Pros
Friendly coworkers! Fun events with suppliers Large book, you often have many different options for customers who are looking for certain varietals Great French portfolio Higher end items (Dom, Veuve, Moet, Opus, Patrimony, etc.) - most are highly allocated and constantly OOS, but if you are lucky enough to have accounts with allocations its a nice paycheck booster Company sponsors sales reps to test for CSW Good health insurance, retirement plan, etc.
Cons
No training/poor training: employees do not know how to do their jobs properly which leads to mistakes and lack of motivation. There are no official training procedures, once you go through the orientation with HR, the "on the job" training is minimal. There is no handbook, manual, or standard operating procedures for a new employee to reference and there are many intricacies to on premise sales (including important legal rules) that are never taught or explained until something bad happens or you unknowingly make a mistake. Once you are done "training" you are on an island with very little guidance on how to actually do your job. There is no office space for sales reps to work from. The office staff and managers have dedicated cubicles and spaces but sales are expected to work from their cars, homes, or sitting in their accounts. There is a large portion of your job that requires admin time, but you aren't given a dedicated space to work from. There are "extra" cubicles and conference rooms at the office that can be temporarily used on a first come basis, but we aren't given our own space to store samples, work on admin stuff, have an actual computer to work from (you get a company iPad and any other admin tasks you have to use your personal computer for). Your home and your car will become a storage space for your work samples, files, etc. Unattainable goals: sales goals and quotas are sent out last minute (after the period has begun) and are sometimes changed mid period because of stock issues making them unattainable and is confusing to sales employees Last minute quotas result in sales not being able to plan ahead for tasting events, dinners, staff trainings, etc. during the short window of the quota period. Programs used to track quotas and incentives are often inaccurate, so its hard to track your progress each month unless you are doing it manually. High turnover of warehouse employees and lack of training results in constant mistakes, shorts, mispicks, and delivery issues. It slows production and causes issues that other departments are burdened with fixing. Warehouse mistakes lead to increased expenses on sales reps (more mileage and gas being used without compensation, loss of revenue due to time being spent fixing mistakes instead of doing sales). The minimal commission that is made on the items we are delivering doesn't even cover the cost of gas to take the items to the account. Don't expect the warehouse to ever fix their own mistakes, resend trucks to accounts with shorted or mispicked products, or even approve exceptions that would fix the mistakes without you having to physically lug the product to the account during your workday. They will come up with every excuse as to why the mistake was made and why they can't fix it, ultimately making it your problem to fix. Commission rates are not given to you upon hiring, there is nowhere they are cleared outlined to you when you start. There is a program on your iPad that is supposed to show your commission structure, but nobody trains you on how to decipher it and often it locks you out of the program or isn't accurate. Warehouse mistakes are causing strains on relationships between sales and customers. Lack of communication between dispatch and sales results in delays in finding out about delivery issues often causing a frenzy right at afternoon cutoff to get a product pulled. Constant mistakes are causing customers to pull Empire products off their shelves, lists, etc. because they are tired of dealing with the delivery issues and OOS issues Purchasing does not do a good job of keeping forecasting updated and often does not reorder product to keep a constant stock until something is completely out. We run into OOS issues on a daily basis because the products are not properly forecasted for, then we have an influx of products on closeout or added to quotas because they were "accidentally ordered" when it was supposed to be discontinued. Poor management: there are a few really good managers, who prioritize the needs of their teams and the customers, but some of management is complacent and just makes excuses for the constant mistakes within the other departments. They are not open to suggestions on how to improve the company and make our jobs easier so we can sell more product and make more money. New managers are not being properly trained, there is no leadership training and some of them have no idea what they are doing. Upper management is not involved in the day to day. Lack of communication: there is disconnect between management, sales, warehouse, customer service. Information is often not accurate and you can ask 5 different people the same question and receive a completely different answer from everyone. Seems like nobody is on the same page and there are no standards or rules that are being followed across the board. Supplier ride withs and sales meetings are held on some of the busiest days in a sales persons week. Management should see this is an issue and make changes to schedule these on slower days so the sales rep can be more present and less distracted. If not, the standard should be to schedule the DMs to cover the routes when a sales rep has a ride with Sales positions are 100% commission but the commission is not great. With no base pay in place, when the market fluctuates during slow season, after taxes you can be taking home less than $1,000 a paycheck, which is a completely unlivable wage. There is little room for growth and often sales are forced with a loss of revenue due to circumstances completely out of their hands. A warehouse move caused a 70%+ decrease in sales reps paychecks and nothing was done to compensate us for the loss. Our paychecks are at the mercy of the warehouse, management, suppliers, purchasing issues, OOS issues, etc. The mentality of being in sales is usually "the harder you work, the more money you make" or "you get out of it what you put into it" but that doesn't translate in this company, you can spend all of your time and energy trying to sell as much as you can and work your market hard, only to run into obstacles left and right that are completely out of your control and often caused by others not doing their jobs properly. PTO for sales is unfair. There are blackout periods around the holidays that we are not allowed to take off, yet this isn't put in writing. Management are able to take time off during these periods, yet sales are told we cannot. Sales reps accrue PTO but since they are commission, there is not dollar amount associated with the time off. Therefore a DM must cover the route during vacation days. Depending on who your DM is, this could cause a loss of revenue for you if they decide to do the bare minimum while you are out of town (which is common) Paid holidays are also not associated to a dollar amount, if a holiday falls on a Monday the sales reps are still required to work and key orders for Tuesday delivery. We receive no "holiday pay" and are told if we want the holiday off we must use additional PTO to take the time off and a manager will cover our route that day. Reimbursement for gas and cell phone is very minimal for on premise sales. We recently implemented MileIQ to track mileage, most sales reps are averaging $900-$1200 per month in mileage (based on the monthly report in our app), yet our gas and cell reimbursement is $150 (which is pretax). For most that doesn't even cover 2 weeks of gas, not to mention wear and tear on your vehicle. Sales reps also cannot expense anything, only managers can. So if you want to attend an event at your account, have lunch with a customer, support your accounts in any way financially, you have to do it on your own dime.
