If you have ever searched on monster, career builder, or craigslist for a job, it's probably inevitable that you have stumbled across a "Sports Marketing!" or "Entry Level Marketing! 3 Positions available for immediate hire!" And upon reading the job description it sounds enticing, saying that you could make $400-1000/wk. This is a word to the wise, to avoid it.
Axiom Advertising claims to be a marketing firm. They lead potential "employees" (and I use the term lightly, because in it is not specified in their help wanted ads that it is a contractual position) to believe that they will be marketing sports teams or golf courses or spas, when in actuality they are selling coupons door to door. On your first interview, you will go in, fill out an application (which still leads you to believe that you are going to be 'hired') although this step in the process is highly unwarranted considering that you will be asked, regardless of what your application says, to come back in for a second interview.
Still all the while, wondering what exactly it is that you will be doing. Linda, the owner, (if you're lucky enough to actually interview with her, otherwise one of her office workers) will have vaguely explained to you what the job entails by showing you a portfolio of the different companies that they work with, but still all the while being extremely and purposefully vague about the actual job itself. She will then ask you to come back for a second interview, which actually entails going out "in the field" with a team leader, aka someone who has fallen for the manipulation. For an entire day, from 7:30am until roughly 5:30-6pm maybe even later depending, you will walk around with this team leader as they go door to door selling coupons.
Once you are hired, which, more than likely you will be because the retention rate of personal sales people at Axiom is extremely low (that should be your first tip off), you will being to learn about Linda's theory on the law of averages. Basically she states that the more businesses that you go to, the more sales you will get. She then will have you train on a pitch to say when you walk into a business to try to get more sales. She claims that she is teaching entry level marketing skills and that sometimes there are just people who can't do the job.
The truth of the matter is, I am a marketing major, who apparently "couldn't do the job" because my sales there weren't anywhere near minimum wage, and were definitely not anywhere close to the money that I was making at serving. Which, if you want to really consider, is a base pay commission sales job. As a marketing major, I have come to learn over the years that the best way to sell a product to people is to be honest, helpful, understanding and empathetic towards your customer.
In real marketing, we like to call that Consumer Relationship Management.in reality, the entire position that you will hold at Axiom was based on manipulation, dishonesty, and a complete ignorance to the entire idea of empathy. As many of the other reports have said, Linda is full of criticisms, and not constructive ones, and she is full of dishonesty and manipulation. She manipulates everyone who works with her. If this is how a company treats it's employees, how are you to expect the employees to learn true marketing techniques and to understand consumer relationship management/marketing.
Another aspect of marketing that Linda truly misses the dot on is the idea of a target market. To those without marketing background, or business background, a company typically will conduct market research, finding a market segment, and then a target market. A specific group of consumers who, based on their demographics, are the consumers that a company wishes to sell it's products to. A company will do this to cut down the excess costs of marketing to people who are not in the target market. But guess what, when you hire contracted sales people who are paid solely on commission, you don't have to worry about those excess costs, because guess who fronts them? Not Linda.
I won't even get into the other aspects of this company, you can read those on the other reports here, but I feel like I had to bring up the other aspects of where this company is a scam. No, it's not your typical scam where they take your money and run with it, bu instead they take your time, that you could be out finding a more legitimate job, or working at a more legitimate job.instead of applying at Axiom, I suggest applying at Verizon or AT&T selling phones, or at Best Buy, where the companies have a solid idea on what marketing truly is, and because they provide base pay onto of commission are willing to help train you in the correct methods of professional selling. Shy away from this one!
0 comments