Honest, non-emotional review (Sales) - Advisor Sales Nitrogen Wealth Employee Review

2.0
2 Nov 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people that you work with in Atlanta are just the absolute best. Going to work is a joy when you work with such smart, talented people. They truly keep everyone's favorite drink in stock, which is awesome. Also, there's snack day 2 days a week, also nice. The ping-pong table is very fun. The actual selling of the product is fun too. However, these perks were not enough to keep Riskalyze out of 2-star territory.

Cons

***Before I say anything, check the variance between the Atlanta office reviews and the California (Auburn) office reviews. That says most everything you need to know. Despite the "pros" I'm still rating Riskalyze as a 2-Star opportunity (1.5 stars would be most appropriate). Here's why I would not take a job there if I'm hoping to use Riskalyze as a stepping stone into the fintech, SaaS, or software sales worlds: 1. You don't make *even close* to what they tell you that you will make. Riskalyze recruits with an $80k OTE for "Account Executives" or "AS Reps" or "Advisor Solutions Consultants" or whatever they put on LinkedIn. All of those roles mean the same thing -- my guess is they change the title so that it makes using GlassDoor harder on potential hires. Regardless, they recruit with a $40k base and $40k OTE bonus -- but almost NO ONE is hitting it. When I was recruited I was told that the top representative in the company was on track to hit (I believe) $190k -- I can't quite remember). I was told that if I worked hard, was entrepreneurial, and put in the hours, that hitting the OTE number would be relatively easy. This is not true. Nearly no one is on track to make $80k in a sales role at Riskalyze. In fact, the person that was "on track" to make $190k was only on track to do so because they had one monster quarter in Q1. Since Q1, that person has done well, but not $190k well. Meanwhile, no one on the sales team in either California or Atlanta is likely to see anything close to $80,000 this year. As a **very good** new rep in Atlanta, your expected earnings are likely about $55k -- with a majority of reps struggling for to hit even 50% quota each quarter. 2. You don't get any commission check if you don't hit at least 50% of your quota each quarter. This means, that if you make Riskalyze 49.999% of quota for a quarter, you get nothing. They still get to keep the money you made them, but you get nothing. This happens quite frequently. In fact, a majority of the sales team in Atlanta got $0.00 in commission for Q3 2017. Remember, you only make $40k in base. 3. There is a MASSIVE problem with lead flow. Quite simply, Riskalyze can't provide quality leads to the SDR team. The SDR team is primarily responsible for booking sales calls for the Sales Reps' calendars. This means less overall appointments and less chances to actually make the money you're recruited with. For reference, a rep probably needs 25ish sales conversations per week to hit their quota -- right now, Riskalyze is able to get you about 8. 4. The pay scale is so low that it kills your ability to make money. Here's what I mean by that -- Riskalyze pays an incredibly low salary relative to its competition. SDRs are recruited with an OTE of $40k, but remember, no one is hitting that number, so they're making about $23k/year. This is about $11.50/hr for people with college degrees. It's unlivable, at least in Atlanta. This leads to incredibly high turnover in the positions most responsible for making reps calendars full of appointments -- the net effect is constant new blood that doesn't really know how to get appointments on reps calendars and this means very poor probability of hitting quota. Sales reps, on the other hand, make just $40k in base per year -- which is among the lowest in the industry for the position. So, while the SDRs are unable to fill your calendar due to lack of quality leads and inexperience, you're making just $40k per year. 5. The final major "Con" is that there's no end in sight for this mess. The strategy does not seem to be changing, the data is not improving, nor is morale, nor is the pay scale. Leadership deflects away from real issues brought up by their employees and pivots toward things that sound good on a PR soundbite. I would not trust the leadership's vision and do not believe the company can continue to exist in its current form. It feels almost inevitable that it will be either A) acquired by a bank/trading platform or B) bought at a deep discount by a private equity firm when it can't make payroll. 6. Bonus point #6, the company does not know how to roll a product out. Every product other than the core product has had an abysmal rollout that has been full of problems -- and none of them have made reps any money. The newest one, AutoPilot, has been no different. I only bring this point up in case you are being recruited on the promise of a big pay day thanks to AutoPilot. It hasn't happened so far, and will not ever happen, provided they keep the commission structure for AutoPilot in place. 7. Bonus point #7 -- there is no trail. You get paid on money one time, regardless of how long the customer (or group) stays with Riskalyze. That means, you could make them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you get paid exactly once, and it counts toward a quota that you may not even get a portion of if you don't hit 50% -- something that largely rests on their shoulders.

