It is widely known that Keyence has a very aggressive approach to sales which is evident by their market position in many areas like machine vision and safety. However, this is a double edged sword as it turns many customers off to wanting to work with Keyence and makes it tough to work with customers and break into new customers. It is hard to shake the reputation even with well established customers.
You are simply a number and you are expected to and graded on your output of volume of emails, phone calls, sales calls etc. It really is quantity over quality. Being a Japanese company, they are very strict to their many (many) KPIs.
You must be in the sales office 2x per week, no exceptions. You are not treated like an adult who can manage their own time and be trusted to do their job without having someone looking over your shoulder. This is understandable to a degree as most salespeople are fresh out of college and this being their first full time role out of school. Overall, the company is fine with hiring 100+ people yearly and having less than a 50% retention rate after 2-3 years.
You will notice that Keyence is a launch pad for many people into other sales roles at other organizations in the industry. It is never the other way around, you will never see someone in the industry come to Keyence and it is due to their approach to sales here in the US and only promoting from within
Overall, Keyence is a great introduction into the world of automation and sales with market leading products and great sales training. It is by no means a place to stay for long as the average tenure is 2-3 years. It does help on a resume for transitioning to another sales role in the industry.
