Cobra Group ,I've been humiliated, stripped of pride, wasted my money, and treated like a slave. Coventry Nationwide

I have been connected with the Cobra Group for 5 years now and have read the various posts on this website and have finally become so amused and shocked at some of the reasons for bad feeling towards the industry that i wish to pass some of my opinions across.

Firstly i understand that because i am an owner i of course have been brainwashed by the magical messiahs of the Cobra Group and have a chip implanted in my brain in which i receive subconscious messages from the Chairman telling me paradise is only around the corner!! Of course I'm being silly but from some of the comments on here you would think the business is a religious cult!!

I started in the business as a traveller in Sydney and had answered an advertisement in the local paper which asked for " Sports minded people" Now i am not a genius but i assumed that from the fact it was in a local paper it would be a sales related role and would probably be commission based as you don't generally get Brain surgeon jobs in the General vacancies section, Anyway i turned up for the interview and was initially impressed at the standard of the office as i was expecting something a lot more low key.

The appointment was quite brief but that was fine as i was a traveller looking for short term work, the manager booked me in for an observation day were i could watch somebody else sell for the day ask questions and decide whether the role was suitable for me which seemed completely fair, I will admit that after the interview i had a good idea that it would be cold calling and would be performance based even though the manager did not say "It is door to door and is commission based" i knew through common sense and the fact he said it was direct sales gave me a good indication, On a side note i get fed up with the amount of comments where people did not know what the role would be and feel they were mislead, No one in this day and age describes there jobs as they are everything is over glamorised for example my friend is a " Vision Technician" which is basically a window cleaner i used to be a assistant film director on film sets and that meant i directed traffic !! People describe themselves as having very technical jobs when in fact they sometimes just work in retail, This is not to say that anyone should be mislead when they apply for a role but the job of the Owner is to sell the position as being attractive and if that means saying its community based selling instead of Door to Door then so be it!!

My observation day was quite simple and the guy i worked with made a reasonable amount of sales and i understood that i would get out what i put in and i liked that concept, Also the product was good and the sales guy who took me out was professional.

My first week was great an even though i was not that excited by the bell ringing sessions and over excessive use of the word "juice" i was making good money and had met some good people.
To cut a long story short i decided to follow the management path as it seemed a very easy concept to me, Sell then train other people and if you create a sales team which is profitable you will get paid incentives and eventually if results are achieved you will run your own company, It took me in total 14 months to get promoted and i had good and bad times but the point I'm making is i decided to follow this path not anyone else so for that reason anyone who has been involved in the industry should be accountable for the decisions you made and not blame Cobra for selling you false dreams.

I have been running my deal for close to 5 years now and in that time have seen a lot of people come and go and can honestly tell you that i have left on bad terms with only a handful of people for various reasons, I am very open about the fact if you work in my office you will be given an opportunity to grow but its what you do with it that will determine success, Every individual is told how you become a manager and it is up to them if they want to pursue it and i am also very open that the role is not suitable for everyone but who am i to tell someone they cant achieve something.

One thing i can tell you is that almost every individual who has not been successful will blame everything other than themselves for there failure and i believe a lot of complaints on this site are of the same nature.

I am sure that there are lots of genuine complaints also but what is so important to remember is that the Cobra group is the supplier and each office is run by a contracted company , I would imagine that in the past there have been some owners who have not done right by there people and as a result it gets tagged back to Cobra you should take your issues up with the Manager or office who shafted you!! I run a clean professional business and become furious when someone who spent a couple of months in one office tries to create the impression that the whole Cobra group is dodgy.

I make a very decent income and then money i spend is real so i know from vast experience the business is legit, I am sure that some of you have had real nightmares with your experiences of direct sales but anyone who has sour grapes because they did not get promoted or made no sales should only blame themselves and go back to playing warcraft