The President of Field Operations was the worst leader I have ever worked for in my career. He tries to motivate and lead through negative comments and many of the sales team members do not care for his style of leadership. He and his GTM leadership team don’t like to receive or hear constructive feedback and see it as a sign of negativity or a team member not being on board with the company. They shy away from difficult conversations like changing a team member’s territory mid-year without communicating the change to that specific team member. They like to surround themselves with direct reports who they know or have worked with in the past that will be “Yes” people and not ask questions or provide constructive feedback.
There is A LOT of turnover in Sales. Leadership hired a handful of underqualified Sales Directors and all of them left within a year. They keep open positions posted on hiring websites and LinkedIn to make it seem like they are growing but most of them are posted to backfill employee turnover.
Unlimited PTO is promoted as a perk, but it was a painful process to take PTO. My manager tried to make it seem like I was burdening the team anytime I took PTO. I was asked several questions on why I was taking PTO and who was going to carry the workload while I was out even when the request was several months in advance.
There was constant micromanagement in Sales. My manager would message me several times throughout the day asking for updates on my forecast. They would typically ask for updates because they were part of several forecast calls throughout the week. They only cared about the numbers and didn’t provide any feedback or offer up opportunities to strategize on specific deals to try and close them sooner or move them along in the pipeline. They were forecast parrots and didn’t provide any value to generating new opportunities or closing existing ones.
Many people will say the work environment is fast paced, which is true. But, the environment within Sales does not respect a healthy work-life balance. I was constantly receiving messages and emails at night or on the weekends from my manager or other management team members with the expectation to respond to them as soon as possible. There wasn’t much of an opportunity to unplug at night or on the weekends.
