Culture shock for the talented and authentic type
Pros
If you get a good manager, that goes a long way. Decent base salaries if you are a tenured rep coming in. Lots of female analysts and sales reps (But NOT senior executives...there's a glass ceiling there) Clients tend to like the research and advisory services overall
Cons
Hard to be authentic and speak your mind on even the smallest matter- there's a culture of intolerance for ANY mistakes or speaking out, no matter how small. Clients are frustrated with the inflexibility of service delivery and the overly complex product configurations - company is IP based, but has not figured out how to communicate this to clients in a way that helps clients consume effectively and buy easily at the same time. It's left to the sales rep to handle compliance without any support from corporate. Service delivery teams driven their metrics are cannibalizing sales growth opportunities daily. Sales tools, sales support resources, teams, and ideas are created and enforced by the folks with heavy IT backgrounds and and operations backgrounds, NOT sales Finance and pricing does not help you close deals at all. Not even a 1% discount-- Current SaaS reps, take note. Process driven to the extreme, so you'll witness and be a part of $2,000-$5,000/hour in payroll tied up in internal low value calls several times per week . They treat small, enterprise, and global reps similarly and do not segment tools, expectations, etc for the kind of clients you work with Old school management culture, forecasting, and smile-and-dial style taken largely from the 2001 SaaS world. You are responsible for the # and renewal without any power over actual service delivery levels, and you are not supposed to escalate things to service delivery managers; junior service delivery team members can be tough to work with.
