Pros
Great name Strong Financial Outlook Good number of Products to offer Licensing fees are reimbursed Very in-depth training on selling Decent price on medical benefits Depending on who your manager is, you will get a lot of support when you are doing well and when not so well. However, there are managers that will make your life hell if you do not bring in enough GDR (sales). I was fortunate to have a manager who was very supportive of me (even taking money out of his own pocket to help me buy leads or lunch - just unbelievably admirable of a guy) up until the end when I just couldn't survive anymore. If you have a large warm market, then you can survive the beginning. However, if you can't get good referrals, then you will not last much longer after your warm market dries up. There is the chance to move up to management if you can survive two years. Had I found a position to moonlight in at the same time, I might have been able to last long enough and could have siphoned some of those extra dollars from that job for marketing or to buy good leads. Mostly everyone at the office got along, which is great.
Cons
Although there is great training, often times that could hinder your availability to your client or prospect. If your prospect goes cold, then you just lost a sale. Call nights could be brutal, expect to be at the office late and making calls to anyone and everyone you may have a phone number for. Again, this could take away from potential clients and prospects. Financial services is a very clustered type industry, often times you will run into multiple companies in the same territory areas you working in. Often when I went to city chamber events, other reps not only from my own office would be there, but also from other companies. Sometimes half of the people at the chamber event would be insurance and financial services people. From what I understood, I was one of the last to get into the program where the company pays a small weekly salary of $400 while studying for licensing (Series 6/63) and training - this was for 10 weeks. After that, there is a draw of $3600 you can pull from - that lasted about six weeks. Once your draw is done, and if you haven't gotten enough sales, you might be screwed. Although some managers are great and trust worthy, others are not so much. Upper management may even make your life more difficult as it truly is a "What have you done for me lately" mentality. Although Pru offers great products with a strong name attached, they are somewhat expensive. My warm market was made up of Blue Collars who just couldn't see spending that kind of money on the products I was able to offer; often times they ended up going with a lower cost alternative and I couldn't blame them as sometimes it was half the cost for a similar product like a 30 Year Term Policy.