Having been in sales for 28 years, owning a business for the last 6 years, the recession had taken its toil on my life. I was looking for a business that had repeat business, was recession proof, and it was a real career that I could continue after retiring (which I intended to do in about 10-15 years.
Maintenance Engineering had an advertisement in Craig's List, outlining what a great "green" company they were and of course I applied. I applied and was contacted by HR and set up a phone interview with Barbara. She ask a million questions and really stressed that this was a career, not a job. She said that salespeople within a short period of time had so much repeat business that they spent most of their time just writing orders.in fact, after retirement they could stay with the company and just keep their existing clients and write up their orders for years. Wow, what a job. After all, lights are required by everybody!!!
The big drawback was the $500 investment that was required to go to work for them. Normally I would have told they to take a hike, but it sounded so good, well put it on my credit card and off I was going to build a career.
Their training was over the phone for an hour one week and everything in their sales training was hard sell, with a 5-point closing. I'm used to corporate selling and after the second "hard" sale, I would be kicked out of their offices and told to never come back. Next their 4' florescents were approximately $20 per bulb with shipping and they informed me that they didn't want me to call on corporate accounts, but very, very small business. Small businesses don't do repeat business with a bulb that supposedly last 12 years? Especially since they can purchase a bulb at a time from Lowe's @ $2.75 and their smallest order was 12 bulbs.
I made the cold calls on small business, and as suspected, they were not interested. I figured that if I brought literally thousands of potential bulbs through corporate accounts they would be excited and work with me on contracts. Not true, they would offer a 10% discount on literally thousands of bulbs. We have big corporate headquarters in the Northwest like Boeing, Microsoft, Cosco, Starbucks, etc.
This company is not a place to work. They are on CareerBuilders and others. They are looking for your money, and send you a $20 light box, and some bulbs. They also have a sister company called Superior Lighting. Run from them as fast as you can and tell everybody to check them out.
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