Complaint Review: CBT Direct - Frank Coleman Co-Owner

To: Human Resources
Re: Resignation

To whom it may concern,

Please accept this letter of resignation effective December 19, 2008. After 4 weeks on the job, I have regrettably determined that I can not afford to work here any longer. I simply need to earn more income to support myself and my children. It does not appear that there will be an increase in the near future so I must look for other employment. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to work for CBT Direct. It has been a valuable learning experience for me.

Since I am leaving, I thought I would take this opportunity to point out some issues that I had in working here in an effort to make the upper management and owners aware of what a new person experiences in this position. It is too late to make a difference in my career, but perhaps a few changes could be made to make a more positive influence on future employees. Below are some of the areas that I had concerns over:


1) The use of foul language on the floor not a day went by that I did not hear several curse words, especially the F word, used repeatedly throughout the day. Not only did I often hear co-workers swearing out loud, but I have also heard the two floor managers swearing. I have even heard them swear at the customers on the phone. This type of language may be acceptable on a construction site, but in an office where employees are expected to dress and act professionally, I am surprised at the language spoken on a day to day basis. It also does not create a positive atmosphere for selling when those around you are swearing at the phone.

2) Splitting deals with new reps I have heard that some of the new reps are being cheated out of their full 50% of a call that got flipped to a senior rep. Yesterday I experienced such a deal. Bob had a customer ready to buy and flipped the call to Tammy Float (10+ yr. Employee). Then shortly after receiving the call, Tammy Float realized that the customer was a past customer of Lori Brunelle(10+ yr. X-Employee) and flipped it over to her. Lori closed the deal and then told Bob (New-Hire) he was only going to get 1/3 of the deal and she was keeping the other 2/3. Bob disagreed with her and Lori stood up and yelled at Bob across the floor that he just made $50 for 15 minutes of work and should be grateful for it. Lori told Bob that he could dispute the deal with Frank Coleman (Owner) if he wanted to and would probably win, but then he would be hurting his position with the floor. Mimi Kepner (X Floor MGR - was later fired for writing deals - over a $100K, for people in her group that never materialized) joined in and told Bob to take the 33 1/3% and that what comes around goes around. This type of deal where the senior rep decides how much they are keeping was never taught to us in training and I feel that the floor managers should have stood up for what was right and not have allowed an improper split to take place. That type of situation does not bring about employee retention, nor does it add any trust between employees in the room.

3) Managements treatment of employees although the two floor managers may be knowledgeable in their field, they are not good managers of people. They are the most disrespectful managers I have ever worked underneath. They are constantly yelling at employees and putting them down in front of others. They are often using sexual connotations to describe employees and customers in such a way to make themselves appear funny and "hip" when in actuality they are bordering on sexual harassment. They lack in professionalism in the manner in which they speak to others. On my second day on the floor I got up to ask Tom LaTour (Corporate Sales Mgr. and oversees both Floor Mgrs.) a general question about corporate accounts. He was on the phone so I walked back to my desk. Before I could even return to my seat Mimi stopped me and started yelling at me and scolding me for trying to speak to Tom. She wanted to know why I wanted to talk to him and to make sure I knew that I was not allowed to speak to him. She yelled repeatedly at me that everything was to go through her and Dominic Grispo (Floor Mgr.) as they are my managers. She kept repeating her self at the top of her voice to me and I tried to assure her that I would follow proper procedures and that I just had a question for him. Rob Roy (10+ yr. Employee) saw that I was uncomfortable (in tears) being yelled at on my second day and joined in the conversation trying to make a joke out of it to lighten the mood. As an employee, I lost all respect for Mimi that day. If you cant talk with respect to others then you havent earned it for yourself.

4) Process for getting new leads in training we were told that experienced reps must write $4,500 in one week to be on the call in list and that those with less than 6 months experience had a pro-rated amount to write. That would naturally make sense since we are new and should not be expected to produce as much as those with 10 years of experience. After 1 week of getting 4 and 5 year old leads I asked the two floor managers "when will we be getting newer leads?" Mimi informed me that I had to write $4,500 in business first. This is conflicting information from what we were taught in training and does not seem quite fair.

5) The leads in general are poor quality most of the leads I was given were dated 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. Sometimes I would get some 2008 leads, but many of them were no better than the 5 year old leads. After dialing an average of 200 calls every day, I would usually only get to talk to about 3 people and they never had money because my phone call took them by surprise. For the most part, my calls would consist of about 35 wrong numbers, 130 no answers, and 35 NOT interested responses. It felt like they were purposely setting us up to fail. Without some decent leads of people that were in a buying mode, there was not much chance of us selling anything. Even the 12 calls that were good enough to flip to a senior rep did not turn into anything. If we are expected to sell as much as the senior reps, then we should be given the same opportunity to sell as they are with newer leads. Having to convince people that they did visit our website in the past is not a buying signal. It would seem to me that everyone is wasting their time and money to keep calling on leads that have told employees repeatedly at CBT that they are not interested. There should be a way to code leads that have no interest so that the new people are not passing them around and wasting their time calling on a customer that is not going to purchase and upsetting the customer even more in the process. There are far too many newer leads that have never been verbally contacted. I feel CBT should stop wasting time on old leads that have no interest. The newest leads should be given out first, not last.
 
6) Lunch hour from 12:00 1:00 this is an early break time and makes for a very long afternoon. It is better to reach people in the morning or end of day than in the middle of the day. Therefore, we would have more success calling CA and WA people at noon our time than at 1:00. Instead of having a lunch call in list, why not have some people take a 12:00 lunch and others take a 1:00 lunch and allow employees to decide which hour they prefer to eat. You could have enough coverage on the floor so that all calls were answered and no one would have to miss a lunch break.

These were some of the things I was uncomfortable with. I hope that management, or better yet -the owners will give them some consideration and make necessary changes to ensure that future employees will not experience the unpleasantness that I did. Thank you for your time,
Sincerely,

X-Employee

Now again, ...let me ask you - Is this REALLY a place you'd like to work?, ...or worse yet support them by buying their product now knowing how they treat their new employees?? ...and then get treated like a red headed step-child after becoming a customer???

By the way, after writting this letter NO changes were made and they continued to operate in the same fashion and more than likely still do to this day! 

This is a prime example of how the owners, Frank Coleman and Kimberly Cardinale (Miss Kitty), let their company run and continue to run to this very day. New Hires get NO respect and they NEVER last more then 6 months at which time they've had enough of the abuse or are let go because they can not make any sales with the DEAD leads they continue to call over and over and over again!!

Take my advice and find another place to work, ...or find another company to get your training from - there are plenty out there to choose from! 

This company also recently fired an employee after 13+ yrs. of service for sexual harassment and then had to deal with a law suit from the New-Hire that suffered from the sexual harassment..., what's NEXT?!? ...stay tuned in to Rip-Off Report!