Only at a pearson do they take a position that was designed to help current customers and make sure they have a good experience with our products and change their name to Loyalty rep and make them enter data all day and actually help very few customers. Now I know what the reps always complained about!
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Get rid of 50% of the core reps. They sit behind a computer. They can't sell anything. Keep the cold call reps & proven drivers. You just saved the company.
The market size in higher education continues to shrink every year because of OER and instructors deciding they don’t need a textbook anymore and we haven’t hit the big demographic drop of college age students which will hit in three years. To take serious marketshare it will take at least three years and big investments in new products and support not just taking support people and calling them renewal reps. That might look good on paper like you have more reps but customers stick with you because of great support and products not someone emailing you and asking if you are going to stick with us next term. The company doesn’t have the will to make the investments and should sell to someone who does.
With respect, you're mentioning modern tech companies? As if that means something. Within the context of Pearson? Wowwwewoow
@dbfs+1l8FFuAf It actually makes sense— every mature tech company has BDR, “grower-type” sales rep, Loyalty advocates, etc.
Our problem is we created these roles but didn’t both to define them AT ALL. I swear how CC gets Tom to sign off on things that have NOTHING to support its funding is insane.
But to your point, we should’ve been doing this ages ago and even if we got this right from the start (we didn’t) it might still be too late. I am in the camp that T AP Simon is doing a long con on everyone and has been instructed to prep the division for a sale.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were reorganized twice before the year ends and the position comes full circle and it’s back to the old sales director position. I see little activity in my region from this group except for constantly redefining the role and beginning to try and place blame on the BD group. Everyone knew this change made little sense except upper management.
I get the "weasel in" comment because they're paid on verbal commit rather than actual closed business. That's not how the sales profession works. You have to tangibly document closed business in order to get paid. If you don't find that completely shady, I've got a bridge to sell you. Plus they are taking business that was being seeded and developed by sales reps dating back to last year. And don't even say, "Yeah, but it's dual comp." That's BS when the heavy lifting has already been done. What we're looking at here is a last ditch kamakazi mission to inflate the value of the HE business to make the company more attractive for a sale. In other words, a PE firm is basically saying, if you can get to X within 12 months, you've got a deal. I could be off on this (I doubt it), but this sudden urgency to square-peg-into-the-round hole attacking "white space" is extremely suspect.
I don't think "weasel in on" is the correct description. The old LTS, DSS and PSS position was valuable and they deserved their sales credit and bonus pay. It's not their fault they were reorged for the 600th time and they have no clue what to do.
At least the Loyalty reps are doing something. The new specialist position going after the “white space”. That’s going to prove to be another poor reorg decision. A bunch of people sitting at home collecting checks and trying to figure out a takeaway they can weasel in on and get sales credit.