Think of all the perks that come with most sales jobs...freedom, flexible schedule, working remotely, etc. This has NONE of that!!!
Regarding my brief 3 month experience on the Central Connecticut Team in WNE (Berlin, CT). Here, you will be required to check into the office everyday at 8AM but be out of the office before 9:30am to get in your car to drive back from where you came from (most salespeople live in the territory they cover). You will then go knock doors prospecting for business. At 3:00pm you are required to be back in the Berlin office to make phone calls till 5PM or submit orders, while the manager walks around to make sure people are making calls.
At 5PM, there is a mandatory team conference call that will last between 30-45 minutes where you will explain what you did that day, how many sales you got, new opportunities found, number of appointments you sat on that day, number of appointments the following day, and your forecast for tomorrow. If you make a sale and it happened to contain voice and data, but the client did not want TV, you will need to explain why you they did not get TV and vice versa. If you sold a lower tier Internet speed, you will have to explain why it was not a 50Mbps or faster connection. In some instances the manager will insist going back to the client together and try to convince the client to get all 3 services or to increase their speed, because you as the sales professional, clearly did not listen to their needs the first time.
If you leave before the call is over you will be labeled a "non team player", so hopefully you dont mind traffic. My commute was dificult, but not nearly as bad as the guy who lived in the springfield Massachusetts area (yes he had to be in the office twice everyday too...no exceptions)
Tuesdays and Thursdays you will have in person huddles where they will teach you things such as top down selling, wedge statements, open ended questions, or practice role plays (great information if you have never had a sales job before). After the huddle you will have a 1 on 1 with your manager or a ride day where he shadows you and tells you what you did right or wrong in a condescending tone. In the event that you miss a team huddle for being sick or more than 5 minutes late, you will have to make it up later that week with the manager.
On any given day, there can be no more than 2 people off due to "business needs", this includes holidays such as day before thanksgiving, black friday, Christmas eve, day after christmas, new years eve and new years day among others.
I worked there for 3 months and went through velocity training and finished my ramp period. At the end of that time, my manager held a formal review and said that "unfortunately it was not going to work out and that I did not have the attitude needed to be successful here", so i was let go. Part of me felt bad being rejected and all, but I was also happy knowing that I would not have to endure this horrible and demeaning sales culture any longer.
Had I known before hand what this job was all about, I never would have accepted it. I have had several sales jobs over my career, recently coming over from the online advertising industry and have never been treated like this before. Hope someone finds this information useful before making the same mistake I made.
