Pros
I recently joined New Relic, and I have to say I am a bit surprised by some of the negative reviews I've seen on here.
From a product perspective, I've never worked with a better product. Frankly, it's a product that sells itself. The formula at New Relic is land and expand; once a customer purchases the product they'll come back to the well 3 or 6 months later. And this cycle continually repeats itself across your accounts.
Each rep is given a patch to work based on geography. Each patch is a combination of existing customers and new prospects for that geography.
The existing install base helps reps pad their numbers with lots of transactions and ARR to help you meet your quota. But the best reps blow out their quotas by focusing on outbound and new logos.
And once you hit your quota, you hit accelerators with no cap. Should also be noted that new reps are placed on a ramp quota, and every new rep who comes on board blows it out.
Each rep is assigned an SE to help with the demos and technical validation. Prior to New Relic I had never worked with an SE before, and frankly I will never work without one again. Our SE org is world class, and they help reduce cycles by nipping technical concerns in the bud as they pop up, allowing you to focus on advancing the salescycle forward.
You also get an SDR to help you with outbounding. They rely on you for feedback and guidance, so if you have 50 accounts you think would be a fit, you can divvy up the work and divide and conquer.
For a sales rep, you want to work in a sales-driven culture. Everyone from the CEO to Product to Engineering wants Sales to be successful, and they value each of your wins. Have a deal that requires custom implementation? Engineering will talk to the customer directly to drive the deal forward. Have a customer who is thinking of defecting for a competitor? Executives will reach out to their executives directly.
In the early days of New Relic, most of the new business came from inbound leads. New Relic is a pioneer in the APM space, and when we started there was a lot of demand for performance monitoring and very limited supply (in terms of competitors). I hear a lot of reps talk about the good old days, and I sense a lot of the frustration on Glassdoor stems from that nostalgia.
Today there are a lot of players in the space, and the market is more competitive. Reps can no longer just coast and expect to hit their quota by solely relying on inbound leads. This shouldn't be a shocker or a deal breaker. Sales is a grind, and those who work hard, outbound, and put in the activity continually blow out their number and hit accelerators.
Lastly, let me speak to the culture. The sales team is tight knit: they party together, they vacation together. Part of the formula to success is having a strong SalesOps team with defined ROE's that prevents any foul play, so everyone is genuinely rooting for each other's success. But New Relic also just does a great job hiring for culture fit.
Cons
Most reps are on a quarterly quota, which can sometimes be a grind. The benefit of course is that you hit your accelerators early and often. The downside is you can hit 200% of your quota in March, and then be a chump at 0% the next day. Such is the life of sales :)
