Pros
I would say flexibility, but you have a "manager" calling you and checking in with you every other day. You are required to report your calls, appointments, sales, etc every M,W,F and a meeting every Monday that takes half your day. You are a 1099 self-employed person, but they treat you like you work for them. It's just a way for them to not pay you a salary.
Cons
There are several things that I will advise you to consider before deciding to work here. First, consider the commission structure. They built their philosophy and their training around Long-Term Care policies. As someone mentioned in a different post, these policies take 8 to 10 weeks to go through underwriting. There are 2 companies used for LTC, and the one they hype in the presentation as the affordable group plan, is very hard to get approved. Most people end up going with the secondary plan which is a lot more expensive. The secondary plan pays commissions "As Earned", so you have to wait 3 months before you see any money. And when you finally get paid, you only receive 1/12th of the commission paid out monthly for 12 months. The primary LTC company just lowered their advance to 3 months, and then "As Earned" after that. Basically, it sucks!! You will need to sell about 50 policies before your monthly commissions are comfortable. So the best thing to sell is Cancer or Heart policies, but like someone said earlier, they are already hit with these policies in school. These are harder to sell, and your commissions and advances are small, but at least you get an advance. Before you accept the job, ask a bunch of questions regarding the pay structure. They will talk about how good "As Earned" is because you don't have charge backs, but these are the people that have a bunch of money coming in from residuals. Next, they tell you that you will be selling to retired educators, but you will find out quickly that the retired ones have been hit a million times by agent after agent before you. You will be hung up on, yelled at, and told that someone just called them. You are handed recycled leads, and told to make it happen. You have to hunt for their phone numbers, and when/if they answer the phone, you basically have to lie to them to get it the door. They will tell you in the meeting, just get in the door. (Let me make this clear to you: I've done sales a long time and know what outside sales involves, and I know that you have to have thick skin.) This is over the top. You have to make calls in the evening, so expect to be on the phone every night until 8:30. You will learn to say anything to get an appointment. The lead system sucks, and you are forced to make your own leads. The managers seem to always do well, and I caught one passing off a "hot lead" to me that was only because they couldn't get them to answer. I drove by, and when they came to the door, they told me that there were several messages from the manager and they're not interested. I could go on and on, but I'll end with 1 last thing. I tried and tried to make it work. I started in the summer of last year, but I just couldn't do it anymore. Even though I worked almost a year and a half, you do not get any residuals or even any of the commissions you had coming down your pipeline. I am back at a major insurance company, and I am very happy.
