Miss leading from start to finish. Not recommendable - Sales Account Manager Flashbay Employee Review

1.0
1 Sept 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flashbay is a very well structured company. Everything works to perfection and is a perfect machine made to generate profit. They sell decent products and they have a great IT team to make sure that all the systems in place works and the sales teams are focused on selling. The Spanish Sales Manager was very strict and no the friendliest person in the world but maybe the only person in the company who is actually honest and speaks clear.

Cons

Everything else: - 0 Flexibility - Ridiculous KPI’s - Competitive and unfriendly work environment - False job advertisement - This is no an Account Manager job. It’s just a transactional basic sales job that doesn’t require any skills at all. - Ridiculous extensions of probation periods after 6 months. Extension until you reach 10k profit regardless how you work and how capable you are. They won’t fire you but you won’t get any permanent contract and rights such as sick pay until the day they consider you are profitable enough for them. - During the great training they offer you will get the impression that the job is great and the team is very friendly. After a couple of months you will realise this is another lie. - Your line manager will check one by one all your emails and calls and you will have a 1:1 every week going through every coma of your emails….This was never mentioned at the start neither. - HR will share on social media hundreds of post about how much they care about mental health while 3/4 of the staff leave the company on the verge of a nervous breakdown. - The office is as boring and grey as the job itself. - I learnt nothing in 7 months and I had the worse work experience of my life in my 36 years. - By the way, I was on the Spanish team and in the 7 months I was there 6 of us left. 6 from a team of 7. -I keep seeing job offers for Spain and Portugal as they are unable to retain any member of the staff. Waiting for HR nonsense response in 3..2…1…

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Flashbay Response
2y
We were sorry to see you decide to leave when we took the decision to extend your probation period. Although you made it clear at the time that you did not agree with the decision we stand by it because the level of sales that you were able to attain was not sufficient to be sustainable. Rather than ending your probation we had wanted to give you more time to show that you were able to reach the minimum level needed to make your position viable. You decided instead to leave and we respected that decision. All our sales people join us as Sales Account Managers. In this role they are responsible for working with new enquiries and managing a portfolio of existing customers. As they grow in experience their portfolio of existing customers grows and after a few years it can become possible to switch into a pure Account Manager role focusing only on existing customers but most sales people choose not to go down this route because they prefer to continue to work with new business customers. The nature of our products and services mean that our interaction with our customers is grounded in a consultative sales process structured around the individual sales transactions resulting from the projects and initiatives that our customers are purchasing promotional products to support. Group and team leaders work hard to try to support new starters through their probation. After our initial training programme the focus moves to supporting 'on the job' and this necessarily includes reviewing how an individual is actually performing in their role, especially when the results being achieved are lower than would be expected or needed to be successful. We want every new joiner to succeed - we try to make offers to individual's who have relevant experience or show potential, we have a great initial training programme and experienced team members then try to support a new starter as they learn the ropes. It is challenging (like all sales roles are) but every member of our team has been through the process whether they've been with us for 15 years or 15 weeks. During your employment unfortunately 3 (not 6) members of our Spanish team did depart the company. This was very unusual and disappointing for us - 1 employee returned to full time education (they wanted to work part time but unfortunately all our sales roles are full time), 1 returned to Spain and another left for a new opportunity. Our Spanish team currently has 7 members and we are actively recruiting as we’d like to grow the team to ensure all of our customers receive the best possible experience. While we'd have liked things to have turned out differently we wish you every success in your new role.

Explore other reviews about Flashbay

5.0
14 Jan 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flashbay owns a good deal of the design and patents on their products, you can't buy them elsewhere and they are of a high quality. They deliver really quick and have an incredible array to choose from giving you a concierge experience buying from an experienced representative. It's first class all the way. The culture is inclusive and champions each success, they have great team building moments and events too. The owners and management are brilliant and innovative, always engaged and in touch.

Cons

There are no cons to be honest.

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Flashbay Response
1y
Our heartfelt thanks for your feedback and for all the positive energy, commitment and dedication that you brought to Flashbay. You positively impacted the trajectory of both the company and those members of the team who were fortunate to work under your management over the years. We wish you every success and happiness in the future.
2.0
18 Feb 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Good B2B Sales experience for beginners -Good health insurance -Fun outings when possible

Cons

-Dying industry, not many companies are willing to buy flash drives for security reasons and this company charges premium prices which makes it a tougher sell sometimes -Senior employees horde good accounts (rightfully so) but the way new employees inherit old accounts from previous reps will set up a new recruit for immediate success or failure. -During any hardship in economy companies cut out the branded items like this first which makes your employment vulnerable in any slight downturn -intense micromanaging -toxic middle management environment puts undo pressure on employees -pay is lower for area

4
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Flashbay Response
2y
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us on Glassdoor. We are pleased to hear you were happy with the health insurance, enjoyed the social outings and developed good B2B sales experience. We’re grateful for your additional feedback but respectfully we don’t agree. Flashdrives were our original product offering, originally launched in 2003 and they remain in high demand to this day with millions sold each year. Over the past 10 years we have diversified our product offering and now offer a wide range of the most popular promotional items to better cater for our customer's promotional product needs. While some businesses cut costs across the board during economic downturns many others take the opportunity to be more strategic in their spending and look for opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competition through marketing and with initiatives like the deployment of custom branded promotional products. The promotional products industry is growing and we fully intend to make the most of the opportunities that will be available in the months and years to come. We have a team who are responsible for assigning customers to all new sales team members and they follow a set process to ensure fairness. New hires are given a portfolio of existing customers and receive multiple inbound new customer enquiries every day, as do their colleagues. This is always very much welcomed by our new starters as they are aware that in many other sales roles new hires are required to build their account from scratch. The role of the sales person is to develop the existing accounts they inherit as well as convert the warm inbound leads into customers and build their own successful account. Individuals do this with varying degrees of success. Providing a good working environment is very important to us and we receive regular feedback from current and previous employees about the great environment we have created. This is an ongoing effort and we’re continually aiming to improve. Our group leaders are all experienced and successful sales people. As in any sales role there are KPIs and targets to be achieved every month and Group Leaders offer a supportive and motivating work environment to enable all employees to reach their full potential. Where one person sees support another may see micromanagement but ultimately our group and team leaders are seeking to enhance the effectiveness of every sales person and each sales person is the direct beneficiary of this by virtue of our commission scheme. We offer a competitive basic salary as well as a generous commission scheme and monthly cash prizes for competitions. We offer a range of benefits including private medical and dental insurance, hybrid or fully remote working, a Perkbox subscription and fully paid for company social events. We actively encourage all of our employees to provide feedback, both positive and negative, on a regular basis including during their Exit interview. If you feel there is additional information that you did not share prior to your departure that you feel would be of benefit to Flashbay, then please send an email to hr.uk@flashbay.com. We welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.
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