Company treading water, poor culture, slow to change
Pros
I worked at Zones as an AE for about 4 years. I have mixed feelings about my experiences. I always tried to look at this job as a paid internship. Something I wasn’t going to do forever but a good place to learn how to do stuff: Write a solid professional email, understanding the inner workings of an organization and how they function together, understanding logistical variables, learn how to use CRM,... These were all great things to learn, but it really only takes a year here before you have exhausted all the learning potential.
Cons
It is only when you have a large amount of business that you discover Zones' abilities are duct-taped together and it’s nearly impossible to stay ahead of the competition. You might have done all the right things-but still lose the sale because we cannot perform on price/capability/speed. Not only is the pay underwhelming, you are required to participate in “trainings” constantly. These “trainings” are performed by partners where AEs drool in front of a powerpoint for an hour while we lose time on responding to email/quotes/cases/etc. There is almost nothing gained from these trainings unless you are a BRAND NEW rep and management knows it. The tools we use are terrible. CRM is SLOW, internet is SLOW, SLAs are SLOW. You have a laptop but no work from home...there is no trust in this company and the culture is an absolute joke. This is not a place you will ENJOY working at. If you are desperate for a paycheck sure, you can get it here, but you wont drive in the parking lot thinking, oh I’m happy to do X, Y or Z today. I feel bad for the managers. There are some really steller people in management. Healthcare specifically. But they aren’t given the tools to empower their employees. The quotas are so high that you will not meet them. If you have an idea or feedback it is not taken seriously. A lot of the people that have stayed with the company have been there so long that they feel trapped. The non-compete is so strict that they don’t know where else to turn. There are some very successful folks, and some of them are outrageously rude, cocky, and borderline aggressive towards others. It has gotten to the point where these individuals are well known for their demeaning attitude and management empowers this behavior. I miss a lot of the folks I worked with directly because we got each other through the bad times. But looking back-I should have left way sooner.
