Your best is never good enough. There is a lot of micromanaging. If you have a large geographic sales territory, you will spend a lot of time on the road including overnight travel. People are promoted to management based on sales success and seniority, not because they have managerial or people skills. The company has an inherent mistrust of its employees, but it has improved. For example, when I first started, you could not be trusted to access useful information like customer contact info unless you were physically in the sales office, which made it difficult to be flexible on the road. Since it is a Japanese company and many managers in the US speak English as a second language, there can be some difficult communication. For example, there is a long-standing Japanese mis-translation of the term OEM. Keyence thinks it means a custom machine builder and their database labels companies that way, but it creates confusion when talking to mass-producing manufacturers (real OEMs). The tech support division is woefully understaffed and does not have a sense of urgency. When you have customers whose equipment needs advanced troubleshooting, repair, or replacement, then you (and the customer) are often hung out to dry. There is a lot of employee turnover, which is not necessarily a bad thing because if you stick around you will get promoted, but there is a reason for the turnover. There is a reason that they pay so well - otherwise even fewer people wouldn't stick around. Your job is to sell the product at the highest price possible and to influence customer specifications to buy Keyence in the future. I will admit that I have feelings of guilt from over-charging small businesses because they had no other choice than to buy the specified product from me. I also feel guilt about taking sales away from worthy American competitors. If you care about your carbon footprint, driving hundreds of miles each week could give you some heartache.
