Pros
Great work environment. There are fun things to do around the office. Ping pong, corn hole, beer drops, happy hours. The employees are all young so it is easy to become acquainted. The training is really great. The training takes anyone with a degree and zero sales experience and trains them on logistics, trucking, and the sales cycle. The trainers are absolutely fantastic and great people. They deserve promotions and should work somewhere that values them more. Good health benefits. 401k matching.
Cons
Compensation is far too low. The draw system makes it nearly impossible to make commission before year one. In fact, in my one year tenure, there was not a single person in the office who made more than $35k in their first year. Most people, after their second year, were hardly breaking $50k. The industry doesn't provide a future. Even if you break out, land a big account, and pay off your draw, you won't have anywhere to go once you quit this job. Training is too long. I had six years of sales experience when I started. I could have been on the phone selling after 30 days. Instead, I had to sit on an older employee's account for six months before I got the opportunity to sell. No resources for lead generation. You are expected to manage and harvest your own leads. There are no resources provided, other than an internet connection, to generate leads. I was lucky enough to have premium Hoovers access. This provided a huge advantage over my colleagues. However, the company did not provide this. Or anything really. The proprietary CRM was very difficult and clunky. There are huge problems within the CRM software at this company. Often times, two different employees will call the same leads. This is not regulated very well by IT or management. Management encourages calling big companies as many times as possible... In hopes that one time when you call, they will need your services. This has THRASHED relationships with huge companies such as Wendy's, who simply will never do business with TQL. There is no training on how to be professional when communicating with C-level executives. Unreasonable hours. Management expects you to come in early and stay late everyday. Leaving for lunch is frowned upon. Every time I took an hour lunch, I would get stared down or talked to when I returned. This also happened if I left at 5pm. While training, the hours are 7:45am - 5:15pm... For no particular reason. Hardly any paid vacation. Management will micromanage you, but not to make you better. They only care that you are hitting your call numbers and sales revenue, but provide no coaching on how to get there. This job has taken people with no management experience and put them into management roles which can be dangerous as not everyone has the personality to lead others. The draw versus commission structure is difficult to overcome. In logistics, there is very little loyalty; no matter how you slice the cake, customers in only care about price. TQL's prices are generally higher than the competition. The only customers that care about service over price either do not want to work with us because we harass them or they already do work with TQL under a senior broker. Commission is pay as a percatange of gross profit margin. As a broker, margins are going to be very thin. In this industry, your sales revenue will bounce up and down from week to week. Some weeks will be great, some will be poor. This can make forecasting when you will pay off the draw nearly impossible. The draw is based on payables, so good weeks won't necessarily help you if you have a few bad weeks that follow. The bottom line is with razor thin margins and no predictability, it takes a long time to make commission. The list goes on. I will say that in my one year with this company, the experienced I gained was immeasurable. I know how to generate leads, manage my time, manage follow ups, schedule, etc. This will translate well to a better opportunity.