If you hear or read the name IPA, IBA, International Profit Associates or International Business Associates, do your self a favor and say NO!
Whether it is an advertisement for employment as a Sales Repfesentative, Senior Business Analysist or or a telephone call from their telemarketing department say NO!
Here is how it works from the "employment" side.
Classified ad runs every 3 to 6 months in local news paper for a B2B sales person or for a Senior Business Analysist. After two telephone interviews with IPA recruiters, two to four prospects from several goegraphical areas will be invited to Buffalo Grove for a weeks intensive training. STOP! Don't buy your own plane ticket. IPA will reimburse the ticket if you complete the training. I will say that the only positive experience I had with the IPA debauchle was the week I spent in training with 39 other good people, learned to read financial statements and access a business's general conditoins quickly.
The point of the training is to teach you how to use the business's own numbers to convince the owner how stupid he/she is, how much cash or credit is available for a consultancy, and they will be broke in 6 months or less if they don't hire IPA to save them. You fax the numbers to your HQ manager "Senior Executive", SENEX for short, who will tell you how many days the business will need IPA consultants on site - which equates how much money they think they can get from the victim.
You arrive for training on Sunday, a limo picks you up at the airport, stay and train in a mid to upper class hotel. Having successfully completed training (about 10% of the class will not) you depart Saturday or Sunday for your 1st weeks victims. If you have gotten this far, finish out your week's victim list, don't make a "GO" - their word for sale, and go home. Use this time to reflect on the people you have met in the past two weeks and it is OK to have a conscience. When IPA calls you on Saturday morning identifying your next victim just tell them you can't go because you have a hang nail. You have hung your IPA CAREER on a nail.By the way one third to one half of your classmates will be gone by this time.By the end of the month the another 25% will be IPA history. Out of the 40 people in my class only two lasted for more than 6weeks and none lasted for two months and not one of us made any money, even the three that had a "GO". The most effective performer had 3 GO's and was fired for wanting the week off around Christmas.
The process: The telemarketer will call a business to set an appointment for a sales representative to call. The sales representative will qualify the victim and set a time for a business analysist to come in. The analysis will cost $300 to $2500 and ocassionally more, but payed only if the client is happy with the performance of the analysist. Most business owners have a conscience and will pay for this minimal amount of work. At this time the telemarkerter and salesrep are paid their respective commissions. The analysist commission is paid only after the consultancy is performed, billed and collected.
Even the guy with the 3 GO's didn't get paid since he wasn't with the company when and if the consultancy fee was collected.
IPA puts forth a good front in their recruiting and in their community. Behind the front lay the bodies of those who were swept into the the tar pit and on which IPA feeds.
0 comments