A zombi wunz bit mi systur. It poot hur out uv commission.
People will be pleased to know that I managed to find a job since 2003. (Actually several).
I was actually kind of worried for you.
My husband is a stockbroker aka financial advisor. When he started the job, he was put on a small salary ($30k?) + commission. The salary portion was reduced gradually over 2 years til at the end, he was 100% commissioned. That is typical for big firms.
The reason that the average stockbroker makes $300k+ is because, after two years, those who aren’t producing leave either voluntarily or involuntarily.
I’ve never worked a job like this, but I have gotten random recruiter calls for them. Frankly, I don’t see the appeal. One funny story was from the last time I got one of these calls. He started asking me all kinds of silly leading questions like “Wouldn’t you want to work for yourself?” and, having some fun, rather than giving him the expected response, I was giving him the opposite one. Then he got to the “Wouldn’t you like to make more money?” To which I responded that, no, I’m actually quite happy with my current salary, which is actually true. He responded by calling me a liar, that everyone wants more money, at which point I ended the call tell him that I had no interest in working with anyone who accuses his potential recruits of lying and hung up on him before proceeding to laugh at the whole ridiculousness.
Honestly, I can’t see the appeal of a 100% commission job except in a high-risk high-reward type of environment like stock broking or real estate. Certainly, I think the type of job that the OP describes is more or less a scam to lure people in with the idea of, not only a job in this low economy, but with financial security and self-employment, but they conveniently leave out the negative sides. It’s cheap to do a seminar and then send people out selling stuff on 100% commission, so why should they care if most of them don’t make it?
I was having sympathetic chest pains for him.
I have not, but one of my guildmates has. He worked his ass off for very little payoff for at least a year before the job starting giving him any net returns. He cold-called thousands of numbers to find leads. It is probably the worst imaginable job for a new employee.
He’s now a financial advisor in NYC who’ll be able to retire by the age of 35 (not that he will, but he could). He has hundreds of thousands in his own investments and makes bank for himself and his company. But it’s all about beating the paths and making the connections and paying your dues, and most people lack either the looks, the aptitude, the luck, the people skills, or the tenacity to pull this off. You also have to be good at financial management, and the market is not always on your side. You could have a promising career in the making, and a single downturn of the stocks you invested in could make your career go bust.
My guildmate made some lucky picks early on and worked his ass off to get where he is. I wouldn’t recommend it.
I can see the appeal, but you have to be the right sort of person. I know a bunch of people who go caught up in Multi Level Marketing or network marketing schemes (aka pyramid schemes). To do that sort of job, you need to have (or appear to have) this tireless enthusiasm that the idea you support is the greatest thing EVER!
There is no such thing as an idea that is both so awesome that it will make you super rich whike at the same time virtually unknown to the general public, Wall Street or whoever. And if there was, why would they want Joe Nobody (ie you and me) to know about it?
My impression of the “financial advisor” type jobs is that they are basically looking for you to mine your relatives. This is true even for the big reputable companies. They want you to sell your mom an annuity. Whether you survive past this point is questionable. I would like to see some reputable statistics on how many people who start this kind of job are ultimately successful at it. I suspect that number is vanishingly small.
I work as a proprietary trader at a trading firm. I’m given a very small salary (really a draw against future profits), but the overwhelming majority of my compensation is based on my performance. It’s not really based on commissions, but a profit split. If I make $1,000 I keep x% and the firm keeps y% with x and y varying based on a few factors.
I’m 27 and have been trading for five years. I don’t have any responsibilities outside of paying rent and buying food. If I were to get married and have a child, I might think of transitioning into something more stable. But, at this point in my life the high risk/high reward structure is fine for me.
My wife applied for a “job” like that when she was out of work. They asked her for a list of ten of her friends/relatives and what their net worth was. Just hearing about it made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Thank goodness she managed to land a normal job.
Pretty much. All these sort of direct marketing and sales jobs really require you to go out and mine your network. I’m sure we all have at least one friend who joined some MLM scheme and three times a day post super enthusiastic messages about some hot new game changer those fat cats won’t tell you about that uses real science to get real results.
But really a lot of jobs like sales, trading, lawyering, consulting, I-banking, real estate and others tie your compensation, bonus or continued employment to hard metrics like sales, deals made or hours billed.
Very few people have the drive and tenancity to work in some sort of Boiler Room Glenngarry Glenn Ross style 100% commission rat race. And a lot of these jobs sort of border on the edge of being “legitimate”. Think about it. What sort of company wants an army of barely trained reps swarming the marketplace annoying people with their sales pitches? The sort that probably won’t be around long enough to care after they have made whatever they can from whatever percent of their sales force actually bringing in money.
IF you’re good at what you do, and there definitely is an art to investing, word will get out and the clients start coming to you. That is when you’ve hit the sweet spot in your career. Most don’t make it to that point.
You’re not that far off. Basically, financial service companies are only interested the networks you can bring to the company. They’re using you to prospect for them. That’s all it is.
I have.
I haven’t, no. Cold-calling with no leads? I suspect MsRobyn is pretty much 100% right.
The leads–are weak.
The leads are weak? You’re weak. I can go out there tonight, the materials you got, make myself 15,000 dollars. Tonight. In two hours. Can you? Can you?
What’s your name?
You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an 80,000 dollar BMW. That’s my name.
You know what? I don’t have to listen to this.