Superior Lamp Thank you so much for the heads up about this company. After speaking with the representative earlier this week I thought this was a legimate opportunity. That was until I read info from this website New Jersey Nationwide

Ok, I have waited almost 4 years to do this.

As an employee I didn't want to appear self serving. Now I am an ex-employee and I will tell you the truth.

I started back in June of '05 and 11/21/08 was my last day.

I got all the money I was ever promised.

I got training and some of it was excellent, some was ok and some was a wste of my time.

I did schedule some nice appointments for trainers early but learned to make them show me how to prospect because that is the hard part. Once you get someone interested enough to meet you the hard part is done. I always made the trainers drive because they were making money that day, I wasn't. They always bought me lunch as well.

One trainer in particular helped me get several accounts that repeated often and with nice size orders. Thank you Carl Geesey!

My trips into the office (Marlton, then Mt Laurel) were always productive. People were very helpful and treated me very well. They always paid my expenses and they always took us out to nice places to eat.

I did not follow the sales system they taught and I wish I had. If I had I might be still selling lights. The system was instantly distasteful to me and I decided to do it my way. I did but I think their way is far more efficient once you get comfortable with it.

My advice to anyone starting at Superior is to learn their system, have fun with it and use it with your personality. Their is a system to it. Customer's usually are not offended, they shouldn't be if they understand it, and it helps reps stay consistent.

One of my biggest flaws was consistency with presentation. So many times my presentation would vary depending on how I felt. With a proven system embedded you do not have the negative forces working against you as effectively when you have a roten day...and we all have those. It is just get in mode and go with their system.

I was not a big fan of their repeat sales system. It is easy to lie using their system so I was always careful, maybe too careful. That being said, I don't think I ever lied and I had alot of repeats. You do get string encouragement to follow their system and that is ok. They trully do want to help you.

I think I know almost everyone in the office and they are nice people. They care and they prove it by making sure every trip to the office is profitable. If you are having a slow day their will be some pressure put on the in-house guys to help you. It is not uncommon to have big trips in the office.

About the product. Just don't listen to anyone who says the product is overpriced. It took me along time to believe the pricing was faur but I do. I met several long term customers of Superior who loved the product. I have several great stories I can share.

1. a church that was blowing out their halogen lights every 2-3 months. They started buying the Superior lamp and it last 15+ months. Their problem was vibration from the contempory music service. They had lamps fail prematurely and they were replaced without even a hesitation. One lamp went out 3 days before it was removed. It was removed 1 day after the warranty period expired. We trusted them that it was actually out a few days earlier and they got a new lamp.

2. A Pizza shop that had our floods for almost three years before they started going bad.

3.a motorcycle shop was told they had to increase their shop's brightness to meet manufacturers standards. Electricians were quoting them $6,500+ promising 35% increase in brightness at a energy consumption increase. They were using 8ft h*o lamps. I replaced their h*o lamps with Superior h*o's and their brightness doubled, their energy consumption stayed the same, their long term maintenance cost will be lower and it cost $5,000 less than the electrcians.

4. a gallery started buying from me but would never order any of the floods in his gallery. He kept telling me they weren't going bad. Here I came to find out that the man he bought the gallery from had been a Superior customer. I went back in there one day and looked at his lights. Sure enough, they were all Superior Floods and they were all almost 5 years old.

5. an accountant bought flurescents from me (F40T12) and a few months later he nearly hugged me in the grocery store. He told me he was so impressed with the lights. They actually made him feel better. He said it was the first tax season he could go home and play with his kids because he wasn't so exhausted. He told me his wife said he was a different person.

6. A church wanted to save energy so they put Superior F40T12's in their four lamp fixtures. They only used two lamps instead of 4 and they got brighter light, better light and cut their energy in half. Then, they got more aggressive. They went in a room with (8) 3 lamp T-12 fixtures. They removed all three lamps and put one of Superior's right down the middle. They were impressed enough with the brightness that they ended up using only 8 lamps in a room that used to have 24 lamps. They even disconnected the switch to the outside ballasts so the outside sockets were dead and only the middle one worked in each fixture.

