It's a Trap. They lied and called inside sales when its telemarketing - Inside Sales Representative Avalara Employee Review

2.0
Jan 28, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Avalara is a great company. Great culture. Great corporate environment. Very talented people. Great vision. Their product serves a very particular purpose and niche for the right market. I have no doubt that Avalara will very well take over the world with everything and anything tax. Casual atmosphere. Swanky looking offices. Beautiful facility.

Cons

COMPANY So first. This company is BURNING time and money. They then realized they weren't burning it fast enough and they still had some left, so they went and got gasoline to add to it to go faster. They will call it "growing pains" or whatever soft language that they want to use, but the truth is this from my observation that the company got a giant investment of money, more than they possibly know what to do with. They've set absolutely unrealistic expectations for so many roles. Expectations that leave everyone extremely and hopelessly stressed. From an entry level role looking up it becomes so apparent that resources are being so ineffectively managed. Many upper managment roles reek with inexperience. It's new corporate structure makes it impossible to get anything done because you have to talk about doing it for 3 months. Telemarketing I will be clear. This role is not Inside Sales. This role is telemarketing. It is not in anyway shape or form remotely inside sales. That is only a title they use to make people in these roles feel better. Intelligence is highly discouraged. This job is all about mindless robotic calling to the absolute worst quality leads. They want biological human dialing machines and nothing more. If the technology existed the will replace this job with a robot INSTANTLY. In this role you have to leave pre recorded voicemails which are horribly written and sound like they are failed TV adds. You are not allowed to type your own emails and can only send pre written ones which were seriously written by someone with absolutely social skills. Managments reason being "we don't want to risk making any grammatical errors." Are you serious? LASTLY the part of this job that is most infuriating and completely 100% counter productive is how your success is measured. In this role you are only measured on the number of "opportunities" you create and the number of calls you make. THAT'S IT. You can be the #1 Rep and employee of the month and not even have a single dollar attached to your name. You will become great at qualifying the unqualified. Making calls for the sake of making calls and setting vain appointments. Lastly your job and success is completely out of your control. Management will tell you "If you do your job and work hard you will succeed." They will tell you a thousand variations on how you are not succeeding because you are not setting your goals and that you have to do that to be succesful. This is their evaluation for everything. Managers basically plagerise and shove the book "The Secret" down your throat because they read it once. I digress and say the secret is totally real, but it does not apply to this and cannot overcome the most horrendous inefficiencies of what Avalara calls marketing. In transition, your job and success is completely 100% out of your control. Your success is in the hands of what leads marketing decides to provide or refilter because you have absolutely no choice in who you call. This brings me to my next point Marketing Marketing is so bad that it makes me want to cry in a furious rage not just because it's absolutely terrible, but because no one will ever do anything to make it better or even try. They will talk about making things better. They will talk about it again. Then they will talk about it some more maybe rearranging some words. But they will never do anything to fix it. So mind you SOME of this is probably related to unrealistic expectations, but marketing who the fate of your success and not getting fired is dependent on daily provides leads that are literally engulfing the companies time and money into flames by providing seriously ridiculously bad leads to the point that even Hitler was like chill out those are some flames. Marketing is providing leads that have nothing to even remotely do with sales tax in which you are still forced to call on by management. Yes, let me call on this non-profit, churches, government entities or just any organization that is clearly non taxable. You will be told by management "Your job is to equally qualify as well as disqualify." They are providing leads that you can't even call on because if the number isn't wrong, they are active customers, partners, engaged opportunities. You will spend most of your time duplicate searching And...let me tell you..your success isn't measured on disqualifying. Marketing does not know how to use their tools. PLEASE for the love of god fix salesforce. There is a filter. You could easily save the department 30% in time. And beyond this and the worst part, For some reason inside sales reports directly to marketing which is so completely backwards and counterproductive. It's unfortunate too because Marketing has no idea what they are doing. I'm pretty sure they'd be better off hiring Helen Keller because at least she could see as well as hear the painful inefficiencies that is inside sales. The worst part is if you ever bring up anything about quality of leads to management or say anything along the lines that you have nothing to work with they will say "What would you like me to do...wave a magic wand" while still holding you to you unrealistic expectations and telling you that you need to work harder and set better goals.

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
2d
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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