Training topics are great but there is almost no engagement during 'role-play' exercises. People don't really take it seriously so it seemed a little unnecessary to me.
The job is awesome if you're looking to meet quota and go home. Senior AE positions are extremely competitive (as they should be) but management positions are few and far between. In other words, if you're looking to 'move up' within the company, your ceiling is senior AE. Could be wrong but haven't seen new teams forming or new managers be considered with one exception that didn't make sense from my point of view.
Teams are split up into senior AEs and all other AEs which is weird that you wouldn't want your best salespeople interacting with as many AEs as possible. Some work is being done on this front so this isn't a huge worry.
Like it's been stated before, sales dept feels completely different from the rest of the company. This isn't to say that there's a negative atmosphere in the sales dept but it's definitely not as 'Bamboo-ey' as the rest of the company. Sales would joke that all the awards and recognition on BambooHR's culture comes from the 'second floor' (where the rest of the company operates). It may be the nature of the job but sales dept always seems way more stressed than the rest of the company.
Even though managers always seek feedback, you don't always get a sense that the feedback is making it any further than the manager you to which you spoke. There's been a months-long transition of lead management and both sales dev and AEs are unhappy with it. Some of it stems from unclarity in job responsibilities. Basically there's a weak sense of unity between sales dev and AEs. Griping occurs on both ends of that relationship.
There's a real feel that 'we are all on this ship and we'll correct the path if we make a mistake' but that can come back to bite you in the butt. Sometimes decisions are made by management but they can't be fully explained to the staff. That makes it harder to be confident when we move in a new direction. So you get AEs that would just rather do things their own way.
Monthly quota review can really affect your concentration and level of stress. End of month is crazy and normally managers spend the better part of the day badgering you about each and every deal in your pipe. I'd often have leads go cold on me after I berated them the last week of the month at my manager's insistence. Average sales cycle for a lead is 5-6 weeks so why is quota evaluated on a monthly basis.
My guess is that we would have a 30%-40% quota attainment for AEs and almost double the quota attainment for SAEs. Make of that what you will, but it jut means you have an extremely successful group and a mostly discouraged and stressed out majority.
