Pros
- Friendly and optimistic people throughout the entire organization that are enjoyable to be around - Operates similar to a startup with lots of young faces, and has the backing of a billion dollar organization - Good opportunity to fluff up your resume and get you from an SDR to an AE, so you can shift to a different company eventually - Great office location and view - Flexibility for F2F travel as needed - 1-2 times monthly outing paid for by EDQ - Internal promotion is a heavy focus in the organization - Potential partnership opportunities and access to a variety of accounts through cross collaboration with different business units in Experian
Cons
Employees/co-workers: There are a handful of sales personnel that keep this business running, and the rest of the organization hangs by a thread. The majority of employees lack talent and experience, and there is a big demand for internal referrals, which results in recruiting additional subpar talent. Culture is depressing with mostly everyone caring only for their own and remaining quiet through most of the day - a strict 8am-5pm office culture where no one wants to stay an extra minute. Product: EDQ offers overpriced commodity software in a saturated market, which most companies can create with minimal engineering effort or use Google API to solve their problems. In addition to the unstructured pricing platform, the product frequently runs into compatibility issues with potential buyers' technology stacks. The only attractive offering is data enhancement using Experian's credit and marketing data files, which is a product brought on from a different division in Experian and you will unfortunately compete with that division for the same accounts on a regular basis. Sales funnel: SDRs operate under Marketing with hourly wages instead of sales incentives, and can be replaced by an outsourced call center. From the get-go, marketing material is very vague and catches interest mainly from individuals who are familiar with Experian. Online documentation, white papers, and educational material online is a nightmare to find and navigate. The next part of the filtering process is done by recent college graduates who have little to no training on sales-qualification or the product. The leads are then round-robbined throughout the sales organization with minimal research by the sales managers on the potential value of the opportunity, etc. By the time the AE finally gets hold of the individuals, it's either going to be a price war with a low-level marketing grunt that is collecting information or you'll figure out that our product doesn't fulfill the customer's need. As a result, less than 20% of sales reps hit their yearly quota. Overall: Toxic work environment with poorly defined territories, unattainable quotas, subpar/misleading management, and demotivated coworkers. I've yet to see such a dysfunctional business model and am unsure how EDQ is sustainable, but I'm certain it wouldn't be existent without Experian as its fundamental backbone.