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Nitrogen Wealth Response
8y
I really appreciate your contributions to our company for the couple of quarters you were here. Unfortunately, this review is neither honest nor is it non-emotional. If you had chosen to actually follow our core value of open and direct communication and communicated with me even once about your perception of these issues, we could have had a great conversation, and I think you'd have a slightly different perspective. For the record, the couple of quarters you were here were definitely tough quarters for the sales team as we've worked through some operational issues. Longtime Riskalyzers know that the last couple of quarters are an anomaly compared to how things operated before then. We've absolutely got some work to do to fix these issues, but we're well on our way to solving those problems. To respond to your points... 1. Impossible to make your on-target earnings (OTE) — it was definitely far too tough the last couple quarters, but we absolutely did have a number of reps make their OTE. They had to work far too hard to make it happen, and the tools and data should have made their lives a lot easier. 2. You have to make 50% of goal to earn incentive comp — that's correct, but it's untrue that there was a disproportionate effect on Atlanta. You were not privy to data about your colleague's compensation. 3. Not enough leads — not exactly right on the details, but you're close. The SDR team had some major issues with technology crop up that reduced their productivity and didn't deliver enough appointments to the sales reps. This was compounded by some unethical behavior to deliver false appointments to reps, which we discovered pretty quickly and those people were terminated. This is the best part of your review — it's the true source of our challenges the last few quarters and why sales reps had to work WAY too hard to make their OTE. I appreciate that a number of them muscled their way through those challenges and made it, but this is the primary issue we're fixing. We're already rolling out new cadence software and fixing a number of the data issues slowing the SDR team, and seeing good early results. 4. Pay scale — not exactly true, but we can't charge more than $1,500/year to our advisors for our products and go google how tough it is to build a SaaS business of $1500 ACVs. The truth is that if #3 is clicking along well, sales reps have no issues making $80-120K on our comp plans. There is also career path up into senior sales roles that work with larger customers and pay $120-200K. I love signing those checks and we're getting back to signing them! 5. Company won't be able to fix the issues — fortunately, you're dead wrong here. I can't control how you feel about this, but we're already making great progress toward fixing these issues. I wish you had chosen to communicate about them while you were here; that would have shown real teamwork, accountability and respect for your colleagues — all core values of ours. 6. Don't know how to ship products — we're literally the fastest growing company in advisor technology. That creates both challenges and opportunities. I wouldn't call us perfect, but we serve over 20,000 financial advisors who LOVE us. That wouldn't have happened if we didn't how how to ship products they love. 7. No trail — that's just not how SaaS software works. Of course there is no trail. You pay one group of people to be elite in bringing new customers in, and you pay them really well to do that. (We're getting back to those days quickly!) Then you pay a different group of people to be elite in retaining and renewing those customers for year two and beyond. That's how we operate and that's how every other sustainable SaaS company operates. I'm sorry you had a bad experience in your couple of quarters at our company. It was definitely tough timing to join the sales team. If we could wind back the clock and foresee the issues with the SDR team, we'd have prevented those from happening in the first place, and we'd never had these tough couple of quarters. I think it's quite possible you'd have been very successful at our company. I wish you well in your career, and my advice to you is to communicate your perceptions and your challenges while you are still working in an organization, not keep them a secret until after you leave. Every Riskalyzer has my email, cell and Slack — and I wish you had chosen to use those tools to share your perspective with me. -AK

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