As a former CDW engineer my observation was that the number of engineers far exceeded the amount of available projects. While I worked with some smart engineers, a majority did not have skills comparable to their pay grade. Too many "that's not my niche" excuses for 6 figure salaries IMO.
The layoffs that are happening now is a forced "personnel correction" due to leadership not understanding the needs of the business.
@bz can I add that simply due to a vp title does not make you "valuable" to an account, often customers consider you a block to getting things done because you have to meddle in any deal that is tagged big or strategic and take up their time with pointless check in calls and how I can ESCALATE your deal for you - we don't need a stinkin escalation, just let the reps do their job and stop messing with the account
Good Leadership isn't as common as we'd hope it would be. Years ago, I had a great Sales Manager and great Director. I would go into market about once a quarter (I had to fly in). I went solo twice a year, once a year with my Manager, and once a year with my Director. Both my Manager and Director added value to the meetings and were great with my customers. We also held great events my customers loved at Stadiums. My Director created these events and truly cared about them being successful.
Every day, my Manager helped remove obstacles for me and helped me get stuff out the door. Yes, my leadership pushed me to be better and some initiatives were annoying, but they were all well intended. My Manager also used to take some top performers out for lunch once a month and my Director would do that once a quarter. All my great leaders have been "CDW home grown" and knew what I did for a living.
Things have changed since these good old days.
@ah it’s unfortunate we don’t have much in the way of managers with these traits but isn’t that the issue? we’re laying off the IC people to prop up an old management strategy - who are we trying to be ?? IBM in 1980??? Big pay for yes men and no strategy for the current environment and no accountability
@ah
Making sales more complicated than it needs to be.
Customer trusts AM with thier procurement initiatives and timelines for simple rollouts or projects or just a simple printer. They desire honestly, updates if any issue occurs, and the ability for said AM to loop in mfg contacts or internal resources if needed.
Middle management can't even push back against their bosses that the changes being put in place are wrecking the basic business flow customers had come to accept as normal over years. This isn't SpaceX and we're not dealing with rocket science.
All the people with Director or VP in front of their names seem to not be worth the big $ and stock options they're mooching from shareholders and people that actually bring in the revenue and GP.
Sellers will sell to make $ or else they woudn't take sales job...those that don't get weeded out (this is one thing management can do)...other than that..management just deals with daily issues that need escalation...they don't really do much that matters other than that. Lots of managers actually get in the way as well.
Established sellers can literally work from anywhere and maintain or grow. Lots of management actually hold sales back by reassigning accounts to AM's that don't stick around past 3-4 yrs while senior leadership finds new ways to cut commissions for tenured reps.
It's funny because there might be a correlation between longtime management and leadership being pushed out and being replaced with directors and VP's that come from outside the organization....seems like that added to the decline along with what everyone else here already mentioned.
@OP an a sales rep it felt like we didn’t have enough resources. Probably another misallocation
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agree that most leaders don't have a clue but I don't think it resulted in too many engineers, I think we have too many middle managers and vp's that are building their little clown kingdoms- some were brought in as buddies of other employees - not hired for their expertise or business results. we're sinking fast and the market is catching on