Where do I start, first their operations are atrocious. I sold multiple accounts that were supposed to be installed 4 to 6 weeks after collecting employee sizes that took closer to 16 weeks to actually install. Meanwhile you don't get paid until the customer pays and they don't pay until uniforms are delivered.
The sales teams are micromanaged to death which causes huge turnover. UniFirst specifically designed their CRM so that they can babysit their reps. The weekly deluge of reports included the total number of phone calls recorded, total number of face to face calls, appointments ran, appointments scheduled for the following week, accounts that are past due for follow up calls, average close ratios and on and on. These are all actually great numbers to have if the management didn't force you to fudge them so they look good. My team was told on multiple occasions to fudge the records so we had x appointments every week. Didn't matter if they were real or not just make sure they were there.
We were also required to record in the CRM a minimum number of calls per week. Management didn't even seem to care about revenue, they just wanted to make sure the team was above quota for weekly calls and fake appointments so the regional managers were happy.
The micromanagement would be acceptable if the company actually delivered a decent product and service. But their uniforms which they manufacture themselves in sweatshops in Mexico are very poor quality. The garments didn't last long at all and it was probably by design so the route drivers could loss and damage charge the garments out and bill the client for the damaged shirt.
This was a routine practice by the way because the drivers were paid commissions off of garments that were loss and damaged. Typically the large accounts got hosed the worst because hardly anyone was paying attention. They just signed the bill and called it a day. Some drivers would take perfectly good uniforms and toss them in the trash so they could loss and damage and earn a commission on the new garments.
If you can sleep at night knowing that the product and solution you are selling will not be delivered in any way shape or form, knowing that your client will be locked into a 3 or 5 year contract during which they will be sucked dry for every dollar that can be loss and damaged and for every price increase they feel like and knowing that most the accounts you sell to will end up hating you... Then you will do just fine.
