• I was hired on as one of the first AE’s in the Northeast region in 2020. Not sure if that's true, because there is no defining territory and upon start date, I noticed some SpotOn accounts were already open in my area. Later on, this became an issue because it became quite easy to walk into a business that another SpotOn AE had already visited prior. Odd. The hiring process was very quick, but that should have been my first red flag. After 1 conversation with two separate people, they decided to go forth and send me to onboarding. We hardly even talked about anything in my “open conversation” interview and I had no sales experience going into this role.
• In the conversation, I was quoted a $35,000 base, lifetime residuals and a competitive commission structure. In the same conversation, a 2nd person contradicted that and said the offer varies from case-to-case. Red flag #2, still I pressed on.
• My start date came about a week later and they entered me into their training camp over the next week or two which took place over Zoom. They compensated $500 as a sign-on bonus. The camp had about 50 other new AE’s and never had enough time for 1:1 questions except to a lucky few before the call ended. These sessions took place every day for about 6 hours with no specifics on how the products we would be selling interact with each other. Odd. Red flag #3.
• Come to find out, this is an outside sales role that requires you to go door-to-door. Being based on the east coast and put under someone located on the west coast put me in the constant debacle of trying to figure out scheduling of when I should prospect because if I needed support, that support was 3 hours behind me. As a salesperson you don't even get to see the tech except on implementation days. It's all just an online directory and news letters. What's more is SpotOn is really a processor, not a tech company because if you want to make any sort of REAL money, you MUST sell payment processing and not their POS systems, websites, appointment software etc. They really have no idea what they're supposed to be. Red flag #4.
• Remember that base pay and lifetime residual plan I was quoted? Turns out it’s a strictly commission based position with your access to residuals AND negotiation for a base salary is locked behind a massive pay-wall. Only the top AE’s get all of that. My team lead said he would negotiate all of that with me once I had opened 100 accounts. Other negotiations that could be had could include SpotOn footing the cost of joining your local Chamber of Commerce to build rapport and network, but again, I was told to exceed quota and then that would be considered. Unless you're well established in your community, your only way of selling is rapport building and networking, so you'd think SpotOn would jump at the opportunity of increasing an individual's interest in that, especially an individual who was making quota. Red flag #5
• Management is not open to advice. I was one of the first AE’s in the northeast and it feels like there was literally no market research done to help support the salespeople on the ground out here prior to entering the market. They just shot in the dark with a bunch of undertrained and under qualified candidates and hoped to be able to become the next Square. Seriously, the Kool Aid in this company’s management is unreal. Success stories are passed around like we’re all singing kumbaya around a camp fire. Ironically, all of those stories derive from seasoned salespeople strategically placed in massive metro areas like Chicago, Denver or their home-base San Francisco. Red flag #6
• When I was hired, SpotOn prided themselves on being able to fit their product into any SMB type. Hospitality, Retail, Barber Shops, Mechanics, you name it, they had the product to support them. Then 6 months into my tenure, they started rolling out all kinds of things for Hospitality specifically making wild claims like how they can rival Toast, a fan-favorite in industry. Most of the accounts I opened were unhappy with the switch from who they were with prior within 3 months due to various reasons. The tech is nothing different than what Toast or Square offers and is usually priced at a lower price point than either of the two, but read point #8 and you will understand why this does not matter. Red flag #7
• Finally, the team leads never pick up the phone and they are largely your means for support unless you want to call the actual support number given to you for every question you might have. As a field sales representative, questions come around at all turns that you may not be able to individually answer and wrapping up an entire meeting to take a raincheck for another date often annoys the customer. They're taking time out of their day to hear me rant on about a product that has probably been pitched to them 4 times already this week. SpotOn operates largely on the selling strategy of "sell you and the benefits that come with you as a representative, not the product," but that falls short because there is no meaningful support that values punctuality. SpotOn prides itself in having everything they sell be bound to a month-to-month contract which can be more attractive to business owners in comparison to signing into a 1 - 3 year contract, but what they're signing up for for the month is delayed responses and tech that is not any more special than Square, Toast, or UpServe. Red flag #8.
