How challe...

Question

How challenging is it to achieve sales targets as a new Account Executive at Paychex?

Former Employee · Accepted Answer

Most of the top reps of the company I ever met or spoke with all said it would take 2 years of blood sweat and tears to get consistent and to be in a position where you can hit with relative confidence. 
The culture of the company though seems to be to give about a year otherwise the stress gets piled on with PIPs and obnoxious leadership-driven meetings that seem often tongue-in-cheek. 
In addition to what's been said below, I would also include factors for the territory you'll sell to. Many states have laws and regulations that could play in your favor since there is more of a need for some of the extra services or outsourcing less the business owner wants to forgo business activity to become an expert in payroll tax law, HCM, and so many other tedious aspects. 
Some states like my own do not have such laws or policies in place, this added to the challenge. 
For example, in the state of Oregon, each employer needs to provide some sort of retirement plan option. If they don't choose one they have to leverage the state option which is not great in general. 
An Idaho rep once mentioned to me that Idaho has no such requirements so the product was harder to sell/bundle as to many it felt unneeded. A good sales rep would learn to work through that to propose the right value however, we can all admit, that it is easier to sell the product if the client knows they HAVE to do something, so they might as well bundle it if it sounds good enough.

I left largely due to culture. Most of my success came from the seeds planted by other reps in the territory before me. The thing is, they were still with the company when I got to reap the benefits. Those deals would have made the difference between that rep looking like one of the 6 of 9 in the previous post and a more consistent and reliable rep.

Lastly, it all comes down to the partnerships. If you can establish and maintain value with partners (CPAs, Banks, etc) then your likelihood of winning jumps dramatically.  Unfortunately, I heard of many situations where these would fall through because clients and their trusted professionals who referred them would run into service issues leading to trust issues with the company thus resulting in a loss of partnerships with the agent.  I get this exists in many sales arenas but I was a bit surprised at the level it happened with Paychex. Not to mention personality differences potentially holding you up. I had 2 partner banks that were in contract to work with and refer business to me while there. One was incredibly hard to get in front of and work with for no clear reason, we implemented many strategies (me and the DSM and other management) to try and jump-start the relationship to no avail while the other one was hit or miss at best.

Someone said it all depends on your effort and strategic ability. I agree there, I simply feel there are considerations that Paychex does not appear to care about enough to address with new people coming in and as such result in a high turnover. For context, when I was hired, I was part of a class that had around 50+ new hires (who covered different states across the US). When I checked around the 1-year mark, there were about 5 reps remaining besides myself and maybe 3 of them seemed to be focused on making it long-term.

Current Employee · Answer

Over the past 8 months 60% if our sales team has been put on a very shady and nearly impossible PIP.

Only 5% of 80 reps are consistently hitting 100% to quota
80% of those reps aren't even at 50% to quota.

My team has had 6 new reps within a year....sales careers come here to die

Current Employee · Answer

Put simply 80% of Sales reps did not hit quotas last year and are not pacing to hit this year's goals. 
Important to note 50% of your comp is determined by hitting 100%+

6/9 reps on my direct team have not hit quota in 4 months

Good luck!

Current Employee · Answer

Market and the product you are selling will largely determine this. Quotas have been consistently increasing. With strong partnerships you will be best set up for success. If you are in the right territory you will do well. If not, it may be a struggle.

Former Employee · Answer

Unless you have a well established network of HR and Finance leaders, AND those people are in the territory you’re given, it’s unlikely to hit your quota working a 40 hour work week. 
Expect to spend at least a year building relationships until you get some good business.

Current Employee · Answer

It depends on your effort, territory, and ability to be strategic. If you're willing to put in the work and be smart about where you focus, you can be very successful here.

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Anonymous Q&A

How challenging is it to achieve sales targets as a new Account Executive at Paychex?