Confluent is a hard sell. Made harder as you're likely reporting into a lot of people that have no idea what it takes to get a deal over the line, how the technology works and are working hard to justify their existence. This is a result of the constant cycle of change, leadership, commission structures, GTM over the past few years. There has been no stability or direction in the region. It makes a hard sales job even harder and culturally the company has suffered immensely as it's grown since it's IPO. Deal cycles can vary from 6 months (if you're lucky and the previous rep has done the ground work for you ) to 2 years+ and that's to land a customer and it's unlikely some mega pay day deal that you think should align with the gargantuan effort you put in to win it. I've held AE roles where I would do 150% attainment with half the effort and stress and with far less ground breaking technology. Effort versus reward doesn't seem to align here. There was barely any celebration of wins in the near 5 years I was there. You always felt and were made to feel "behind" and there is far too many internal politics that get in the way of actually focussing on the important stuff. Incredibly hard working, talented AE's have not done well here. If you think incredible tech is going to do the selling for you here then think again. This cannot be the case of the previous reps were bad.. if that's the case then what is management hiring bad reps for. If you're a good AE. you will qualify the hell out of the hiring manager here.
