Avoid - Keystone Cops - Sales Account Manager Zayo Employee Review

Customers have had to experience multiple rep changes in short periods and this does not create confidence. You can sign up a new good hard-earned logo and can literally lose them in the next re-org or shuffle of the deck, with that account only to get lost in Inside Sales with no new growth. Salespeople joke internally that long term projects may not be handled by the current rep. Nearly all the focus at sales team meetings was on the current quarter and not enough on the future quarters. It is hardly surprising large sales have tailed off – infrastructure is a long term business and big sales are normally based on long term experience and successful relationships. Short term tactical hits are possible but big deals need to form a significant portion. To get your OTE you need to significantly outperform your quota. Individual quotas seemed generally fair but don’t expect to have a lot visibility into your non-basic pay. Restricted Share Units (RSUs) and ICCs (aka commission payments) are based on your sales numbers, then scaled up or down, depending on subjective factors into which you have little visibility, and then reduced by the % multiple that the company failed to meet its stretch goals (based on sales and other general accounting metrics ) that quarter . There was one good quarter in 2016 the RSUs were awarded at 100% but the rest have been significantly less - sometimes as little as 45%-50%. In these lowest examples to get 100% OTE you need to be around 200% of quota, and if payout is at 60-70% you need to be around 150% of quota. There were a lot of reps below quota and this suggests a more fundamental problem – they cannot keep blaming the reps. Salespeople are now realizing there is a further scaling back of the RSU as the share price drops before vesting due to management blunders (see examples below), some of which border on Keystone cops behavior. Salespeople are treated as hired hands and come and go, at a seemingly much higher rate than I was ever used to. Despite statements that RSUs can be paid at less than 100%, most people join the company with the true stories of the millions earned by the early entrants (very true) and the achievements and early vision/execution of the founder (also true). However the founder and current management are clearly not the right team to lead a mature infrastructure company (Zayo is a WSJ top 1000 company) nor to outperform their peer sectors and S&P500. Before getting starry-eyed about the stock, check out the stock versus the S&P and relevant tech sectors over the last two or three years, even before the latest debacle. The latest sales re-org on 1/1/18 obviously has not yet paid off. Before this there was 6 months of nobody knowing what was coming other than people being told to close whatever deals they could as quickly as possible because it was unlikely they would be handling the account after the change. Long term strategic business discussions took a back seat – at all levels in the sales force. A lot of large clients were sent to Inside Sales (smart, hardworking recent graduates on a phone desk in Boulder/Denver, but who have little depth in market or business knowledge). Customers may be even pleased after a revolving door of rep changes but this doesn’t generally lead to long term expanding relationships. Sales people complain of having to spend inordinate amounts of time on possible high impact small companies (future Ubers) and not a big enough target list of customers and big prospects. The need to have x meetings per week from a small deck of clients and target prospects led to some clients feeling harassed with a consequent degradation in relationship. The head of sales has reduced sales to a science but this science is not paying off. Personally, I would hire someone more inspiring. There is a lot of good in sales metrics but should never be regarded as an alternative to inspirational leadership. Net Promoter Score NPS is being introduced so expect the usual gaming over the metrics if tied to compensation. To tie people to the company with RSUs was a stroke of genius. However when you have so many people joking internally that they cannot afford to leave, must have its cost. Management mis-steps expanded. - Longstanding deputy under Dan was pushed out in favor of a new President, a Brit from Level3, who arrived with great fanfare and only stayed a year. His resignation was announced just before an earnings call (a bizarre and pointed way of leaving), having earned a large chunk of cash/shares in the process. Nobody ever really shared why he left and it was left to the rumor mill to speculate. His hiring trumpeted he was President, his departure only that he was COO and relatively inconsequential. - Again, a new head of sales arrived with great fanfare around the same time (mid-2017). This guy stayed a month and returned to Level3 with a huge pay increase. There were a lot of rumblings internally that this could be prevented contractually beforehand. Not only investors see the above two hires going so badly, but so do potential customers. The modern day CIO is pretty sophisticated and due diligence is performed on long term large suppliers. Too much erratic behavior is not good for company image. - The latest debacle on the share price (today $26 versus $39 only a few months ago) due to poor earnings guidance. Zayo is a top 1000 company and not some new IPO. Everyone knows the market punishes established companies for being over optimistic about earnings. Either management is not on top of numbers or being misled by inexperienced/fearful middle management feeding sales projections that they feel is expected of them.