This office is a cross between Office Space and Andy Griffith. There is a version of Lundberg who says their management style is known as managing by walking around. That means they come by your cubicle multiple times during the day to ask "what's happening?" Micro....micromanagement I accepted the sales job even though the salary offered was just $8 more than minimum wage in hopes of earning decent commissions sooner than expectations as I had in the past. All of my onboarding was done on Zoom because the Business Manager lived in a different state and I never heard from them again during my tenure. My sales training consisted of watching countless training videos and then meeting with one of my three managers to recap if/when they had time. Unfortunately, I was provided with a refurbished laptop and it had problems from day one. Our in-house I.T./engineer would only come in a couple days each week so any fix would take much longer than expected because ultimately he would just have me call the corporate I.T. number for help. As a seller, I was asked to make phone calls to get appointments any time I wasn't watching videos--or when my laptop was down, but barely knew the products. They just told me to call local companies and tell them we can get them more customers and then I would bring one of my managers with me to close them. The goal I was given in my third week was to conduct 10 CNAs per week and those were tracked with a CRM that management was constantly looking at throughout the day. I could barely get to one CNA per day which was not considered successful. To help everyone see my shortcomings, they would publish every seller's billing on a weekly basis so you would know how you stacked up...or didn't stack up. I quickly realized that we were just reselling digital tactics from third party vendors--at higher costs which seemed to bring a lot of churn because the campaigns would not deliver as promised due to all of the "management fees." When a client said they wanted to cancel, the solution was always to offer them a bunch of free radio commercials to pacify them. However, when one client in particular told their salesperson they were not happy with their campaign results, they were told to bring them a cherry pie and Coca-Cola! When I tried to voice a concern, it was often met with the office catchphrase "it doesn't matter what you think." I had hoped for a long and prosperous sales career with Salem, but ultimately I think they were looking for an appointment setter willing to cold call for 8-9 hours a day. Could be a good fit for the right person who thrives on high pressure, but I never felt like a member of the team.
