Pros
The market opportunity is real, and there are genuinely talented people in the business trying to make it work. If you’re experienced enough to operate without support, you can close deals, the product has legs.
Cons
For a revenue-focused business, the commercial infrastructure is startlingly immature. There’s no coherent sales methodology, no consistent qualification framework, and pipeline reviews are surface-level at best. Nobody above you is asking the right questions, which means bad deals stay in the forecast for too long and good ones don’t get the support they need.
Territory and account planning is non-existent. You’re handed a patch and expected to work it without any strategic input, market mapping, or guidance on where to prioritise. For a company that talks about growth, there’s very little thinking behind how that growth is actually supposed to happen.
Travel is a significant issue from a commercial efficiency standpoint. You can lose multiple days a week to trips that are poorly scoped, often unnecessary, and rarely followed up on effectively. The cost-to-revenue ratio of some of these visits would make any decent CFO wince.
Leadership talks a good game on pipeline but has no real grip on it. Forecast calls lack rigour, deal coaching doesn’t happen, and there’s no culture of honest qualification. Deals get happy-eared up the chain and the business is making resourcing and revenue decisions on fiction.
Compensation structure lacks transparency. Understanding what you’re owed and when you’ll be paid it requires more effort than it should, and I’m not the only person who experienced discrepancies.