Pros
- They usually hire smart people - Access to C-level and depending on your sales manager, there is great training and development - When you hit accelerators, commission is very generous - Flexible working arrangements - Gartner portal is great and the analyst and research community is great - Intelligent sales process - Investments in maintaining and developing product currency - New leader has joined the business from HQ and seems to be making some positive changes, but might be a little too late
Cons
- Whilst Gartner as a company is not a bad company, and the product is certainly good, in Australia in both business units, there is a massive cultural problem. Leadership is tasked at sales at all costs, and burns through their team members at every level, nothing is more important than 'activity' not even your health - There are never any engagement or sentiment surveys, and it seems like the reason is HQ does not care - Turnover is extremely high and it takes a couple of months before the shine wears off and people start to look for new roles (entire teams have left) - Burned through significant portion of talent market, so recruiters are constantly messaging candidates because they need to meet their numbers - Staff leaving affects clients as some of them have worked with 5+ different AEs in one year - Because the region is left to its own devices in terms of people management, there is a very strong element of favouritism. Favourite employees get the opportunities whereas other employees that might not play the 'game' often get shafted and end up leaving out of frustration. Sales managers have a habit of scapegoating employees - Service teams are underfunded and overworked - Old CEB business is still very disjointed from main Gartner business, and often times there is inter-company competition, ending up with tussles over accounts playing out in front of clients - There are cheaper more agile entrants into the market quickly grabbing market share - No employment perks at all, not even one red cent was given to employees during COVID to set up a home office - Due to lack of servicing in certain accounts, it is very hard to retain or even grow accounts but that is never a consideration when it comes to developing quotas - Your forecast becomes your goal - Difficult and tedious internal processes can lead to client irritation at perceived inefficiencies, which become your fault as an AE - Service teams have differing levels of competency, and training in service teams have fallen by the wayside - You can never celebrate a deal for too long, as the next week you will be harassed by managers telling you your pipeline has dried up - Huge focus on sales activity leading to people embellishing their numbers, leading to false promises and missed forecasts - Lack of investment in APAC given the comparative performance of the APAC region versus other regions such as North America or EMEA