- The most damaging con is accountability from management. Far too often the companies failures are pinned on the sales team. Those making decisions do not admit bad decisions and instead put all the responsibility on the sales team. Yet expect the sales team (new business and CS) to come in day in day out motivated and ready to go.
- Arrogance from management. For some reason, management are under the impression that staff should be grateful for a job at Contractbook, rather than them being grateful for their employees. Because of this, personal development is just non existent. The only time people are promoted is to fight fires and to ultimately shut people up. There is always talk of a personal development plan, but it never exists. Too many talented people left because they were not looked after. Or unfortunately, promoted to positions they are unqualified for and then inevitably fall short of expectations and end up being fired. Create a progression program that motivates people to do better and provide the training and support to get them there.
- Poor decision making, especially with leadership hires. There have been a number of sales leaders that are either unqualified professionally or culturally (sometimes both), for a long time at Contractbook.
With each new leader comes a new playbook that on paper 'works' but is ultimately another excuse to get rid of 'under performing' members of the team, and to deflect from the businesess true failures. Rather than focusing on improving the parts of the platform and sales organisation that is below par they waste money hiring new leaders that are going to 'fix' the sales team. When that fails, the process is simple, fire the leader and the staff that management don't like and go again! At this stage of the business, the focus should be on training the sales team - not expecting people to come in and work miracles. Salespeople are given 1 month before they are expected to hit the same results as veterans of the salesteam, how does that work? This ultimately comes down to the fact that the new sales leader is always desperate to prove themselves and demands results immediately from the team in order to look good. Rather than taking a step back and evaluating what is missing and going wrong, the approach is do more output 'so at least it looks like we are trying'. Time is valuable of course, but there's greater value in actually working out meaningful solutions then there is hoping the new sales leader will miracously fix everything.
The platform is not advanced enough to compete at the desired level. The price of the platform puts them on the same level as the elites in the CLM space, but the platforms functionality is comparable to SMB CLM service providers. This means that the team have to fight for those companies that can't quite afford the big players, but want something that is better than an entry level CLM tool, which often means Contractbook are too easily priced out the conversation, because they have big player pricing but entry level functionality. This position of market limbo inaccurately inflates marketings numbers since they get leads from SMBs and Enterprise, and ultimately just makes the salesteam look bad when the conversion rate is so low.
- Unrealistic targets. Hitting target at Contractbook does not happen across the entire salesteam. From SDR to AE to CS, the targets are simply unattainable. This unfortunately fosters a losing culture. People know they won't hit target so it's just about doing as good as you can and celebrating quietly as you'll be questioned for celebrating when you haven't hit target. Make targets achievable to get that winning spirit back and get people excited to fight!
- People are not listened to. Even when the company ask for feedback, they do nothing with the feedback and carry on with what they believe is right. This is a problem across every department; they pretend to be interested in people's thoughts and feedback but just never act on it. This means change for the better is very rare. The vision that got the company Seed A/B was great, but its not enough anymore, listen to the people that know what they are talking about so the company can actually improve. If you don't want to listen, don't ask for feedback.
- Misleading and inaccurate culture. People talk about the culture at Contractbook like its amazing, but there isn't really any culture anymore. The culture is free drinks occasionally on a Friday, lots of merch for people to post on LinkedIn and the annual meetups. The meetups are the best part of the companies culture as it brings everyone together with a range of activities and exercises to get to know each other better. Take parts of the meetup and put that into the everyday culture, not just the drinking and merch.
Remote work/Hybrid work is just no longer accurate for the salesteam. Jobs are advertised as Hyrbid (like it is for the rest of the company), but it is not hybrid for the salesteam. You are expected to be at the office everyday despite it being advertised as hybrid. The company are advocates for remote/hybrid work unless you're in the salesteam which is quite disappointing for new people joining sales.
