Brother USA reviews

Stability- They can and will let you go at anytime- at least in sales. I was hired into a territory that was never visited by Brother or purchased Brother- as an Outside Rep. My territory included very large education institutions. In 7 months I basically had the time to visit the majority of these accounts, drive all over the place, shake someone's hand, and begin the relationship by follow ups. All this without the benefits of any type of leads. Anyone who is in sales knows relationship building takes a long time in major accounts who don't currently buy. Long story short, I was terminated without any type of warning on my 8 month anniversary. Hardly enough time to establish yourself in a completely untouched territory that is dominated by leasing contracts, and the 800lb gorilla, HP. Old fashioned- While they finally appear to be coming around, they are not as inovative as competitors. They do little marketing to get the word out compared to HP, Lexmark, Ricoh, etc. Management- Many of the upper managers do not have a clue of what our jobs consists of. It's all about the bottom line...even when we do not neccessarily control the bottom line. Brother does not sell direct Brother does not sell direct- Initially, I liked the fact that they didn't sell direct. I thought it may be an advantage when you weren't in direct competition with resellers. Now, I feel it was a huge disadvantage. There is a significant dependence on resellers to sell your product. While you can preach the gospel about Brother, ultimately the reseller sells the product and frankly HP is king (because of name and spiffs).Besides this, there is a lot of dependence needed on the resellers and distributors, which makes it hard when you are stuck with a target you need to achieve and Joe Blow reseller, doesn't feel like calling you back.

- Senior management and board of directors are all talk. They claim to be accountable and “at your side” but in reality have their own agenda. - Senior management only prefers a “yes” to any initiative or project then acts surprised when project fails. - culture of blame and fear. politics makes life easy but you are held responsible for others’ failures if playing politics isn’t your style. - senior management and BoD comprised of company “lifers” where some have no business running a department due to their lack of experience or education. - complete void of direction and vision. Too many people want to make decisions, adding scope and time loss. Worst part: all decisions are made without properly understanding the root cause or wanting to solve the underlying Customer issues. - no respect is given, but in my department subjected to ridicule and snide comments by the department head.