Broad strokes: New sales leadership came into Sage Intacct a little over a year ago, and since then there has been a nonstop flow of changes that leave the organization more confused and convoluted than before. Several newer reps on my team that started after the first of these major changes have told me they feel like since they started, it has been nothing but one change after another. Others have told me they feel completely lied to about what this role would be. We are constantly trying to figure out what the current policy or rule is on a certain matter and leadership just continues slogging ahead with their changes, completely uncaring towards reps that are struggling to keep up. Retention: senior leadership continues to increase headcount in an attempt to bolster numbers. This makes attainment more difficult for reps as there are less leads to go around and more threat of being expendable. When reps are fired or leave the organization, little to nothing is said about their departure from management and often is not learned about until weeks or even months later. The hush-hush nature of these replacements is disturbing. Even more disturbing, however: one tenured rep that was widely admired for their willingness to speak up to leadership about our concerns and address obvious issues with their ideas and changes was abruptly dismissed from the organization, and once again nothing was said about it. I only found out when I messaged them about a lead they had ROE on and they let me know they had been terminated. The above-mentioned weekly meetings management started holding to allow reps to discuss issues they have are gradually becoming less of an open forum with reps afraid to address the actual issues at hand. They are now barely more than a meeting for leadership to misrepresent numbers about how the teams are performing to keep us calm and walk us through the next several radical changes they plan to make in the next couple of months. Promotion/recognition: Our inbound leads, called MQLs, have seen a sharp drop off in quantity since the start of 2023. To compound this issue, these MQLs get distributed at an unusually imbalanced rate both in terms of quantity and quality. Some reps get dozens of MQLs a month and convert the majority of them, while some reps don't even hit double digits with workable MQLs and convert the ones they can work at the standard rate or lower. Leadership somehow perceives the reps converting an unusually high rate of their MQLs as being "top performers". The reality is these MQLs are prospects that have requested to speak with us, are ready to buy, and could be converted by my 90 year-old senile grandfather. Leadership lauds and awards the few reps who are doubling or tripling their quotas EXCLUSIVELY from these silver spoon MQLs. The remaining 90% of the sales org that didn't benefit from this broken algorithm, who didn't have their quota handed to them on a platter, are insultingly told we should learn from these reps. I say insultingly because these reps have admitted to us privately that they didn't have to prospect/work outbound leads at all, and made dials at a tiny fraction of the rate of other reps struggling to attain. As an extra slap in the face, the only "solutions" or "help" we get from senior leadership is being told to "work harder" and "control what you can control". The irony here, aside from the obvious bit that the top reps are not working hard or controlling anything, is that leadership themselves doesn't control anything to help us and often just make things even more challenging by introducing another major change. They claim they have been trying to correct the disparity with MQLs yet the issue has remained for months now. Many reps have to disqualify bad leads more often than they can work them, but the leads that you disqualify because they are nothing more than spam that wasn't filtered out still count as an MQL towards your total and thus ensure you get even less to work. And now teams are being restructured yet again (3rd or 4th time in 6 months, I lose track) so that only a select few reps will receive the inbound leads while the rest will have to work exclusively outbound. Given senior leadership's love to coddle the "top-performing" reps and letting the remaining 90% drown, take a wild guess as to how those teams will be divided. A competent leader might wonder why the "top-performing" reps aren't placed on the more challenging team to hone their skills and prepare them for promotion. Competent leaders are few and far between at the senior level. Regarding promotion, despite more and more reps becoming tenured and senior and expressing frustration with the tendency for Intacct to hire externally, the organization still seems intent on almost exclusively externally hiring for roles. It is unusually hard to be promoted within Sage even as a high-performing rep, thus when positions are available they are even more competitive. Compensation: I'll keep this part brief, although it is one of the more outrageous points of my review. 6 months ago, our teams were divided into inbound and outbound. Outbound had a higher base pay, inbound had a higher quota, inbound outnumbered outbound. Outbound was the next step up after inbound. Over the course of several team restructures, and with the decline in MQLs, reps that aren't receiving the disproportionate quality and quantity of MQLs mentioned above have been told we are "essentially outbound" at this point. Yet we are still compensated as if we were inbound. We are paid less, have a higher quota, and are expected to prospect even more than the original outbound team. The reps that are compensated higher receive more MQLs and prospect less. It almost comes off as a plot by leadership to have a larger outbound team that they can pay less. More likely it genuinely is just leadership once again obliviously and inadvertently sowing even more resentment among their reps. Culture and Attainment: As I mentioned in the pros, when I started with Sage Intacct the organization FELT vastly different. I hardly recognize it now. No matter the complaints we raise, leadership continues to make changes that make it harder to attain your goals. In September, not even 20% of the team hit quotas. Then leadership had the brilliant idea to raise quotas by 33%. Unsurprisingly, only a small fraction of reps hit their goals. Then, last night (management likes to make major announcements via email and after hours), we were told our quotas would remain the same because, and I quote "September is usually equal to August. The quotas remain the same as we had in August." If September is equal to the month when less than a quarter of the organization attained quota, why would you keep that same quota? Moving on and back to culture. One particular change has served to significantly worsen culture: MQL poaching. If you don't contact your MQLs within 90 minutes of assignment, regardless of reason, ANY rep in your territory is free to take it. This has created an incredibly cutthroat environment and many leads are poached well before the 90 minutes have elapsed. Closing: One may wonder why lower managers do not convey all of these concerns and struggles reps seem to deal with to senior leadership, or at least make some solutions themselves. The answer is they can't. Even when we bring these issues up to senior leadership, their answer is they can't. Any issue with changes or culture etc. are always given the same answer: "this comes from above me" "my hands are tied". Direct managers have no power aside from being mouthpieces of senior leadership, despite voicing many of the same concerns as the reps during our 1:1 talks. All anyone can seem to do is adapt to the changes and hope they don't completely screw you over. Do not work at Intacct. At the rate leadership makes changes, it will not be the same organization you applied for when you exit training.
