Grateful f...

Question

Grateful for feedback / insight from any AE's - positives & negatives . 
Are you set up for success?  
Whats sales leadership style ? 
 Are you micromanaged with metrics,  (calls made, activities logged).  
If you were interviewing now what questions would you ask / commitments would you ask for?

Former Employee · Accepted Answer

I'm not sure what level you are in your career but for someone who has been in tech sales for 20 years this was taking a HUGE step back for me. It is very much a start up and the wild wild west. The enablement team has a huge say so in your success which is odd. While I did enjoy my first line manager leadership over all is lacking. Expectations are misaligned throughout the organization. VERY VERY VERY metric driven. Doesn't matter if it's not working they want numbers of calls and activities. Left little time to actually do prospecting the right way with clear research.

If I were interviewing I would ask for rep attainment. When I was there the only reps making their numbers in the enterprise org were people who were selling into current clients. Net new logos in the org were very challenging to get. I will say that the corporate (more midsize companies) did do well. Problem with large customers is that they typically had Anaplan, Oracle, etc and spent millions not just on software but on building out centers of excellence that they were very risk adverse to bringing in Pigment. I would also ask about how they are aligned with the Solutions Consultants, I did not have a good experience. They were hesitant to help do any discovery.

The tech is great and they paid well from a salary perspective but the culture for me was NOT IT.

Hope this helps.

Current Employee · Answer

I agree with the other response overall.  Upon joining, there is genuine positivity across most of their teams but I don't feel like it's at the current state of development as an organization that you're likely to knock it out of the park.

Expectations from reps change monthly and you better be ready and willing to do lots of cold calling without a lot of actual strategy behind it - enablement teams build lists for you to call weekly without a true reason or customer/prospect message developed.  The most successful reps have had success due to tenure and territory patches that don't often get aligned.   The more tenured reps are also not held to the same standard of work from prospecting because they can point to the closed won, which is more a function of their patch than actual skillset or effort expended.

Leadership is a bit all over the place from the sales side.  There are some bad leaders at the RVP level who are nightmares to work (enterprise west) with and others who seem like great people but who are a bit more on cruise control because they've banked enough early equity that they aren't very engaged.  Everything is tracked, micro-managed which is tough to deal with when their are continuing shifting priorities internally.

I think I'd ask what % of reps are hitting quota and how are those reps who are successful driving deals (i.e. are they just cleaning up on in-bounds, baked patches (smaller enterprise bay area tech)). Their tech still has some good things to work out to fully reach the level they're wanting to reach.  It's probably best suited for 5,000 or less FTE's buying for finance but outside of that the calc engine has some scale issues that were concerning.

Best of luck.

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Anonymous Q&A

Grateful for feedback / insight from any AE's - positives & negatives . Are you set up for success? Whats sales leadership style ? Are you micromanaged with metrics, (calls made, activities logged). If you were interviewing now what questions would you ask / commitments would you ask for?