I was first approached to start an insurance career / business opportunity with Performance Matters Associates (A subcompany of Conseco LLC) by Chris Shropshire (Regional Manager in PA) back in July. We met for an interview in the lobby of the "La Quinta" hotel in Harrisburg, PA. When I interviewed with him he threw me a very good sales pitch as to what the "opportunity" entailed. That should have been my first clue as to get out then but I thought "I'll give it a shot".
He told me that I would be selling supplemental health insurance to employees of different accounts/business that were already open and that there were many accounts already open within a 2 hours radius of Harrisburg. It is a very similar business to Aflac but the "perk" was that I would not need to open my own accounts and agents shared accounts. He also explained that there was "A TON" of money to be made and that they would train me on how to do it. He said that to start up would not be a whole lot of money but would entail a little.
All of this sounded great at the time. My training consisted of a DVD and a script I was supposed to memorize and recite to each possible customer with "sales techniques" that were supposed to bring in and sell every customer.
I found out later were that there were very very few accounts open in the Harrisburg area. Also the start up costs included the miles and several hundreds of dollars used to travel to small accounts 2-3 hours away. Much different than what I was told in the interview. My very first "account" or business that I was supposed to market to employed 5 people who already had policies. My boss also told me that she was told by regional and state managers to make sure I make $1000.00 in premium my first week to make sure I stay with the company. This was a turnoff in itself. Why would they need to do this to make me stay.
As time went on I made a few hundred dollars here and there selling to small accounts. I went into credit card debt supporting the gas used to travel 2-3 hours away making no money at all at the measly accounts they sent me to. They then wanted to me to attend a mandatory regional sales meeting in Pittsburgh, PA (5 hrs away).
After this I decided to leave the company. Within 4 months I received a letter from Conseco saying that I owed them nearly $1400.00 for chargebacks / accounts that cancelled. I only made about $2000 over a 3 month period. So now I was told I would make lots of money through lots of open accounts which did not hold true, went into debt and am now being toldto pay all of the money I made! I could understand if the risk was thrown out on the table but no one mentioned any of this when I signed up to work with them. I know this happened to several more PMA agents as well.
I'll let you form your own opinion but here was my experience. I turned out paying my money back to Conseco, having a bad credit score because of fighting and putting off the process, going into credit card debt to support myself and being jobless in the end.
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