. It's actually VERY possible to make a sale, and through the points system, get paid NEGATIVE money. So say you make one very clean sale, they paid the 200$ up front (activation fee required to be paid immediately or you get dinged on point) and you didn't need to go over on points to hook up their house. This is rare, but it does happen and it's like a blessing from jesus himself when it does. It feels amazing and you really do get paid a lot, it's just so hard to realistically achieve. But ok, next sale, they wont sign up unless you waive the activation, and hook up their garage or something. You went way over on points, so much that you went -50, or even -100 on your sale. So that gets taken off the 450$ you got paid on the other sale, so now because you made a sale, you actually LOST 100$. Why would you even make that sale then, you ask. Well, because it adds to your yearly total to have access to your back end (again, your back end is 40% of your gross income for the summer withheld until the end of the season). So now, you need to make one less sale to be able to get paid what you are owed at the end of the summer. Also, just because you went negative on this, doesn't mean that you wont get paid for it on your back end, if you receive your back end, you will get paid a small amount, but that is months away, your on the road and need money now, and if you dont get your back end, then its literally just you actually paying Fluent 100$ to make a sale for them that they make profit off. It's very common for sales reps on the road to be unable to afford food or to pay their cell phone bill until the next check comes in. Hope you have a credit card with a high limit or generous parents. They advertise very heavily on what the average first year rep makes in the summer, and it sounds amazing. But in the fine print it says "of the top 10% of sales agents". It sounds really good on paper and they are very convincing. Look, this company is greasy, they make it look super cool and try to draw you in with flashy stuff but underneath the core experience of this work environment is grease. It makes a few people pretty well off, and the rest are just made to be suckers. Top management is obsessed with NLP and mind manipulation. Manipulating people is literally their business model. But don't trust me, go work for them and find out for yourself ; )
