If you're in sales, just stay away - Regional Sales Manager Avalara Employee Review

1.0
Mar 15, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free beer after hours, if you don't have a life and no one to go home to. That's about it.

Cons

Worst micro-management I've ever experienced. Which might not be SO bad if the sales managers actually knew what they were doing. Completely clueless. Their entire philosophy is "dial more numbers", "send more emails" and by default, you'll just magically make more money. A couple years ago, the company thought they were growing a lot faster than they really were and over hired sales reps. By a long shot. The entire sales organization has been struggling ever since. They had to let a bunch of people go, and created new (worthless) positions for other people they didn't want to can right there on the spot. But ultimately, it was a position where management hoped people would just weed themselves out. It worked. People were quitting left and right, while those that hung on (miserably) were given more and more restrictions, month after month, systematically guaranteeing their failure. Then they hold "team meetings" where managers berate their entire team for missing quota. If anyone mentioned the restrictions and how they made it very challenging to hit quota, they would literally get screamed at and told to "find employment elsewhere, if you don't like it". On top of that, we were consistently given fake leads then we would get yelled at for "not working them". We were trying to sell sales tax calculation software, but we were expected to work leads for non-profit organizations, government entities, utility companies, and a laundry list of other businesses that had no use for our software. For the handful of leads that were actually good, the majority would say they weren't interested, then their contact information would go into a list that was called ad emailed over and over, day in and day out by two dozen desperate sales people, until they demanded we never call again, blocked our phone numbers, and registered our email domain as spam. If people asked me what I did for a living, I literally told them I was a telemarketer. Morale couldn't possibly get any lower across the entire sales team.There are a few "superstars" there, who are force fed all the high quality, big $$ opportunities and are raking in the cash. But they are drinking buddies in the "good ol' boy club" with upper management. If you don't spend all your "free time" (what little is given to you) drinking and partying with upper management, then you are just given the leftover scraps that the managers BFF's couldn't close. While these few sales reps are blowing their numbers out of the water, the entire rest of the sales force was struggling to even come close to quota. Customers were constantly furious, because they were sold products they didn't want or need, but were sold them at a highly discounted rate and the only way to get the "great deal" was to purchase multiple products as a "bundle package". Everything would seem great, and we'd get them into this fully automated system, then when their automatic renewal comes around, their cost for using the products would increase 200%. Customers would be irate and threaten to cancel, but it was so difficult to undo the automation, and go back to a manual process, that they were practically stuck with the product. Either pay full price, or cancel and deal with months of difficult work to undo everything and get back to the manual process and get your books back in order. I could go on and on about all the cons and negativity, but you can just scroll down through all the other reviews to see everything else that's wrong with this company. As stated many times before, the majority of the positive reviews are clearly fake.

Explore other reviews about Avalara

5.0
Jun 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good org Solid product Good middle mgmt.

Cons

Like every SaaS org direction as a whole is a bit turbulent Needs to figure out how to properly lean into Enterprise

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Avalara Response
4w
Thank you for sharing your experience at Avalara. We appreciate your perspective and are glad to hear you’ve had a positive experience with the team and the work. We also value your thoughtful feedback as we continue to improve and grow. We’re grateful to have you on our orange team.
4.0
Jul 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Avalara truly has great people working for the company. The culture is strong, we wear orange and are out in the market having fun which is appreciated internally but also by our prospects, customers and partners. There is potential to make very good money along with enjoying many other great benefits that other companies i have worked for have not offered. Avalara does not hesitate to invest in software and other tools that help their employees do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

Cons

There has been a lot of turnover at all levels which is not a bad thing because it brings new ideas and perspective to the company. With these new ideas and frameworks there has been a lot of change and shifting goals so you need to be adaptable to keep up. The loss of longtime employees also leaves a gap of institutional knowledge which can make finding answers to questions challenging.

1
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Avalara Response
1d
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience at Avalara. We love hearing that our culture, has had a meaningful impact on your experience, and we also appreciate your perspective on the pace of change across the business. Feedback like this helps us continue building on what is working well while improving how we support employees through growth and transition.
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