- The customer base in SMB is a cesspool of non paying customers.
- Accounts shift every 6 months. I just lost some really great fit accounts with great relationships I built over time, and they were reassigned to a different AM in a snap. Some of them had upsell opportunities go with them.
- New accounts will VERY often be an account already in collections / past due invoice / suspended for not paying their bill. It's a nightmare regarding past due accounts and will significantly impact your ability to hit quota. Yes, even these accounts will "count toward your overall managed ACV" and lead to a total quota number determined by it.
- You will sometimes absorb a brand new first time ZI customer, and sometimes a jaded customer who's been through the ringer with our Indian customer support or Indian onboarding crew for the lower spend accounts. I have nothing against them, but the language barrier has proven to frustrate our US based customers into giving up or ghosting us entirely. Then it's up to you to turn them around and pray they'll renew for at least 50% of their current spend.
- Quota is too high for the level of territory mismanagement. I've had to close out new opportunities assigned to me during the account shifts because there is zero hope in any universe whatsoever (and your manager will agree) that they'll renew. This will heavily cripple you because your quota is already set, and from senior leadership's perspective you just lost 10-15k from your assigned book. Multiply this across 50-60 accounts per year and it will crush/demoralize you.
- Price is laughably over inflated for some packages. You need to adjust customer's spend at renewal time because they get oversold, or they get ripped off somehow by new business with a very high price for a lower tier package. This can create a perception that we deceived them, devalues our product heavily when the dream level expectations set by the AE aren't met, and ruins our chances of growing the account in the future.
- The SMB market is far too saturated with cheap data providers ruining the perception of what a quality database like this is supposed to look like, and it will cause first time ZI customers to churn because they assume (or get wildly mislead to believe) cheap competitors have the same quality data. I do not believe we should match their prices, but we shouldn't be 700% higher in most cases either. Will affect your ability to hit quota or have consistent months. I realize this isn't any fault of ZI's, but it's worth noting as it is a real challenge that you will face more regularly in this segment.
- Extremely obsessed over activity. They want you hitting your dials, emails, and meetings held every month or they will be all over you. There may be hidden exceptions to this for the top 1% of performers I'm not sure, but if you take a week off you need to try planning your calendar around it to fill meetings for when you return. It's also heavily focused on during major holidays with no compassion when your customer base will collectively take a lot of time off while you're working trying to reach them, then they'll be back in office when you're finally out on your scheduled PTO. It can cause you to effectively feel behind about 2 weeks on your month for the activity piece, and they will show no remorse in hounding you nonstop to get it up. Overall, this will contribute to the feeling that leaders are out of touch, don't care about you at all, and may also annoy your customer base.
