Working at American Management Services — Reviews by Employees

They are an honest company...Only winners need apply. They pay on results and they pay well...if you can sell. If you are mediocre you can't make it. They run with Pre-set appointments and for a good salesperson that is great. They respect results and don't pay attention to a lot of the touchy feely stuff. But, if you want a dedicated territory and interesting work dealing with new people all the time, the Field sales job is the best.

Training is as good as it gets. Lots of money is spent on it. I can see that some improvement in the recruiting process needs to be made judging from my own new hire class. I think some of the people shouldn't have been there. Losers might naturally be bitter.

I concur with the previous complaint. In my case, I was hired as a telemarketer and the ad made a promise of $60,000/year, first year with a starting base of $16/hr. plus benefits. So far, it sounded good. I could live on $16 an hour untill I built that up to $60,000.

I went on their website and saw that AMS did consulting with businesses. With a background in sales and consulting, I saw this as a natural fit. So far, I was extremely excited.

What I found out was that the starting pay was not $16/per hour to start, but $8/hr and not full time, but during training, you averaged about 20 hours a week. Again, I thought I could tough it out for awhile and tried to see the big picture.

AMS training program was to put all of the new trainees in a conference room by ourselves. Every 4 hours or so sombody from management would pop in and ask how we we were doing. I am not kiding.

Day 2 we got a script to study, again amongst ourselves. Management came in only to tell us that we could go home early and we wer told to study the scripts on our own time.

For the first two weeks, all we did was watch vidoes and go over scripts. We were also given a manual and handout with information on the Sandler Sales System.

The fact was that there was no training.

An italian guy named Lou runs the place and is a complete idiot. And he knows nothing about sales. I seriously doubt if he could give away a hot cup of coffee to an eskimo in freezing weather. Lou also had no people skills.

I stuck it out for about a week while others in my class bailed out. I should have followed suit but I hung on.

Once on the phones, I was even more disgusted. Leads were old. Scripts were ridiculous and nobody knew what we were talking about. We would make cold calls and asked people, "Don't you remember me? " How could they, it was a cold call and the first time that new reps were calling. We were supposed to make them think that they had talked to us [the calling rep] a few months before.

We were instructed to use vocal intonations and sigh at certain parts for effect and say things like, [sigh] "I was afraid of that!" LOL!

It is very true that one of the red flags about t his out fit is their constant advertising and high turnover. Even for telemarketing, the tunover is extremely high, possibly record breaking. Reasons?? They have no clue at what they are doing, do not understand sales, are not people oriented, management are idiots and Lou who runs the place is a FIRST CLASS MORON!!!

Need I say more???

As the previous poster stated, they operate uner the assumption that all clients are liars. This company treats their employees like crap. The told us that we could make $300K a year as a survey analyst. In order to do that, you would have to convert almost every survey you did. We actually only convert about 20%. This is a $65K job and you will work anywhere from 80-100 hours a week to make it, living out of a hotel. It also takes you about 6 months to start making money due to the learning curve and the fact that you have to fill up your pipeling. The turnover is amazing, there are 3 analysts that have been there for a while, the rest is a revolving door. Out of the last 14 hired over the past 4 months, only 2 remain. Many of the warning signs were there, but I figured what the hell, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. You will have to pay your way to training and will only be reimursed if you complete the training (flag #1). They irequire you to invest in the latest and greatest technology prior to coming to training, they provide nothing (flag #2). They are always recruiting (flag #3).

To make matters worse, the director of survey is a bully. He gets off on verbally abusing those he has power over. As a consequence, you avoid making contact with the home office to ask for help because you don't want to be dragged over the coals. Of course, this reduces your chances for success. I have no idea how this guy gets away with it, but at some point in time someone will beat the crap out of him.

It's one thing to take the risk of working 100 hours a week for a commission only job that has you away from home all week, its another thing to do all that and be bullied as well. I know of at least 4 promising analysts that have quit because of the abuse heaped on them by the asshole director.

Pay-Straight commission. Company's practices make it very difficult to earn commissions. Employees are required to pay all expenses up front for training in Orlando offices. Reimbursement takes up to a month, IF employee makes it through training! I learned that they have ongoing (monthly/weekly) training, as so few survive. Although company has been in business since 1986, at the time I was in training, they had 5, that's right 5 in 23 years, Field Services Managers working successfully. Training classes, incidentally, include anywhere from 5-15 unsuspecting new hires!

Benefits are not offered until 6 months. Job security: A joke!

The whole business philosophy and therefore training and M.O. is based in the belief that buyers are liars and so, you must be a craftier liar (through evasion, deception and outright lying) to be successful. Pre-set appointments (made by an in house telemarketing staff) are based on confusion, at best, and outright deception, at worst. Prospects are overwhelmingly confused about the purpose of supposedly "pre-qualified" appointments. More often, they're so pissed off about feeling misled; they're not receptive to any conversation, let alone presentation.

Respect- Uh, where do I begin? Management seems unable to convey a thought without the most foul of expletives, belittles employees in front of other staff, has absolutely NO interest in hearing ideas, input of feedback from employees (in fact, attempting such seems to be a main reason for dismissal).

Work/Life Balance- Plan on waking up at 5am to begin driving to 8am appts. that are scheduled hours away from home. Plan to receive next day's appointments (which require company research, mapping for directions/not provided and other details)and doing various paperwork until 8 or 9 pm!

Career Potential/Growth-Seems they have about a 99% attrition rate. To make it through the training is a major career accomplishment.

Location is good, if you enjoy working from home or in the field with little supervision, other than calls/emails/reports. You will NOT spend time at home, other that to collapse in exhaustion after a 15 hour day.

Coworker competence-Staff is very cordial, much like children in an abusive home environment. My negative rating is based on senior management, which is unprofessional in the extreme.

Work environment- Again, negative, fearful, unsupportive, and unprofessional. If you enjoy being cussed out, hung up on, belittled and stressed to the point of a breakdown, this may be the job for you.

My comments are based not only on my own experience, but on what I observed in virtually every interaction around me. A fellow-trainee, a male in his 40s, was reduced to tears describing his level of stress to me during the training. Another co-worker called me and said he couldn't handle another negative appointment, caused by the lying telemarketers.

I am awaiting reimbursement for out of pocket expenses (just those I am being reimbursed for are nearly $1000) for nearly 30 days. In addition, I spent nearly another $1000 on requisite expenses for which I will not be reimbursed!

There are 5 people out of 100s or possibly 1000s who have survived and are still working as Field Sales Managers. So, apparently it's a job for someone.

In closing I would like to add that prior to accepting this position, I have worked as a consultant to dozens of companies of all sizes, revenues and in myriad industries for over a decade. I have NEVER seen anything as professionally appalling in all those years or in years of corporate sales prior.