Verdigris Marketing Group is located in Kansas City Missouri.
I was contacted by them through careerbuilder.com and the email said...
Thank you for your interest in working with our company. I understand how competitive the Kansas City job market can be, and appreciate you taking the time to submit your resume. After reviewing your resume, our management staff has selected you to interview for one of our available positions. As an applicant selected to interview with Verdigris Marketing Group Inc., the first step in your interview process is a one on one meeting with the manager. We were impressed by your qualifications and experience, and we are looking forward to meeting with you.
As you can see it says they carefully examined the resumes and i was chosen. To top it off i recieved a phone call trying to set up an interview. When i got in contact with the receptionist i asked this very simple question, "What is the base salary?"
she replied "youll have to talk to the hiring manager, but it is something like 24,000 plus comission."
I then asked if there were benifits to which she answered "yes".
When i went into the interview, the hiring manager seemed very cool and hip. We seemed to have great chemistry. He asked me why i was changing job professions, to which i answered "Well as a personal trainer, working off commission is too unreliable, so im looking for something more steardy and concrete."
This would have been a good time for him to tell me that this job was solely commision based. I asked him directly, what the salary was to which he responded "It works out to be about 1-2 hundred a day".
I responded, "is that including commision?" he said, "no, plus commision."
I then asked how many companies i would be in charge of, and he told me 6, including AT&T. Which turned out to be a straight up lie. They only handle one company, an office supplies company.
Extremely excited about how our interview went, we scheduled a second interview the very next day. I would be going on a field run.
During the field run, we drove roughly 2 hours away to the middle of nowhere. I was asked if we could use my car, i said "sorry i took a taxi here." so we took the managers car.
After the long drive, we looked for small to mid sized businesses and walked in and asked if we could talk to the person in charge of handling the office supplies. We were cold calling, door to door salesmen. Which was another specific question i had asked the first day, only to be told that we just renewed existing clients.
At lunch i got a breakdown of the pay scale. You got 28% of everything you sold to NEW customers for the office supply company. If you sold to an already existing customer of the office supply chain, you got ZERO! Your manager recieved 24% of all your sales.
After proving yourself for 3 weeks that you can sell office supplies, you are "promoted" to account manager. At this stage, you take possible employees out on day runs. If they hire in, they are a part of your team. After you get 5-7 people hired who can sell, you are promoted to Assistant manager.
Once at this stage you get a 100$ a day salary and you do a lot of office stuff. At this point you spend half the day in the office and half on sales runs. (this must have been the salary he spoke about in the interview, which was obviously a lie and misleading) Once your assistant manager, the manager only takes 5-14% of your sales (how nice of him).
Finally after youve been assistant manager and "learn the tricks" and have 5-7 people willing to follow you to a new office, you become manager of your own team. You must then move to an area that doesnt compete with your old managers buisness, and you owe your old manager 2% of all revenue your new buisness gets. If your keeping track at home, thats a nice giant pyramid.
This happened at lunch (where i got the breakdown of the pay) and i was now certain i was involved in a scam. Tough thing was, i was 2 hours away from home. I sort of felt bad for my interviewer as he was completely brainwashed and was excited about starting his company somewhere in texas (which is where his manager told him to go with his company). Obviously moving a company to a new state is a daunting task to expect from a guy who didnt graduate college and was on this job for only 2 years. But i dont think humanism was a strong point for this company.
When we finally got back to the office, it was 6:30pm. My day there started at 9:00 am. The guy who took me on the run had to be there at 7:30 am. So he had an 11 hour work day. We sold 3 packets of paper and an ink cartridge, he made out with 34 dollars for the day.
Once back, i was asked to go in the office and recap the day and talk about interest in the company. I asked 2 questions.
1. Why isnt there a salary
2. Why are there no benifits.
His answer to q1 was, if there is a salary it doesnt motivate people to work hard to sell. He said it rewarded the hard workers. His answer to question 2 was interesting. He said, "There are benifits. No other company offers such a growth within, and earning potential is astronomical. But in the traditional sense, i dont bother with benifits.
I couldnt believe it. He was talking to me like i was a damned idiot. I still acted positive so i could think about everything during my ride home, but i was amazed.
Later that day i got a call and they offered me the job. I said, "Its a pyramid scheme, sorry im not interested."
Beware people, i was told boldfaced lies that got me as far as a second interview on a day run in the middle of nowhere. If i would have said i had my car, i would have driven out there. Im guessing i wouldnt have been paid for my gas. This particular company had 25 entry level salesmen when I interviewed. After realizing it was a scam, i could just imagine how much that manager is making off these poor college grads (in my case) who are looking for a year of experience so we can crack into real companies. Beware of VERDIGRIS MARKETING GROUP in Kansas City. A scam in every sense of the word. Unless your on top the pyramid of course
0 comments