Paranoia, Self Defense, Penal Colonies and The Good Life
Posted on | May 31, 2007 | No Comments
Hardly The Life of Riley but The Good Life abounds in the Platt household. We’ve been so busy this month that we actually started laughing yesterday when we realized that we had no assignments left to do and we were actually trying to figure out what to do with a little free time. A real close count for the month is one thousand nine hundred and twenty two orders – give or take a few.
I have started once again on my miscellaneous projects list and when I have the time to do that, I know that I really do have some free time. I only work on the miscellaneous projects when all business tasks are completed. My projects list looks like an instruction manual for the space shuttle but I do enjoy finishing the tasks and marking them off the list.
One of the most time consuming tasks on my miscellaneous projects list is looking into field service businesses that utilize the services of field reps like you and me. I started doing this several years back when there were a few companies that were leaving a path of destruction through the field rep ranks. Fortunately, those companies are gone and the remaining not-so-good companies are pretty well known. However, once in a while I get very suspicious of some rep-wanted ads I see and the companies that created the ads.
You know I can’t just come right out and give you the names of these companies but I can tell you a few things you can do to check out any company. These are really basic tactics so I hope you are already aware of most of them.
- Reply to the email address and see what response you get back, if any. Something as simple as a response or no-response tells a lot about a company.
- Check out the e-mail domain. If the e-mail is from ReallyBigCompany@someother.com, this is a big clue that ReallyBigCompany does not have their own mail server. A bad sign as far as I am concerned. Exceptions that I accept are company personnel using their personal e-mail address to send out rep announcement for their company.
- Who are what is someother.com? If ReallyBigCompany can send and receive e-mail through their mail servers, there might be some type of connection between the two.
- Go to www.whois.net and check out someother.com. Use www.google.com, www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com to search for ReallyBigCompany, ReallyBigCompany@someother.com and someother.com. Good or bad, someone may have made a comment that would increase your information on this subject.
- By all means go to groups.google.com and groups.yahoo.com and search for the same stuff as above. You also need to search the groups using any industry related key words in the ad that started you on this quest.
Am I paranoid? Maybe, but I’ve been burned only once for $550. I was new in the business and did not see it coming. I did enjoy so much reading about the Attorney General in their state stuffing them into a state penal colony. One time I did not bother to even invoice a company that owed me $110 but I just never got around to sending an invoice. My bad – not theirs!
The high fallutin types call it due dilligence. Me, I call it self defense. Neither you or I can move fast enough to stay ahead of some of the stuff that goes on nowadays. So, you might as well take the time to check ‘em out. Believe me, some of the opportunities you are offered will look very good but those doing the offering are counting on greed and fear of loss to help them out.
Hey, this is a great business but there are some rough edges. I’ve tried to make things a lot easier for you over at TheRepReportâ„¢. Go look at some of the RepReportsâ„¢ there and you will see some of my self defense tactics in use.
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