Brink's Home Security Reviews

Pros

Great benefits package including medical, dental, 401k, paid vacation, etc.
Generally nice team members and office staff.
Good customer service.

Cons

Crazy schedule for sales consultants. You have 6pm or 7pm appointments at least 3 nights a week, saturday appointments until 2 or 3pm, and work trade shows on average once a month which can include sundays. There is a lot of down time during the day which some may view as a positive bc. you can get errands run, but remember you are back on the road for an evening appointment and can get home anywhere from 8pm to 10pm. Micromanaged and must be in the office every morning if you are not hitting the numbers. No base salary, there is a draw versus commissions but if you are just making the draw you will not be happy with your pay check at all, and more than likely you will not be employed for long.

Advice to Senior Management

offer base salary after one year of tenure vs. a draw.

Pros

Wonderful people to work with. Very flexible with the hours. Fun and easy going atmosphere while still being very professional. Lots of recgonition and encouragement to individually grow within the company.

Cons

there isn't many cons about working with brinks home security. At least not within my department. Probably I would only suggest to increase staffing only because the alarm volume can get pretty high at times and don't want it to effect our response time for our customers.

Advice to Senior Management

I really hope you keep up all of your good work. Especially now and more so after the merge is complete.

Pros

This place is full of honest and good people, who are committed to their jobs yet open to discussion of new ideas.

Also, Call Centers are located within the campus, so you get a good sense of diversity and reality.

Cons

IT change processes are a little muddied and difficult to follow, but intentions are there, and management has strong technical ability.

Vacation benefits lack. 2 weeks/year for the first 5 years, but this does not include sick days. This of course seems to encourage folks to play hooky!!

Advice to Senior Management

Be aware of how the business culture is changing. Lots of long-term employees can cause a stagnant culture that has not progressed with the times.

Pros

Broadview Security (formerly Brink's Home Security) is an outstanding work environment. The employees and supervisors all maintaina positive working relationship and there is a great sense of "team" within each group and department. The benefits are comparable to similar organizations with reasonably priced health, dental, and vision benefits. Employees are provided with adequate time off and the company has a flexible attendance policy. Compensation for call center employees is slightly better than most in the area. In addition, there is a clear career path for contact center employees to develop via a structured training and development program.

Cons

As is the case within many companies, information is generally poorly communicated. Conflicting information is often delivered to front-line employees and revised several times over a short period of time.

Compensation for exempt level employees is below average for the market.

There are insufficient opportunities for exempt level employees to progress and grow professionally at some locations.

Advice to Senior Management

The appearance of disorganization and poor decision making often frustrate employees at all levels of the organization. The best advice I could give would be to closely evaluate the work environment for the front-line representatives and attempt to view organizational, policy, and procedure changes as they do. I would also encourage market studies to determine a more competitive pay scale for exempt level staff.

Pros

Good company, I was with Brink's for a number of years and enjoyed the job. Not in an office all day, out running appointments talking to people. Good product and good service as a company, I believed in what I was selling. 401k, good benefits, mileage reimbursement.

Cons

Things changed after name change to Broadview. It was not the best economic climate for a name change. The quality and quantity of leads went down. Alot more pressure on the self generated side of the business. Threat of job loss became a motivator which was not my favorite atmosphere to work in and took away from the old fun atmoshere that it used to be.

Advice to Senior Management

If you are spending millions on advertising as a company after the name change and not getting quality leads maybe there is an issue. I understood that there needed to be pressure to self generate leads as an SSC but it was a tough economic climate and you do not need to threaten with job loss. Take care of future seasoned sale reps.

Pros

Benefits after 30 days. Good Sales Training program.

Cons

Name change slowed down sales, increase in self generated required when economy getting worse. Not the best idea or smart practice for keeping a sales force. Even sales professionals who had been with company for years having hard time making any money and at risk for loosing job.

Advice to Senior Management

try to retain employees and pay more so people can make a living

Pros

Decent medical and dental benefits, paid holidays, 401K, company paid training, mileage reimbursement, company provided leads, local management sales support.

Cons

Long hours, abysmal company provided lead quality. The leads got worse after the brand name change (from BRINKS to BROADVIEW). The name change wasn't helpful but the expectations for closing ratios for company provided leads was made even more unrealistic.
The time investment for in-home presentations at 2-plus hours in addition to travel time, easily 3 hours invested in a presentation, which may pay as little as $45 (if sale was closed) or $0.00, if not).
If the SSC wasn't fulfilling all company sales requirements, i.e. self generated sales, company generated sales close ratio or having too low additional revenue per sale, the SSC would be put on a training program, requiring SSC to meet with manager every morning. When sales dropped off after the name change, just about all SSC's were required to participate in additional sales training, requiring more (non-income producing) timeinvestment from the SSC.

Company provided appointments set as late as 7:00PM, which would preclude SSC from getting home any sooner than 9:30PM, and if you were in a mandatory training program, this would make for a 12+ hour work day.

Constant pressure from upper and lower management to fill sales quotas, with the threat of job loss being the motivator.

Revolving door. Management constantly focused on hiring and training new employees rather than supporting the "seasoned" staff.

Management focused on "this is how it has always been done" even after a major event such as a brand name change. Management still not willing to look at alternative ways to streamline and maximize business opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

The company spends a great deal of money training all SSC's the company's way of selling the product and product knowledge. In my class there were 36 students. Six months later there were only a handful left. If you were to focus on retaining good people rather than churning sales associates it would boost morale and build a much stronger company.

Pros

This is a good company, it is strong in the market and has a good reputation.. Has good training program which lasts for several weeks. Supervisors are great. There is plenty of room for advancement.

Cons

I felt like everything I did was being checked to find errors. I was apprehensive most of the time, like I was might do or say something that might not be acceptable. You are graded and rated constantly.
After the first 2 weeks or so, I felt like I was on the way out the door. I didn't feel that there was a secure future there. Heaven forbid you don't make your numbers quickly, you will be put on notice!
The immediate team managers were very suportive and that made it a little easier to get through the days.

Advice to Senior Management

Losen up a little bit, you've got great people working for you in your sales department, but no one wants to constantly be in a "Big Brother" environment. Do something about your quality team, nobody likes them!

Pros

Training is excellent to start, so if you are looking for a starter company to begin with here is one for you. Tech support is usually very competent. Good Benefits Package. Nice fuel re-imbursement package as well

Cons

Training stops after their official training seminar in Irving. You've heard the definition of insanity, that is there idea of training. No creativity whatsoever. Pay Matrix takes 6 months to start to understand on how and what you are getting paid, yet during the interview they show you 1 figure they "wink" guarantee you will make and of course after the fact it is nowhere close to the real results.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your people what they are worth.

Pros

Flexible hours. Pays for gas. treats you great in training. Good excersize if you like walking through neighboor hoods.

Cons

Commission is not the best. Everybody snakes someones sales. Very unorganized company. When asking why there isnt a long term employee at my branch. No one can give you a real answer.

Advice to Senior Management

Explain to new employees that prospecting is just a fancy word for door knocking.