The city, the short term mindset of leadership, non-equivalent books of business, and turnover.
After several months in Fort Myers, you will get very tired of your surroundings. It is a small city with a “middle age and up” majority demographic. The best crowd in the city will be your fellow colleagues, which is great for the office, but it gets tiring quickly when work is the common denominator in your conversations. The SMB channel is a bit of a farce as well. Every training class is 30-60 people and MAYBE half will be remaining after a year and a half. This is why the channel has such a huge focus on recruiting; the turn over is tremendous because you are not very empowered in your role. You are the liaison to the analyst community and the research, but you yourself are not advising and consulting clients (except for what kind of conversations they should be having). Not all books of business are created equally, and how your team is determined is luck of the draw. On top of that, when someone is recognized, they are touted as being successful because of their “unlimited mindset” which sends the effective message that everyone else does not have the same mindset. In reality, the rep being recognized is usually just having more luck with client situations. The product itself is an intangible. It is difficult to quantify how much success or ROI a client has when working with Gartner, and it makes the sales cycle that much more difficult. It does not help that the CRM is an in house made tool that inadequately records client conversations, tasks, and necessary follow ups to service clients. Lastly, for a global leading company it is concerning how nonchalant SMB leadership is regarding deceptive business practices. False deadlines and urgencies with inflated ‘price increases’ are the norm, and falsely inflated price points proposed to potential clients without complete transparency into SLA’s are a common tactic.
