Pros
Base pay was good. Coworkers were nice.
Cons
This was one of the most baffling experiences of my career. I first interviewed for an Account Executive role last August (2022). The team was expanding from 1 to 3 reps. They had 1 new hire picked already, and eventually it came down to myself and one other candidate to fill the 3rd spot. In the end, the differentiators (as explained to me by the hiring team) were: my years of experience vs. the other candidate’s proximity to the office (he was local; I was not), and ultimately… they chose proximity! For a role they told me was open to remote employees… I was disappointed, but 3 months later, they reached out again and offered me the third AE role after the first of the previous two new hires decided to leave. ————————— I liked the job. I liked what I did. I liked the people I worked with. I thought I was doing well! I closed my first deal fairly quickly. I began building pipeline and had a decent amount of progression for the 5ish months I was out of onboarding and doing real work. I felt like I was really hitting my stride, so to be blindsided like I was last week with termination — a mere 6 MONTHS almost to the day since I was hired — felt absolutely absurd. I’ve had ramp periods longer than that! ONE full quarter. That is all I was given in this role, but I was compared to an AE with 2+ quarters of "at bats" and sales cycle. My team leader and I did discuss ways to move the pipeline along faster, but I received NO advanced warning my job was in danger or that I was underperforming to such a level where my employment was no longer tenable. No write up. No PIP. No severance. And to see that they are now immediately hiring for a replacement when “operational costs” were mentioned over and over again… it’s questionable. ————————————— I demo’d repeatedly for leadership and was told my demos were good, my product knowledge was there, and my outreach attempts and messaging were in line with expectations. I kept the CRM up to date; a running task list; and always followed up with prospects in a timely manner to ensure we did not lose touch. ———————————— THE PROBLEM with the AE role at CLX is… The role is 100% inbound, which sounds incredible at first, but when you have a dip in incoming opps (both in number and/or quality) like we saw in Q1, pipeline overall suffers. I’m sure leadership would say there are plenty of leads to go around, but the initial discovery process is incredibly lax, so everything gets through and the quality is questionable (no timelines; no budget; no criteria for evaluating, etc). I’m not saying they won’t become real opps in the future, but it will take time, and TIME is not something you have at CLX. While the company may believe it is a 60-90 day sales cycle, I believe all CLX sales reps would agree, outside of freak “we’re ready to buy right now” opps and rekindled cold opportunities (previously closed-lost, etc), the CLX average deal age is closer to 4-6+ months. Couple that with a round robin system and an inability to increase a deal’s dollar size on your own (it’s strictly based on user count — so if your prospect is a small org, base pricing is the price), your ability to hit quota is essentially at the mercy of the draw. I did the work, and I did it right. The only negative feedback I every received was that deals weren’t progressing as fast as leadership thought they should be.. but again… when compared with the other reps in terms of timelines within the company, I was well inline with the number of deals and pipeline progress (I know this because I sat down and had a conversation about this with my teammate). —————————— Would I tell a potential rep not to work at Contract Logix? No, because like I said above, I LIKED almost everything about it. What I WOULD stress is for any potential candidates to be wary and understand what you’re walking into. Yes… the company is 16 years old… but this sales team is just now hitting 12 months. Transparency is lacking. Historical data for a team of 3 working in this fashion is minimal, so… just remember it always “rolls downhill.” ----------------------------------------------- P.S. Healthcare offerings are just okay. No ramp pay. No phone stipend. Vacation days are accrued over time (and they will dock your pay if you leave with a negative). Minimal sales tools. Remote employees are quite disconnected from the rest of the team (far more than in other roles I've held previously). You're one sales engineer/solutions consultant leaving away from a BIG problem.
