Where do I begin and how do I give you the most brutally honest review I can?
I guess recruitment is a good place to start. Don’t get it twisted, there is no “base”, you are an hourly employee and treated as such. Your “base” is trash and heaven help you if there is a slow month because living in DC/VA/MD isn’t cheap! Even the “perks” posted like being invited to President’s Club is a bold face lie (HR, I hope you fix your ads!).
Admittedly, the original commission structure was very good about 4 years ago (more on that later)… On the surface, they will try to find people fresh out of college to give them an “opportunity”, in reality, it’s because they know anyone who has worked in sales would never take this job. As most too good to be true opportunities start, they will try and lure you in by wowing/flashing you with commission checks from previous sales reps so it all seems real, but what they don’t want you to know is that those successful people had either cheated the system or the structure that was in place was okay because management/shareholders hadn’t dug into your paycheck yet (check out the stock price if you are wondering—pay goes down, price goes up). The other part to it is that they know you have no frame of reference because you just graduated, so these numbers seem amazing for someone who was probably eating ramen and bottom shelf beer a few months ago..
**REMEMBER THAT YOUR COMMISSIONS ARE TAXED AT HIGHER RATES THAN ANY OTHER MONEY STREAMS*** just cut 40% off the top to make the math easy for yourself.
There continues to be so much disconnect between HR, Finance, and Management that they find a way to increase the prices to clients while SOMEHOW still figuring out a way to lower your paycheck. A fun ritual that they play is that they bring us all together for a team building exercise, drop a “new and improved” payout plan and then barricade themselves from talking to anyone so you can’t ask them questions. Ex: Newest plan benefited some +1%, but punished most others commissions -9%....
How you will be treated: You are a joke at best and a metric at worst. The fact they call you by your name and not an employee number is a shocker as most managers do not give one flip about clients or their subordinates. After being micromanaged with times (remember, this is an hourly job!), you are given a lousy script to read and if you do not read it verbatim, they will threaten you with write ups and firing you. This is not a sales job. This is showing your ability to pick up the phone and how well you can read. The script isn't awful the first time a client hears it, but, they want you to the say the same words to the same client every 60 days as if it was the last sales rep that was the issue instead of realizing there might be different situations for different people. You get to look at notes seeing that 10 different reps had tried calling within the past two months (I hope you didn't forget about those metrics!) and hoping that they don't pick up only to yell why the company calls so much.. This is partly due to our research team also having insane metrics, the result is the client being bombarded every few days by different people calling.
The fun part is getting the sale, but, hold your horses if you think getting paid is easy. You can get a client to sign up, but the policy is that you have to get payment over the phone or you WILL NOT GET PAID. If the client doesn't feel comfortable giving you their payment information via the phone, tough luck, the company will keep the revenue and tell you to kick bricks (and if you think this happens every once in a while, have fun learning the hard way).-- Clients have options to sign up without you and that commission check that you count on so much is a lot lighter when you lose your deal but the company still keeps it all. -- The inside managers have 0 backbone when it comes to defending reps keeping their deals when outside managers/execs come and swoop deals. You will be forced to remember a ton of rules that change every few months in order for more of your deals to be pulled. Leadership made a rule change that required reps wait a few days before helping a hot lead. This was thinly masked as a better client experience (which doesn't even make sense because now the client went on their merry way without realizing the bait and switch for a few days resulting in lost more time), when the obvious truth was that they just wanted more people to sign up online and cut expenses. Did I mention clawbacks are a real thing? If a client doesn't fulfill their full term length or even decides they like the service but they don’t want it to auto renew, you will have that deal pulled from you on your next commission check... EVEN THOUGH you won't see a penny if the client renews their subscriptions.
Let's finish with company culture. We had a company meeting where senior leadership finally stopped counting all the money and realized that our name/brand has been dragged through the mud. Was it client services defending policies? No. It was sales reps willing to say anything to get a sale by over promising and under delivering. Everything is transactional selling and the more you can oversell glitchy features and tell them that this will fix all life's problems, the better. How many companies show loyalty to their oldest clients by increasing pricing on clients that have been with us for decades 500%+? Management isn't afraid of saying, "live with the price increase or we will find someone else who will"... and by not afraid, I mean the finance department thinks it is a good idea and leaves it to the sales reps to deliver the news/take the brunt of the anger... And when the client pulls their business, the rep delivering the bad news will take the reversal on their next commission check. The only time that you will ever interact with finance is when they raise the prices on the services with no notice or when they accidentally give the sales floor a couple extra bucks before Christmas and then take it back on the next paycheck. Happy Holidays!
I was going to list career advancement in the pro section, but I have found more people coming back to Loopnet after moving on "up" to sell CoStar or flat out quitting.
Management wants turnover so they continue to exploit naive, young professionals who have no frame of reference, don't have to support a family, and will leave for better jobs so they can collect on the renewals. The longer you stay, the more you will work for the same to less pay. Feel free to ignore the warnings, but don't say that no one warned you.
