New Leaving Edward Jones
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It doesn't matter about your resume if you are already set to go to another firm. The other firm obviously knew there would be something..
Here is the bottom line. When you start with Jones (at least in my case), they didn’t disclose anything about years and years of door-knocking. So i take the job, train for several months and get my courses done. By this time and had done research and asked around as much as I could about the job and found out that door-knocking played some kind of role.
So we go into head office for a week of "sales training" - this was ONE FULL WEEK of door-to-door knocking training. Half of the class was pissed when we found out we had to door knock for 20-40 hours/week to become successful. My advice. Take the job, take the free training. Quit before your can-sell date. They'll have no way of tracking your future employment if you're not licensed. Talk about lack of disclosure, they might as well just merge with Primerica.Rock, are you kidding me? You didn’t know that Jones wanted you to doorknock until you went to “sales training”? I find that VERY hard to believe. I went through like 5 interviews before I got hired (screen, phone, face-to-face in a branch, etc.), and a discussion on doorknocking was a major part of EVERY interview. Not only that, we were all required to actually DOORKNOCK BEFORE we even got hired (those silly surveys).
I think you are full of sh1t.[quote=rockhorse]Here is the bottom line. When you start with Jones (at least in my case), they didn’t disclose anything about years and years of door-knocking. So i take the job, train for several months and get my courses done. By this time and had done research and asked around as much as I could about the job and found out that door-knocking played some kind of role.
So we go into head office for a week of "sales training" - this was ONE FULL WEEK of door-to-door knocking training. Half of the class was pissed when we found out we had to door knock for 20-40 hours/week to become successful. My advice. Take the job, take the free training. Quit before your can-sell date. They'll have no way of tracking your future employment if you're not licensed. Talk about lack of disclosure, they might as well just merge with Primerica.[/quote]During which trimester was your mom exposed to agent orange?
Back in my home office days, I was always suprised when someone came to class and was shocked that we were going to practice doorknocking. It’s such a major part of the Jones business building process, I couldn’t imagine anyone not knowing that Jones FAs do that. However, that was many years ago and things have changed. If you come to STL or Tempe for KYC and are suprised that doorknocking is a part of the curriculum, you must have been stoned all the way through your hiring process.
Rockhorse, you can’t come onto this forum where half of us are ex or current Jones people and know exactly what you have been through.
They tell you about door knocking from the begining. It shouldn't be a surprise.. you kncok for 8 weeks and then never have to do it again..whoa 2 months that is so long... You are an idiot don't come back..The doorknocking was undersold to me as well. I balked about joining them, and was given a GK and told that with that I wouldn’t need to doorknock much. Boy was I wrong. I was with them for about 14 months - long enough to figure out what it takes to be successful doing things the EJ way and long enough to know there was a better way for me to make a living.
Its people like this that give Jones the bad name and shows their obvious lack of disclosure. Who can honestly tell me that EJ advisors only door-knock for 8 weeks? I met with a local broker at his office (he'd been with Jones for about 2 years) who was late for our appointment because he was out door-knocking. If you guys are going to lie, at least make it believeable.It shouldn’t be a surprise… you kncok for 8 weeks and then never have to do it again
Rock,
Everyone's situation is different. For some people with no network, no book, and starting from scratch, just like cold-calling, you might have to do it for longer. Other people have a network, maybe have a referral source(s) they tap into, focus on seminars, whatever. I doorknocked heavily for maybe 6 months. But very few people doorknock for 2 years. I live in a community of about 6,000 people, so it's fairly easy to hit most of the area in a short amount of time. If you live in metro STL, where there are, I don't know, a million people, you could doorknock forever and not hit everyone. So it is all relative to where you live and how you want to prospect. But once you are off that 17-week goal thing, you can cold-call or do whatever you want to do. Because at that point, the firm only cares about production, not how you get it.Here’s an interesting tidbit.
Before I went to St. Louis, I was told that I would spend a few years knocking on doors (2-3 or maybe even 4-5 if we hit some bad markets). I was told to expect it and that it would be hard.
Flash forward to Sales Training and the Senior ATL (who was smoking hot by the way - I’m not sure she ever wore underwear) told us that, “You only doorknock until PDP”.
Needless to say, since I chose to only doorknock when my Field Trainer was with me, I’m not sure how everyone else took this.
Well this same ATL was giving classes on Training the Field Trainer in our region (too bad I was married, could have been a good night). And she told the region that people only needed to doorknock until PDP.
Man you should have seen the uproar. I thought these old-timers were going to lose a couple of bricks!
Needless to say, there is no consistency in what new trainees are told. I would suspect that some have been undersold, others oversold. Some may think you only need to doorknock for 8 weeks, while others have been told by their field trainers to never stop. I knew a field trainer who told their trainees that doorknocking was a waste of time, but if they ever told anybody, he would deny it.
