I'm writing this to warn anyone looking for a good sales job to NOT work for Hinckley Springs in Chicago on Harlem Ave., formerly known as Hinckley & Schmitt.
It all started when I went to a job fair (about a year and a half ago) and expressed an interest in a sales job with the Human Resource Manager Meg and set-up an interview. It should be noted the Sales Manager was also present, a reserved guy with a poker face by the name of Mark who hardly said a word throughout the whole process. Odd I thought for someone in Sales.??? For me the first of several red flags.
Well anyways, I set-up an interview with the manager Mark and the DSM at the time, a shifty-eyed guy by the name of Kyle. Well after an uncomfortable interview I was hired. I couldn't get out of my mind the way this Kyle fellow was looking at me. I later found out he was married (naturally) and was away from his family for a long period of time.
At first the only requirement for the job was to attend the morning huddle (as Mark referred to it as) and then go out to whatever area we wanted and sell businesses/consumers on our water. The third red flag. This company doesn't believe in giving someone a protected territory. Why? Because they keep hiring new people all the time and don't care if you're the 20th person to call on the same business. They don't want the customers to get use to any one salesperson because as everyone knows they become loyal to that person and if they leave they no longer want the product.
As far as training goes, it was practically non-existent. Since all this hiring was going on we hardly got any training, maybe an hour at the most. They were extremely disorganized and Mark wasn't mentally equipped to handle all of his duties and the new hires. On top of that, Mark grew increasingly irritated with me and another hire because we were vocal about the lack of training. So what he did was ignore us. I didn't even know what the prices were at first when I went out into the field. It should be noted Mark came up through the ranks and started out as a driver.
However, I finally found out from Kyle (nothing's published) the prices and expressed my dissatisfaction with Mark. But what I really found annoying was that our main competitor Ice Mountain continuously under-cut us on price. BTW, Ice Mountain is owned by an even bigger conglomerate Nestle, the largest food company in the world. What these big companies do is when they want to take over a market they undercut everyone on price and take over the market. Before that, Hinkley had a hold on the bottled water market because they didn't have any competition. Now the field has been turned upside down by Ice Mountain.
What I also found out was there are certain underserved areas, mostly minority, which Hinckley now concentrates on. So it makes sense for them to hire mostly African Americans and Hispanics because they are the only ones left. That's where the diversity in the workplace comes from! So basically if you aren't willing to go into those neighborhoods you're SOL. I was lucky because my partner was a minority and I was able to sell in those neighborhoods because I was with her. Believe me, that does make a difference.
Lastly, I eventually quit after barely 6 mos. With them because I was mostly fed up with the way they treated us, especially Mark. It was at that time I decided I'd rather have the satisfaction of quitting on my own terms then be fired.
I didn't mention it but they always were having problems with payroll. Not just with the people in sales but the entire workforce. It seems the parent company DS Waters was always shifting around things to pay people.
And as a final note Kyle was fired because he had hired people in the CA office that basically lied to people in order to get sales. Since they were taught by him it wasn't too hard to believe. What's that old saying, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree!
0 comments