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In Reply to: Re: Primerica - Let's Have a REAL discussion posted by Former PFSER on November 02, 2004 at 09:28:06: I am a former PFS rep and I'll say up front that I don't want to bash the company.But I'll tell you about my experiences and reasons for leaving. Like most PFS reps I sat with an agent in my home. I was recently married and this agent did a rollover for my wife a couple years before. We were looking for life insurance so we listened. I had just been srewed over by a guy that I was helping to establish a medical equipment repair business and was looking for another opportunity. I had some reservations about the MLM structure, but I do think that MLM is a valid business model and I signed up. Licensing was a snap and I was eager to start. But I was new to the area and my warm market was very small so any business I could have done was taken by my RVP during "training". I was told to recruit everyone and anyone so I could "train" them and make sales for myself. But I wasn't allowed to join any referral networks nor was I allowed to use lead services. I was told that the company had to protect itself from law suits and that I should instead talk to retail clerks and delivery men etc. Well I didn't have a lot of success recruiting and even thogh I was doing a fair amount of business, I could not get a better contract becuase promotion is contigent on recruiting. I enjoyed the work and started researching other options that would let me use business tools like the internet ( which I was also told I could not do with PFS) and lead and referal services like most businesses can. This is when I found out about captivity. The business that I supposedly owned was not in reality my business. If my clients needed something that we did not provide, I was forbidden to help them . I wanted to get my CFP designation, but was discouraged by my upline because it didn't fit with the one size fits all style of PFS. I felt that I was being thwarted in my attempts to succeed. For example, I had one particularly good recruiting period when I found myself with 4 new people to train. Well my RVP was in a bit of a slump and took many of the training appointments for himself. I saw some other people doing well and when they went RVP, thier upline took theis 2 best legs as replacement and their business sufferred baly because of it. Again, if it is my business and I developed 2 strong producers, why does my upline benefit and I get my business decimated. And if you leave to pursue an independent career, you cannot contact your clients or sales team for 2 years because they belong to the company and not to you even though they tell you that you "own your own business". There are better ways to become a financial professional than PFS. True financial planning is more than term insurance and mutual funds. And a true financial plan is as individual as the people you serve. If you want to be more than a product salesman and a sales team manager don't join PFS. I am not here to advertise my current company but I will tell you that they: Allow you to work with any company you want so you can find the best fit for your clients Allow you to own your book of business from day one Promote baed on production alone and not recruits but you can still recruit to increase production and earn overrides. Do not require replacement legs when you are promoted to higher levels.
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