Northwestern Mutual Reviews

Pros

Great opportunity to make money. Great training and people that you work with.

Cons

The relys on commissions so you have to preform

Pros

NW Mutual supports a very open atmosphere where "community" style feedback is given and received openly. Joint work is very beneficial (veteran reps accompany newcomers to meetings). Compensation package is competitive. Business-owner level of freedom. Plenty of encouragement.

Cons

To be safe, you should have a year's income saved up to liquidate to allow you the best chance to succeed in the industry. Variability of income before renewals start kicking in. Micromanaged daily activity check-ins can be frustrating and counter-productive.

Advice to Senior Management

Recruiting needs to probe deeper into savings and personal financial management of prospective reps -- they need to have at least 1 full year of income saved up in order to have the best opportunity to succeed. You wouldn't recruit nearly as many people per year, but the retention rate would skyrocket.

Pros

Great people to work with in financial services industry. Salary potential is practically unlimited. Training is thorough and continuous throughout your career.

Cons

Building client base can be very difficult for a new financial representative. Must meet a certain amount of policies to continue working.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to recruit and train great people. The company is well run and there is no advice for me to impart on senior management.

Pros

you are your own boss.
you make your own schedule.
once a deal is made the pay off is great.
no earnings cap.

Cons

you might not see a paycheck for a long time
closing deals is very tough.
the sales coaches had never even held a sales position.

Advice to Senior Management

get real and experienced sales coaches that can sympathaize with trainees.
try to develop some type of base salary so we wont starve

Pros

Very flexible work hours. No push for the sale, more towards getting to know what the customer wants and how they want to accomplish it.

Cons

Straight commision pay. Very hard to start out if you are not well connected to others. May take several weeks and even months to see the hard work pay off.

Pros

The Income potential at NML is exponential
Friendly atmosphere helps for the time spent in office
Multitude of resources
Incredible training

Cons

Flexibility in hours may cause for poor work habits. One must really know how to manage time effectively to optimize productiveness

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the incredible work. I feel that with the continued, cutting edge resources that are offered to the reps, you are putting us in an incredible position to do great things!

Pros

- they have great managers who understand
- the staff is very fun (lots of events to get to know people)

Cons

-when you run out of people to call, you need to start cold calling
-product wasn't really something that I had passion about.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep being understanding and great job getting people out of their comfort zone. It really helped me open up. Thanks!

Pros

you are your own boss, you have complete freedom,

Cons

you start each month with zero producction.

Advice to Senior Management

more recognition

Pros

If you are entering the job market straight out of college probably one of the better companies to work for. Very good mentoring / training program...if you can last the commission lifestyle, best done when single and few commitments.

Cons

If you are already a financial service professional...maybe not the best fit. Way to much micro-management unless you need that type of motivation.

Advice to Senior Management

Get from behind your desk and lead from the front ... most talk the talk but few lead by example. Most are viewed as just on board for the gravy train.

Pros

Great people.
Need based planning approach.

Cons

Commission based and difficult to establish client base when starting out.