Beginners job for field sales - Area Manager Würth Group Employee Review

1. Salary- the basic salary is abysmal, if you miss your monthly targets expect to have a very lean and tough month. Barely covers the bills. Wurth seem to be the lowest paying company in field sales for basic salary. Bonuses are there but can be hard to hit in the first year unless you are given a good area to manage. 2. It's a lottery regarding what area you get when you start. If you get an area well managed and with lots of big accounts you will do well, if you get what they call a greenfield area you will struggle. Do not annoy a manager as you will have good accounts taken off you and given to another rep. 3. You can hit targets all year but unless you're opening new accounts it doesn't matter you will just be regarded as an order taker not a worker. 4. The sheer amount of cold calling expected of you is ridiculous. Knocking on doors all day getting told no is demoralising and embaressing. 5. The work load: order taking, cold calling, developing your own leads, handling complaints, facilitating returns, selling new products everyday, promoting special offers, the list goes on. 6. If you aren't in or known by the managers don't get expect to get a promotion or go anywhere in the company until you are. 7. Unethical, company promotes selling stuff as high as you possibly can, don't worry about customer just rip them off as much as you can and if they go elsewhere just open a new customer to replace them. Constantly having to open new accounts to make up for the ones that stop spending with you. 8. Holiday allowance is awful, when they take 4 days off you for Christmas you are left with a little over 2 weeks holiday for the rest of the year. 9. Blame culture- management always have someone to blame, never themselves. In the height of the second wave in Feb 21 the top sales manager told every rep there was no excuse for poor sales (we are in a pandemic and a lot of customers don't want a rep walking in or were closed). 10. Profit over staff, when the pandemic first hit the company listened and furloughed all the field sales staff. In the second and third lockdowns the company kept all 400 or so reps on the road visiting up to 15 customers a day 5 days a week. The conversations had in the customers work place could easily have been done over the phone from home but the company clearly felt they would not have earned as much money this way so all sales reps were simply told to keep walking in to workplaces despite many not social distancing wearing masks etc. We were told we were essential workers supplying essential industries, maybe so but these industries could be supplied from the reps home over the phone. No care or consideration for any rep and if you caught covid you had to keep working from home unless you didn't have enough customers in which case you were paid statuory sick pay with no top up from company. No compassion or care whatsoever. 11. Constant company propaganda about company wanting to be the biggest supplier in the UK despite the fact they're selling the same products as a hundred other UK companies but at 3 times the cost. It will never happen unfortunately.