Company: IBM
Date: 2017-12-02
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Senior Sales Specialist
Pros: Intelligent colleagues. Stimulating and challenging work. Continuous technology education for everyone.  Useful  wide and deep scale of the organization to leverage when working on complex deals.  Reasonably flat organization where most upper management or above region (global) executives remain accessible to those in the field. That is admirable given the natural political dynamics that exists in any large organization.
Enjoy your work and you can ignore the discordance that accompanies a large public company.  One that is beholden to shareholders every quarter. 
Company has made genuine efforts at transformation through a combination of product development, acquisitions and strong messaging to the marketplace.  Resulting in some areas of significant technology strength capable of protecting market share or holding a relevant offensive position against the competition.
Cons: Perpetual sense of panic and desperation in the tone from management.  Many micro managers.  Lacks a genuine sales culture that supports fundamental sales behaviours.  Persistent battle to find time communicating or meeting clients, instead of attending internal meetings. 

Failure of middle managers and up-line management to uniformly recognize that selling at IBM is similar to playing in a team sport. Over-weighted attention to individual contribution has led to practices that encourage individual sports habits. This generates unwarranted, conflicting attitudes that fail to deliver the results required of a sports team. 

No work-life balance unless you draw that line in the sand yourself. Urgency is over played regardless of the time of the year - at the start of the fiscal year, in the middle and at the end. It reduces the value of when a sincere urgent activity  requires execution. Up-line management are tone deaf when delivering demands that only fulfill internal, administrative reporting versus authentic field sales efforts.

Management fails to recognize the need to build relationships with clients.  Incessant territory and account coverage change - every 6 months, produces a culture of vulnerability and uncertainty. Often veiled with the term agile.