Absolutely the worst sales experience in my 20 year career - Sales Representative Register Tapes Unlimited Employee Review

I spent the first few weeks closing sales for the company’s tape division. These are fairly expensive ads-coupons on the back of receipts at Kroger, HEB and other major supermarket chains. Within a few months I became, as all reps do, a full time fire-fighter, putting out one fire after another leaving very little time to actually sell. If you are inclined to drink the kool-aid and believe your national sales director, these soon- to-be ongoing issues are simply a ‘one-time mistake and the like’. You will soon see this is not the case. When you grow tired of the rhetoric and dig deeper to pull the curtain back, what you see is that this company, the largest of it’s kind in this niche industry, is run like a mom and pop business, specifically a father-daughter team that makes every decision while micro-managing every aspect of the company. Other family members are in charge of the various departments. There is virtually no authority for regional managers or national sales directors to make any decision on a local level without first going through the home office. What can one expect working on the sales force? Daily problems with your customers and with the Houston corporate office where the moral is low due to the overworked and poorly paid employees. Specifically the reps are constantly being dragged into billing issues, collection issues, graphic art production issues and distribution issues. This makes it difficult to focus on sales and to retain your customers. It is the position of the owners that it is never the fault of the company for any problem; rather it is always the customer’s or the rep’s fault. It takes an act of congress to make it right for the customer whatever the problem may be. When it comes to being paid, it is a never-ending battle with commission disputes and chargebacks. The confusing process each pay period to determine mathematically if you were paid correctly on the sales that you made is complex. You can expect chargebacks that often wipe out your entire commission check. There are also constant changes to the commission plan, specifically with how much and when you can expect to be paid on each sale. While the company hires you as an independent contractor, you are required to do work that is indicative of an employee, like driving hundreds of miles a month to do routine store audits, filling out company forms and physically installing the product in grocery stores at specific times of the month. You can expect to be reprimanded and threatened with termination if you do not do comply with these mandatory duties. There is virtually no recognition of achievement for the sales force and even less appreciation for the customer. The owner has repeated the following line so many times to sales managers and national directors it could almost be the mission statement; "If that customer doesn’t like it, REPLACE THEM.” The money that a decent rep can earn can be earned elsewhere without nearly the amount of headaches and battles that an RTUI sales rep faces daily. I have worked in direct sales for 15 years and have seen it all. While every company has issues to deal with, this company has more then any I have ever seen and is tone deaf when it comes to suggestions to improve the selling environment. If you are looking at RTUI as a potential sales career, my advice is to RUN and run as FAST as you Can!