Morean,
When I started in the business in '01 - I tried the door knocking. It was the first week of March - colder than shit. I lasted about 30 minutes - gave up and went home. Figured there had to be a better way. Save myself from getting flat feet by going after CPAs - never door knocked again - except to help my daughter to sell girl scout cookies.I hear you - It was actually hot as balls when I doorknocked. First day out after my field trainer left, a friend of mine saw me walking (while he was driving in his air conditioned car). He told me after he picked me up that he was wondering, “what kind of dumbass is out here ina suit”.
Screw that! Never had much luck with the CPAs, but I did manage to eke out an existence and exhaust my savings while I was at Jones. But I guess if I had doorknocked more I would still have that savings! Although somehow I doubt it. Probably just would have wasted more time.
Hate to bump an old thread and seemingly continue to beat a dead horse but I’m unknowledgeable and come for help/advise.
I'm currently with Jones and have completed everything except for eval/grad, if I understand correctly I'm not considered licensed yet until after eval/grad. If I'm fired from Jones as opposed to quitting and wish to join another firm (Jones just isn't for me), what is the experience from others of Jones coming after you for training costs? Also what is required to keep the series 7 current so no lapse or retesting is required. Please excuse my lack of intelligence here and thanks in advance for any help/advice.Don’t solicate accounts and don’t transfer your license then they don’t have time to f*** with you. If you want to keep something then you have to pay for it.
When I started with Jones, I was told that if one followed the formula you couldn’t fail. So I followed the formula to the letter. I rang, literally, thousands of door bells. The result? Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one single account from door knocking. If others are having success at it, more power to you. For my money, the trainers didn’t have any idea about how the real world operates.
Appreciate the responses, please educate me further, if I don't transfer my license this means I will have to take the exam again correct ? ThanksDon’t solicate accounts and don’t transfer your license then they don’t have time to f*** with you. If you want to keep something then you have to pay for it.
That's very odd. I doorknocked maybe a thousand doors (I never counted) for about 6 months. I opened my first 100 accounts and at least $5mm AUM off doorknocks. Now, some of them took literally years to turn into clients, but those ended up being my best clients. I actually got a call from the other day from a guy I doorknocked 3 years ago and never spoke to again. I heard stories about that happening, but figured it was a fluke. Well, happened to me.When I started with Jones, I was told that if one followed the formula you couldn’t fail. So I followed the formula to the letter. I rang, literally, thousands of door bells. The result? Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one single account from door knocking. If others are having success at it, more power to you. For my money, the trainers didn’t have any idea about how the real world operates.
[quote=Starka]When I started with Jones, I was told that if one followed the formula you couldn’t fail. So I followed the formula to the letter. I rang, literally, thousands of door bells. The result? Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one single account from door knocking. If others are having success at it, more power to you. For my money, the trainers didn’t have any idea about how the real world operates.
That’s very odd. I doorknocked maybe a thousand doors (I never counted) for about 6 months. I opened my first 100 accounts and at least $5mm AUM off doorknocks. Now, some of them took literally years to turn into clients, but those ended up being my best clients. I actually got a call from the other day from a guy I doorknocked 3 years ago and never spoke to again. I heard stories about that happening, but figured it was a fluke. Well, happened to me.[/quote]
What’s really odd is that you stopped after it worked so good for you. I suppose you just couldn’t handle all of the business.
At any rate, all of my KYC class is gone from Jones now. Curiously, none that I ever kept in touch with had any luck with door knocking either. It could be that the areas are just saturated with Jones kids. That was certainly the case in my area.
Oh well…I moved on to bigger and better things anyway.
Starka, good observations. I live in an area that has very, very few Jones offices. I think maybe 60 or so in my entire state, and like 6 or 7 in my county of 250,000 people. My county also borders another state, so I pull clients from that state also. So there is virtually no Jones competition for me. In fact I wish we had a few more offices just for exposure of the name.
As far as stopping when it worked - my specific town only has about 6500 people (like 3000 households), so it did not take that long to doorknock everywhere. And most people work in my area (not many retirees), so I was pretty much left with nights and weekends to doorknock. In addition, I found that although I was able to open lots of accounts from doorknocking, they obviously weren't all that big. Yes, I landed a handful of acounts over 500K from doorknocking (over time), but the majority of them were the stay-at-home moms, that had the his-and-her rollovers, his-and-her Roths, and a few random stock or somethign, which all added up to about 50 grand at the end of the day. So, did I make tons of money doing it? Not really. Did it give me lots of practice on people that I could just give a simple American Funds presentation to for the few little IRA's they have? Yup. I imporoved their investements, didn't blow them up, practiced, got some accounts and relationshpis going, learned along the way. Hey, we all start somewhere. Then I found that I could capture more meaningful relationships through seminars and networking, so that has been my primary vehicle the past 2 years.