I have never worked with a more dysfunctional organization in my career and I've been doing this for over 20 years. Management talks, big and grandiose, we're awesome... but of the 12 guys on my team I was one of 2 that hit their number (which tells you that either quota's are too high or my manager make poor hires). Turnover on this team is very high - 9 of 12 have left in 12 months. Why? On my team the manager is weak, there is no direction, focus and engaging when a deal needs to be pushed either internally or with a customer. He seems oblivious to the fact that so many on the team are not hitting the numbers and he is not digging in to find root causes. It may well be the absolute lack of onboarding process (that's as it was when I climbed on board 3+ years ago and that has been a source of frustration with new hires) - solution training or even something as basic as who your solutions architect is and, there is zero collaboration with other team members. I was told by one team member when I was new that he would not help me because "there is nothing in it for me". Other team members sell solutions other than yours and they call on the same accounts. Their objective is to take the customer's budget before you can - too bad. Customers have zero lack of trust and the only reason they buy Oracle is because with the "red stack" everything integrates on a code level. So that being said, at a recent company meeting I was talking to a higher education rep and he shared that they typically give a 96% discount off of list and, depending on the situation they may shave another point or two. Tell me why? Is it because sales doesn't know how to sell the value so they sell price? No wonder the poor guy was complaining about having a hard time making a living. And by the way getting any kind of pricing approved is absurd with the different applications you need to access that don't easily share data/information. To illustrate how dysfunctional the organization is, when I climbed on board and I needed access to Oracle's CRM tool so I could climb into my accounts quickly I had to get approved by Mark Hurd's office and that took 4 months - I had to be approved by the president's office and it took 4 months!!! And the information in the tool, well it was almost non existent because other team members refuse to provide information or insights about customers that may help you take the customer's money and therefore commission money out of their pocket. In a nutshell I think the leadership is anemic, weak and frankly doesn't care. The old school managers who have been with the company for 15 years are riding the gravy train. My train is leaving the station - I've had enough.
