It starts and ends with Senior Management - Led by Bill Gage the President who only surrounds himself with YES men. VP's who only tell him things he wants to hear. Senior leadership will NEVER EVER help you with a customer or deal. Guess its too much work to leave the ivory tower.
They are stuck in the 1980's thinking that cold calls and no advertising is the way to gain new customers. Visit the website and you will see how pathetic this company is in terms of marketing.
The commission structure is horrible. The only way to make money is to sell your product on special contract pricing to guarantee profit. If you try and use the pricing provide by the company you will never win a competitive deal. The senior management has made sure that if you sell a copier at low cost, they (the company has already made their profit) but the rep makes nothing.
You are beaten on a weekly basis to make 75 phone calls a week and an extremely unreasonable about of physical cold-calls to customers. Getting deal paperwork created is a nightmare with our 2005 CRM System.
Territories are created with no real logic or understanding. New reps spend their 1st 3 months spinning in circles. Quotas are a magical formula that the President and VP's will never explain how they were assigned.
Turnover is off the charts. in 2015 the company has 55 or so sales position in the 5 offices. This year there have been over 30 reps leave. more than a few started and quit in 6 months.
Service (Great techs and managers) is totally hamstrung to really help our customers. The bean counters are in control. Supplies are controlled by the worse bean counter ever. Supplies is instructed not to send items to customers near the end of months/quarters in order for the department/company to meet their goals.
The company only cares about customers when they are going to sign a new deal. NET NEW NET NEW is all you hear. Tell them you are losing a customer, they ignore it and then blame the rep