Pros
Office Depot has tremendous brand recognition, which is a great advantage for an outside sales person, when approaching a prospect. That's a big plus.
Cons
In order to drive revenue for BSD, the directive from our executive management team in Delray is to micro-manage the sales force. I assume to send a message to Wall Street that everyone in BSD is doing his/her job. The new buzzword is "engaged". However, distracting the sales people with spending 2 days in the office, numerous reports, meetings and training is counter productive. Outside sales means getting in front of our customers every day, 5 days a week. If you're filling out reports and sitting in various meetings all day, you're obviously not selling anything to anybody. You're "engaged" but with non-selling activities. Since the downturn of the economy, senior managment has turned the sales position into an administrative job.