Staples: Soviet style management for sales!
Pros
The pay is alright for entry level.
Cons
The company's main drive at the moment is for 'premium memberships'. They cost $299 and are completely pointless. The pricing is not that great and if you comparative shop you can beat us (shopping around in mid market isn't that time consuming, regardless of what Staples says.) Basically you're hoping the customer doesn't have time or half a brain cell to check what you say. The metrics change constantly - sometimes without notice. (They upped the revenue metric by thousands of dollars without even announcing it to us once.) Instead of preparing you for the changes, they will let them happen, then possibly train you on the changes afterwards. If you want to advance - good luck. You'll either have to change states to move up in any position or just keep doing what you're doing. Every B2B has the same metrics, so those in rural Iowa have the same metrics as those in Manhattan. The people in larger markets will get paid slightly more though. New B2Bs are brought on at a higher pay than older B2Bs. The company wants a "self-starter", but they will put managers in place who will micromanage the crap out of you. If your manager fails you by not helping, you have no excuse because you are supposed to be a self-starter. If you fail due to circumstance, it's not an excuse because you had a manager and you're supposed to be a self-starter. You are always to blame. Always. Pray that you don't get a manager who likes to micromanage. It's the worst when you are making phone calls and the manager just sits there staring at you while you do them. They will call you and email you constantly asking for pointless information about what happened on each of your meetings. Management doesn't want to hear criticism. At all. A common conversation that happens is: Manager: Why didn't you sign them up for a premium membership? Sales Rep: They didn't want to pay the $299 fee. Manager: Why not? Didn't you show them all the benefits? (Benefits which include a discount on FTD flowers and Avis/Budget car rentals. Yay.) Sales Rep: Of course I did, but they just didn't want to pay for it. Manager: Then you didn't sell the value correctly. It doesn't matter what you say, it's always you didn't show them the value. You can only have that conversation so many times before you start to lose your grip on reality.
