Toxic company, really hard to fit when you're a Co/Prime AE
Pros
- Competitive salary, overall it remains higher than the competition and you can make a lot of money if you manage to be successful - A lot of room for internal growth and opportunities given that there a lot of positions and levels - A well-known brand - Brand-new office in Dublin with good coffee
Cons
- Salesforce is a huge machine getting a lot of people in and out, they recruit a lot but have a high employee turnover too, if you're not joining the right team dealing with the right territory at the right time it will be a matter of months for you to leave - Executive leaders will never take accountability, it will always have to be individual contributors to be blamed. That's probably how the company always kept a good employer image - The office is nice but no lunch is provided, the offered snacks and drinks are very unhealthy and options for food around the office are very limited or far. - Salesforce is a performance-driven company, they will not value you and your well-being, they will maybe start caring about you if you constantly exceed expectations. - Prime / Co-AEs (specialised AEs) are always struggling to fit in the collaboration and selling motion. If you're not a Core AE (generalised AE) you will get a lot of internal blockers on the way. Pressure come from every direction and beyond your own manager. - The structure of the sales organisation make it really hard to navigate and act quickly. There are too many hierarchical levels and other sellers you're constantly competing against, even if they're not in your team or selling the same product. - Micro-management is everywhere and in some situations there is a huge lack of trust, it can even come from AVP+ (2 levels above you) - Salesforce is defined as a best-in-class Sales school. They use a lot of good methodologies but there is nothing out of the ordinary. It's still very old school for many territories and a lot of pitching first instead of very deep discovery and objection-handling. I have personally learnt much more in startups and smaller organisations. And for some markets it's shocking how high discounts are givento customers with no proper discovery. - The hard truth is that the best performers are typically the luckiest in terms of books of businesses. - Most decisions are made from top EVP+ in the USA, none of the other leaders outside have much saying. - They constantly talk about customer success and ACV, but they will always push ACV first even uf your product isn't the best fit or it could lead to a very costly and lengthy implementation. - The tools used internally are terribly used, for example Slack's usage has no structure and etiquette, Salesforce's CRM is a maze, there is a lot of their own products not used or poorly implemented. Salesforce spends nothing to properly implement or train its own employees.