Pros
- Strong brand presence - Work with some of the smartest minds in the industry - Interact with some of the most senior level executives in large companies as clients/prospects - Good business model, profitable, and growing - Solid training regimen, intensive and structured
Cons
- Growth target unrealistic - A sales career here is 95% dependent on the account set you receive. I know many great sellers who got stuck with dud accounts which led to their demise - A good salesperson does not make a good manager; Gartner's lack of true sales management layer is concerning. We don't need managers who manage by an Excel spreadsheet, impose authority yet are unable to help in the field. There have been a lot of managers who went back down to sales roles because they weren't successful and Gartner should learn from this. Sending someone to a "leadership training course" does not automatically make someone a capable leader - Limited ways to commercially position Gartner solutions...in essence sellers have 2 or maybe 3 different product types to work with customers which limits the scope significantly - CEO recently embarked on a large salesforce increase, yet did not keep up with the analyst resources. This has led to a lot of overworked analysts (who already are weighed down by processes and bureaucracy) who end up leaving. Star analysts recently who left to go to Porche and Salesforce are good examples of this.