Direct Energy

The staff, contractor's and leadership were a pleasure to work with.

My typical work day was managing the finances and reporting on DE's largest capital project ever undertaken. 

I worked closely with a team primarily out of the Houston office. When I started my role was to gather project costs from 4 different companies and several different cost centres and  set up the project under one business unit, create the budget and forecasting models, work closely with the PM to design the monthly reporting package.

The role developed into ensuring milestone schedules and payments were cleared for payment, working closely with purchasing setting up and managing purchase orders, staffing and contractor costs and ensuring costs were properly managed.

A large part of the role was ensuring all monthly accruals were accounted for, drawn up by me, posted and monthly and inception to date variances explained.

Finally there was project close out and capitalization. The entire team had moved on, leaving me to work with fixed assets and management ensuring capitalization was successful.

Hardest part was the gathering of costs into one company as it was up to me alone to locate and ensure all costs  were accounted for.

Cow-workers were fabulous to work with, had excellent rapport and were very supportive.

Most enjoyable part of the role was training and mentoring financial analysts from the Houston office, seeing them learn and grow. Project close out was also a great yet rewarding experience.

I learned my experience with multiple personalties proved invaluable, particularly working the the PM and having to train basic project accounting and various listening and communication styles to more junior people.

A typical day at work:
we will drop in designated customers by daily customer list. Usually, we will have to visit at least 40 customer located in different location in the same municipality. To do customer's retention or enroll new cutomers.
What I learned
Interpersonal skill, patince to listen, positioning product, convincing customer, fast spotting location, mapping, safe driving and delivering skill, job-related knowledge, paper work, etc
Management
including mapping for team member, customer-related documents organization, mentor and inspire entry level sale representative, control cost for daily work and road trip , monitor and struggle for sales target, etc
My co-worker
When we start daily work, we usually work independently, after a daily work, we will share our experince in dealing with different customers and different incidences etc. We also will encourage each other to achieve our monthly goal
The hardest part of the job
Is to explain our selling product's shortage.
The most enjoyable part of the job
is to make new friends and knowing different municipality every day.

I’ve worked many sales jobs . The people were kind that I worked with. Had to work 6 days a week which is unrealistic . Management didn’t seem to have time for me to talk. You make sales but if people cancel you don’t get paid . There’s so many “deductions” that can happen it’s ridiculous. The pay is so unreliable because you will think you made a certain amount that day but don’t know how many canceled . On the one day off a week we got which was a random week day, we had to pick up our cheques . I had to drive 30 minutes on my days off . Advancing is extremely hard because you have to build a team , but the turn over is so fast it’s hard to get a chance to do so. You must also be trained and you do not get paid for training . Sometimes it’s good fast money but it’s so unreliable even for a sales job. I happily sell cars now  . Also whenever anyone quits they tell everyone “the whole team of 5 people” they fired you . A friend of mine working for the company quit , but management had told people they fired them for smelling like weed. It doesn’t feel good quitting on good terms and knowing they go behind your back. 

Personally, handling the management at this establishment was something I would never do again. Though I had so many great coworkers, we all had the same thing in common, the job was not fun and the managers didn't care about you at all.
We all know that call centres are hard to work in, and it probably wouldn't have been so bad if the managers had taken time to actually listen and direct us when we had trouble. 
I would say the main thing I enjoyed is that it was an easy job minus the occasional jerk on the phone and the bad management. Sales were easy enough to come by if the person actually needed the services, and if you didn't push them, but all the management wanted you to do was push sales.
I get it, make money, but no I'm not going to pitch to a woman who just lost her husband or someone with a disability or language who doesn't understand what they're agreeing to. 
I'm sorry if you enjoy your position or are looking to work here, but if your lucky, you might have good managers, but most likely, you will have the same type of experience.

A typical day consisted of morning meetings. We would than head out to a designated area where we would offer our services to potential customers in that area.

I learned to keep things from becoming personal. Some people do not like door to door persons so they would slam doors in my face. However; I would not allow this to affect my mood and proceeded to the next home.

My management team was very happy with my sales that were very consistent, I was given my own company van and a team of 10 trainees to supervise, motivate and make sure they were able to hit their daily quotas.

Then hardest part of my job was motivating my team to keep up their smiles and high spirits when it was very cold outside.

The most enjoyable part of my job was being able to train my team and be able to consider them my friends. The respect they had for me was amazing and inspired me to be better.

arrive early and got through all the emails and all the updates for the day.

while co workers slowly arrive  try to catch up with them and see how they are doing any new thoughts.

and start working see how many new complains do investigation on the file see what can be offered to the customer and what needs to be done  who needs to be contacted and  if any tech needs to go back-out.

call the customer after 9am offer your promo and apologizes for any issues it caused and tell them what I will do for them and offer them.

follow up with them few days later make sure everything went well and  customer is happy. 

\
the hardest is when you really try and do everything you can in your power  and the customer is still not happy and starts  screaming and yelling and swearing at you,  but that's life and you are still nice and friendly to them.

Advice to Management:
Listen to your customers - they pay your salaries
Listen to your employees - they service and support your customers
Invest in fact-based insights, analytics and research
Leverage fact-based insights to make informed business decisions
Be more forthcoming, transparent and timely with top down communications

I have been working at Aventura Marketing full-time for more than a year

No Doubt, THE BEST Place to work! I really appreciate and thank you so much for all of the opportunities this company has provided me which has not only helped but, is helping me to grow technically, professionally as well as personally. I have learned so much in this past 1 year (and still learning from this great place), and will never forget the kindness of management and all of my colleagues. Aventura Marketing is just filled with lots of opportunities at every level of career. Awesome people to work with, always ready to help, encourage and support.

I thought that this would be a great work experience for me but it turned out to be the opposite.
The owner is nice as a normal person but greedy and cares for himself in business. I did not work long with this company because we were barely selling 3 sales a day and the way workers are being treated is awful.
Plus, I was promised by the owner in person that I will get paid in one week but after waiting for two full weeks and them not answering my calls, I sent them a letter from employment standards which showed them what I could do to get my money and then I got paid in less than 24 hours..

supervised team of eight (three in Canada and five in India)
I learned a considerable amount of the workings of the energy industry 
reviewed entries
ran daily payment run cheque, EFT, ACH, wire
completed monthly reports
liaised with auditors both internal and external
resolved all issues with both internal and external vendors/customers
part of several large projects, (changing systems to SAP, changing banking services)

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