Pros
CDW is a great company. I love all of the people I work with, and i have a very nice and caring direct manager who is very helpful with day to day things. Tons of resources to help you sell. The more tenured co workers are very helpful as well. Lots of free breakfasts/lunches and happy hours from vendors. Lots of money can be made if you get the right manager and right accounts and stick around long enough Great industry to be in, I have learned a TON. Great training program as well. Paid time off is good. Benefits are OK.
Cons
I'll try not to go on too much, but so much favoritism, butt kissing, and politics go on here. The amount of calls you make, and how long you are on the phone are monitored each day. People cheat the system by calling fax machines and voicemails all day, and get praised for it because it looks like they made a lot of calls with a lot of talk time. People call their family and friends and get credit for the talk time and calls. And people get rewarded accounts for it, right in front of my face. Seems like the only way to keep up is to do the same thing, which I don't do currently and will never do. Then for the people who are making legit calls but not "as many" as the people who aren't, get emails from management saying "This is not acceptable, time to step it up". Managers only care about hitting their goal, and don't care if you are profitable or not come the end of the month. I've seen people get rewarded accounts that come in after me and leave before me every day, and that i am consistently selling more than, and/or working harder than. But it goes back to cheating the system in that "They make more calls than me" because CDW is too big of a company to go in and check everyones calls to see if they are legit or not. A lot of luck is involved, first day on the sales floor a fellow new co worker got a $40k order before even talking to the customer, and got praised and rewarded for it. Management plays favorites. But this goes on at every company. Base pay is unbelievably low. 25K, non negotiable. Been the same since 1990. I feel like a huge dummy for turning down 35K and 40K bases from other companies. I often feel like a dog in a cage, it's a slow paced environment. Happy hours and lunches are nice, but they don't pay the bills. Expected to make 40 outbounds a day, but kind of hard when I only have 35 accounts to call into, and prospecting is mostly a waste of time because there are so many people who have the same territory as myself. Overall it's not the ideal job if you want to live on your own and do things you enjoy, simply because it is not affordable. Luckily I had plenty of money saved before I started at CDW. I'll be leaving when the right opportunity comes along.
