Pros
C-Level Access, Interesting Initiatives, name recognition on your resume is high. Very well respected in the industry and will open doors. Great sales methodology (Value Selling).
Cons
At Gartner, and in sales in particular everything depends on who you get as an Area Manager and as a Regional Vice President. If you get a good one, you're golden. if you get someone who is bad, you might as well quit. More and more sales roles are being filled with people from SMB department in Fort Myers, where recent college graduates churn through phone calls, emails, to small to medium companies. The Major Accounts teams and culture is being infiltrated with a micro-management mentality that is hard to endure for anyone who is a seasoned and professional sales executive. The procedures, ongoing irrelevant meetings, fake hurrah about how to sell and upsell take a toll on someone unless they are a workoholic with no life, which many area managers are. Worst of all, Gartner will always blame their sales executive who does not upsell Gartner value (and add licenses) in spite of what is happening at the company- ie. if an energy company has to cut budget and decreases their spend, Gartner management will point the finger at the sales rep for not selling Gartner value, without realizing that there are certain factors beyond your control. Gartner is also under huge amount of pressure to grow from 2 to 4 Billion dollars so they are giving less and less accounts to representatives and asked to grow them at a 20% rate year over year. Lastly, while the reps are given the responsibility to grow accounts and licenses, the reality is that very few managers will enforce the compliance aspect of the accounts they have. It is a widely known fact that clients will share passwords, licenses, in order to avoid paying more for services. In order for the relationship to be maintained, many managers will tell you not to engage compliance because this will get client upset. Perhaps Gartner was a great company to work for 5-10 years ago, but if you're a professional IT sales professional, think VERY hard before you fall for their heavy recruitment efforts. Half of the people in my training group either quite or were driven out by poor management, and many feel like they would have been much better off never having worked here.
