For those of you considering pursuing an outbound sales role please do yourself a big favor and look elsewhere. Do not pursue.
Where do I even begin? First you will be lied to during your interview, they will say reps are hitting quota, you will have a territory with a large addressable market that is not being worked by anyone and the sale is very transactional with a 2-3 week sales cycle. then when you start working you realize that none of that is true. all the "leads", which are just properties and not actual "leads", have been called over and over for years and 99% of them are not in a buying phase or interested in changing their property management system.
The sale typically takes months to years to close. so you will get lucky if you hit your monthly quota 1 or 2 times a year and just as lucky to hit the 70% threshold to get a commission payout. So you're essentially just taking home a below industry standard base salary. Oh yeah, they dont give you a lap top either. The majority of months only a couple reps will hit either and they are typically the most tenured reps who have built up enough pipeline over the years.
For those of you without industry experience, changing your PMS is a MAJOR undertaking that hoteliers are not willing to do / do not want to do AT ALL unless they have a significant enough need or problem that forces their hand. Some hoteliers will refer to this change as "going through hell." Every property already has a PMS. Furthermore, there are literally HUNDREDS of competing PMS's and they all do the same thing. "a pms is a pms, is a pms" is a common phrase you will hear. Cloudbeds executives even said during a company wide meeting that our UVP needed to change because "all in one PMS's are a dime a dozen and we could not differentiate ourselves." So think about that - you are expected to cold call sell a product to leads that have been called over and over for years, they already have the product you are trying to sell and your product is literally no different than what they have. not to mention the fact that in order for a hotel to use any PMS it needs to be able to integrate with their countless other 3rd party applications / products that they also use. You will lose countless deals because Cloudbeds simply didn't work with one of their products that they are already using in their tech stack.
Essentially every deal is driven by timing and luck. You need to find the right person at the right time and then cloudbeds needs to be able to meet all their unique needs and integrations. The vast majority of deals that close on this team are old closed lost opportunities (that keep getting hounded by reps in hopes that they might be in market again) or inbound leads that are sent to the team because they were already called by the rep prior to them becoming an inbound lead. Inbound leads drive the business. There is an inbound team that does well. The strategic team also closes mostly expansion and inbound leads while being touted as rockstar outbound reps (though this may be changing). All while the sales team is told to make more calls to the same leads that aren't interested over and over and over and expect different results. Whats the famous quote about the definition of insanity?
There are so many more issues with unclear rules of engagement, unequal lead distribution, incompetent management, and a general lack of knowledge for the direction of the company simply because no one really knows. they are ultimately spread too thin, failing to really find its niche in the industry and are forced to change directions every month or two. There is so much wrong with this company. But if you dismiss this as just another glassdoor post that you should take with a grain of salt, I dare you to accept the position and find out for yourself.
