Pros
Work from home and the PTO (although now with sales targets - taking any sort of time off will inevitably make you be placed on a PIP)
Cons
Honestly, the past year and a half should win a gold medal for quickest downfall of a company’s culture and morals. When I began as an Account Executive, morale was high and sales was selling! Was the pay worth any bragging rights? No. But the difference was this was a sales job with nonexistent quotas, closed business targets or any mention of KPIs. Our software sold itself and we were merrily there to relay information to our (very) interested leads. Minimal pushback- never hard selling. Thus, the lack of pay could be overlooked as I could still afford my lifestyle without needing to worry about bills being paid. Plus, colleagues were super nice and everyone was more than happy to answer questions or help you out in any way. And not in the IOU way either- they did it because they wanted to and were more than happy to. But then they changed the structure of sales, removing job titles and throwing us into an array of ‘steps’ which you were placed in based off of your old (now nonexistent) job title. Did I mention they did this right after promoting AEs and making these AEs hold off on selling so they could conduct internal interviews? Imagine getting promoted, hopping on your first sales wide meeting and having management tell you that your title doesn’t exist anymore. After being off the phones for these interviews and losing out on a slew of potential business? I didn’t care, my base salary stayed the same - I was in it for the higher tiered leads which I still got. So I looked the other way from that wild performance of mismanagement and continued selling (in hindsight this should’ve been a red flag). But then they hired the new Head of Sales. Out the gate he’s talking about performance culture and upping the ante in sales. KPIs rollout and closed business targets set in. Monthly goals and quarterly goals and sales wide annual goals all come to fruition. Essentially, classic clean house maneuver. More and more AEs were hired on but our other departments weren’t hiring as quickly as us so now we had tripled the sales department and didn’t have the promised support we offered to closed clients. Account management was drowning and customer support suffered immensely. Client retention rates plundered, lead pools shrunk, target numbers rose and management began breathing down our necks and creating a ticking time bomb atmosphere. Sales was collectively suffocating under the pressure and our only advice from management was to just “make more calls!”. Any attempt to explain a non-closed lead’s situation was categorized as an excuse and met with the same ‘keep calling them’ “advice” we’ve been hearing for months now. Clients began recognizing my phone number and ignoring me or only picking up the phone to tell me I’ve been harassing them and they’re not interested and that maybe they would’ve been if I hadn’t called them 200 times in the last week and a half. But remember, if I told management this it’d be labeled as an excuse and if I just “had a conversation” with them we’d be able to sell! Every month tenured AEs found other roles or got fired for missing numbers. The morning meetings became filled with unknown faces and the support once received from colleagues vanished as our senior AEs left or were fired. Replaced by new hires who were fresh out of “training” (or more accurately the lack thereof) the company culture flipped upside and no longer held its same enthusiasm for helping clients, learning about new industries or cultivating any sort of team morale. We view clients as mere numbers on a spreadsheet and no longer deliver the same service we used to (although we still promise it - anything for the close, right?) clients who wouldn’t benefit from our software are suddenly being signed up so we can hit target and who cares if their business fails - we’ll have their spot filled within a day! was essentially management’s view on this issue). AEs however, lost commission on these companies who left or went out of business. So now we have these ridiculous targets with less pay since clients are dropping left and right and we still have a management team unwilling (actually unable is probably a more earned term) to help us in any way or throw us a bone if we miss target. Selling against a bad reputation is also another hurdle now as we’ve screwed over more clients than not and have hurt peoples’ livelihoods (both clients and employees). I’ll end it here as I think you get the gist of the current environment and I do hope you consider looking elsewhere. Your voice, efforts and work does not matter here. Management at least made that one thing VERY clear.
