I am writing this for two reasons. One, after the experience it is good to relate to others who have been through this bull-s#$% manager training program. Two, to give people who are about to begin their successful careers with a CYDCOR subsidiary all of the information they will never get while employed with CYDCOR.
CYDCOR has between 50 and 100 offices accross the US at a given time. Each operates under a DBA of the managers choice. You can recognize a CYDCOR office by the bell and gong hanging in the corner, tired sales zombies uner the age of 25 walking the office, and the fact that the person the ad told you to ask for does not actually work there or even exist.
MY STORY. I worked for Kreamer Marketing for 8 months. You start out walking business to business selling services of major brand corporations (telecom, shipping, energy, etc..). Once you show that you can sell and work a full day, you get promoted to leadership. I have seen this phase take from 3 days to 1 month. I would say that 15% of people who take the job make it to leadership. Out of that 15%, probably less than 1% make it to Assistant Management and then half of those who make it to AM make it to the big goal. Management.
Out of those that make management, a small number make it beyond a year of owning their own business... Let me rephrase that. They are store fronts for CYDCOR. So if anything bad ever happens at one of CYDCOR's offices, they can just pack up and leave and someone else will move in under another DBA to cover that market share.
Leadership is the management training level by which you are supposed interview, train, hire, fire, basically learn to be a manager. If you do not do it the CYDCOR way, then you are booted. The CYDCOR way entails being a complete asshole for no apparant reason. Once, I was sick puking my guts out and when I called in sick I was told that I was letting the entire office down. I guess it would have been better to get everyone sick and shut the office down.
I never had a problem standing up to my manager. She was a total witch but I also was the top national sales rep on our campaign and made her more money than everyone put together in the office for a good 4 months. So she couldn't say much. She got me back in other ways like giving me crappy sales people on my team, forcing me to pick up other leader's slack in training who couldn't close a deal if their life depended on it. I did have my right hand guy (still friends to this day) and a team of around 3-4 suckers on average at a time.
Well AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY to move accross the f*ing country came along and I was given exactly 24 hours to decide to travel with my team or not. According to my MGR my team was going (she had already spoken with them - this pissed me off that she told them first). As it turns out she had not told them all, and the ones who she had told said only if I would go would they even consider it. I said yes automatically because I had put a lot of work into building my team and wasn't going to lose them to this bitch. I found out she lied about this 2 months after moving to f*ing LA on a SAT with no appartment which we were told would be found for us. Well my MGR forced me and my entire team to help her unpack her stuff for that whole Saturday, then she sent us off early evening to find a place to live and be at work by MON morning at 7am.
Needless to say, this arrangement did not last long and we all left her high and dry after working there for 2 months, 2 yearlong leases and 1k debt later. I hear she is back in the field building her team in Phoenix. I hope she learned a lesson. If she didn't she can continue to work 80 hours a week making less than I do now. You see, managers may make some good money if they choose a right campaign/market and are not complete f*ing assholes. But most barely break even afer covering their office overhead.
Anyways to those beging a career with a CYDCOR office, no matter how much they make you think you are asking a stupid question like "what is the turnover rate here" and "how many people that start make it to management" or my favorite is "when do I get to help design marketing campaigns like I was promissed during my first interview". Bunch a bull shit answers will follow. Look for a straight one, I bet you don't find it.
I probably interviewed 300 people in my time there, brought on about 100, and had a team of about 4 at a time. If you want to learn sales. This is a good training. But make sure you are able to sell or you won't be able to survive. My checks were between 700 and 1300 per week. Most people made about 200 to 400 per week.
I had one guy who worked for me for three weeks and only made 99 bucks (and I had closed the deal and gave him the money to boost his confidence). Also consider that territories can be rather large and an daily recruit from the office (and back) to your designated area of the territory can be as far as an hour and half away. No mileage reimbursement. And if you make it to leadership, you will probably end up working from 730 to 730 every day. Straight commission.
Oh yeah, and remember that the following words/actions are bad and may subject you to getting terminated: vacation time, I'm tired, my feet hurt, these customers hate my product, I'm late because my son is sick, not smiling, yawning, the list goes on. Tell your story below. Vent and help these people when they interview with these companies pull the sheets off that have been pulled over their head.
There are too many stories of witchiness, shameful self righteousness, and screwing over of people for me to tell here. I met all of the VPs in the company, even the presidents of Cydcor and DS Max, spoke with them on a personal level... And they all spun the same story. Only some were better at making the business sound fair and legit.
MaxTexas, Texas
U.S.A.
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