The product is very good and the company stands behind the product. If their is product failure they replace it. Even when it is obvious ballast issues Superior covers the lamp but does suggest they won't keep replacing lamps if the ballast isn't changed.

My name is Kent Mummau and my email is KentMummau@embarqmail.com. I would be happy to answer any product questions or questions about employment.

You may wonder why I left Superior. It was not an easy decision. I loved so much about it and every time I went in to the office I would leave re-committed and fired up ready to sell. I actually refused to go in today and tomorrow because I didn't want to go through that temptation to stay.

I decided to get another job because my wife has had some health issues and she was our insured one. She felt she might want to go part time or quit. I looked into private insurance and I found that everyone would make us have ryders on pre-existing conditions. In my wife's situation that was alot to not insure. Group policy through employers cannot deny you or your family insurance for any reason so I started looking for a job about 6 months ago.

Since then I have been offered 6 jobs with half hearted job hunting. I turned down each one until a local college offered me a job working as an Activity Director. I think it is work I will love and I thought I could work part time since much of the college work is evenings and weekends.

In the first three weeks at this job I managed to sell close to $6,000 out of my base and about $1500 new. Oh, while I was in Florida the last week in October I sold another $1,000+ from phone calls while I was in Disney. Not bad.

My new job was a little crazy at first and my time for selling was just not there yet. After the holidays I will have about 15-20 hours per week I could sell but I was not writing much new business the past few weeks. They told me they wanted me to write 4 new accounts per week to stay. They also scheduled me to go to Mt Laurel this week.

I realized by Friday I wouldn't have 4 accounts so I called them Saturday and told them it was over and that I canceled my trip to the office. I also had accepted a major meeting appointment at the college for Monday.

I was sad to leave a great company like superior. If you have the guts to try straight commission Superior Lamp is a great company.

I can understand some of the complaints on this web site because it is not easy and they don't give back your initial investment if you quit. Quitting is the only way you can fail in that company short term. They will try and try to help you succeed but in the end it usually comes down to people not working smart enough or hard enough.

If you use referrals from the start you will save yourself a lot of hardwork and make alot of money.

One more thing. Superior sells a high end product. It is not a commodity like short life lamps. You must learn to sell it but once you do you wouldn't want to sell a cheap lamp. I never want to sell a commodity again and if I would ever sell cheap lamps, I would not be able to sell against Superior's quality, just the price. But, in the end, I think Superior makes expensive lamps that cost the least.

Like I said in the beginning. I have waited to write this until I left Superior. I have no gripes with them. It is true that they are holding my remaining commissions for 150 days but I understood that and planned for it. If they don't treat me right in 150 days I will come back here and tell you, but I would be shocked if that happened.

As for the names mentioned throughout this website, I will give you a quick assesment :

product- Don Warren - great guy, I loved working for him

product- Mark Friedt - another guy I enjoyed working with

Ken Henning - He is a driver but will be gracious and kind so long as he thinks you are working hard. That is fair.

Hal Sussex - I have never seen him anything but empathetic. At times he and Ken play good cop bad cop and Hal is the good cop while Ken is a fair cop.

Paul Wallace - He only wants to make you better. He is evangelistic about his way to sell so I could always appreciate his intentions.He made lunch interesting.

I think that is all I remember reading about. Everyone I mentioned, and everyone else in there, have great flaws. But we all do. Those guys have been doing long life lamps for 25+ years and have made alot of money. It can be rewarding.

About straight commission. It is not that bad once you are in it for a week or two. By the third week you have already received two pay checks and it is fine. The truth is any sales job is straight commission. Most just pay you the commission up front but if you stop selling, you will soon be paid nothing. Superior is the same way once you get some momentum built up.

Good luck selling and buying Superior products. It is a premium company with a premium product line!