Job Advice
 

I just started a new job 1-1/2 weeks ago. Last week was training, this week is an office planning week. I am a RSM covering VA all the way up to ME. I have reached out to my distributors and am working to set up meetings with them to cover sales planning.

So today, I get an email directing me to have my calendar populated 6 weeks out. No big deal, I fill in where I plan to be, etc. etc. Then I learn my boss will be traveling with me in 2 weeks. Again, no big deal, we are scheduled for a trade show, and then heading into W NY to interview potential distributors. Then I get another email, this time from my boss' boss saying he is going to ride with me 3 weeks out, he wants to know what I have set up, where to fly to, etc.

I list out what I have scheduled, this is a more established area, meeting with reps to get a feel for what they are doing, where they've had success, target accts, etc. I tell him he can fly into one of two different airports pending price. He comes back with, make sure you have a full schedule I want tons of calls if I'm coming out.

WTH? I don't have a list of end user accounts, distributor salesman don't want to bring in factory reps to their accts until they have met them, and we have no list of installations in the area. How do you expect me to have a full slate of calls set up 3 weeks out after 3 days? Not only that, don't say tell me it needs to be worth your while if you just told me you are riding with me that week, that is your decision.

Is this a little ridiculous? Or am I just over reacting?

Seems...odd?

I believe I would pick up a phone, so much gets lost in email translation and either call my boss or directly to my boss's boss and explain how long you have been on the ground and where you are in the process.

I might even go as far as to suggest he wait until your second trip to the area to accompany unless he has contacts he can introduce you to.

What I suspect (depending on company size) this could be a deal where they have been talking to about bringing you on board long enough that b2 may not even realize this is your 3rd day live.

Besides it should be totally expected that you are still drinking from a fire hose at this point I would think.

Ok, so it's not just me.

That's my thought. I mean if you want me to just go out and make sales calls for the sake of making sales calls, fine. But don't expect different results for what you had before. I've always had success when I have planned with my reps and distributors and had a focused sales approach. It's slower at first, but you lay the ground work for sustained and consistent growth and market penetration. If you jam someone to make calls and see lots of people, you can get some results, but you typically don't get good results because you wind up taking bad jobs.

Sounds like some seats above yours may be a little warm. And yeah, this all sounds fairly unreasonable, but then again, unreasonable isn't all that unusual in sales these days so it's quite possible to me that they're expecting miracles of various degree, time on the job be damned.

Ugh. Sounds like the reason I moved to marketing. Was this incredibly quick schedule discussed during the interview process? Seems unreasonable and abnormal.

This, I'm not a big fan of a lot of our sales people, but I certainly see them put in situations like this often and respect the pressure of the job. This goes double for RSMs in our smaller regional offices.

No, it was not. There were some odd quirks mentioned, no alcohol can be purchased while entertaining, some odd hotel restrictions, but nothing like this.

Best of luck. I hope you aren't wasting your time in a job where they will churn through you like meat and cycle you out before you make good money.

Yet again I find myself in agreement with Jon. I'm going to go hang my head in shame, now.

What type of hotel restrictions?

Nothing serious, but $75 limit for the hotel room per night.

That's crazy low, do they actually enforce it? Plenty of locations where that's impossible.

And no drinks while entertaining customers?

I don't know, I spent sufficient time traveling as part of various sales cycles (not a rep though) in the technology field. Neither of those would fly.

I understand the no drink rule, been there before and the hotel limits as well. Hotels.com and Hotwire becomes your best friend traveling.

The main thing I am curious about is the bosses, you aren't working for Polycom are you (LOL! They drive their reps that way)

Wow... have fun at Motel 6. :(

This thread reminds me of The Office.

Wow....$75?

Make sure you dont go to the NE or anywhere near the coast from now until September.

My limit is $100 and I have tome staying there is a place I care to sleep in. Frequently I just cover the overage.

And the alcohol sucks but thats getting more common.

No alcohol when its just you and co-workers is one thing and understandable. If you are taking a customer out though, that's just strange.

What....the....fuck?

Is that everywhere or just in a certain (podunk, run down, shitkicking) area? My hotel in Rosslyn was $319 / night last week. You couldn't find a Motel 6 for $75 in Rosslyn some weeks.

A few years ago, an ex-client of mine said "we'll make the hotel arrangements" on an out of town gig. Ok, no problem. So we show up Day 1, work on installing/training on their new software package and then follow their instructions to the hotel. It's a $39/night fleabag in shitty area of Nashville. Dreadful. I pulled up, looked around and said "fuck this". I took my crew a few miles away to a Fairfield Inn-type hotel for about $80/night.

Went back in the next morning and talked to VP who said they'd book the hotel and calmly said we were NOT staying in that place and we would work on this job only by staying in a decent place. He refused to pay. So I told my group to pack up because we're leaving. He flipped out and called my owners. I got on the phone with them and told them that the hotel was dismal, unsafe and that we wouldn't be staying there. When they realized what a shithole it was, they said ok.

So we're packing our shit - leaving them totally down - and I decided to pay the President of their company a visit. I told him thank you for the business, but we weren't going to be treated that way and that's not the way we do business. I said I'm sure he didn't allow his people to be put in unsafe areas either. When he found out where they were trying to put us, he flipped out and promptly cussed out his VP. We got an apology, a decent hotel allowance, the VP was removed from the project and later fired.

I've also had clients try to insist that we share rooms (nope) and so forth. I don't put up with that anymore. If I'm on the road, I'm going to be comfortable and eat well. $75/night? Fuck that shit.

Fortunately no real cap here at my work, just to find places that are reasonable. So I try to stay under $150, but that isn't usually possible in downtown areas.

I moved into a consultant role with a company running my own show. However they take care of all hotel arrangements for us and it is usually where our event is.

My per diem sucks, which is only $35/day which if I am in NY city means I am eating fast food or saving it all for dinner.

Here in Lubbock this week, I can eat quite well...

But $75/night in some places is ok, in others you may have to drive distances but I think $150/night or lower is typical though.

$35 per diem for food? It's $71/day in NYC.

No per firm on food, but I'm sure they'd flag it if it was an outrageous bill. We do have a corporate rate that should help with hotel stays, but yeah, it's odd.

It got better today, spoke to our Great Lakes guy, he said the big guy was going to travel with him the week of the 9th, but something came up. Apparently, that something was me.

That would be a deal breaker for me, especially if you travel a lot. You don't need to stay at a Westin, but you need to stay somewhere that has wifi, a desk, etc...

I work for one of the biggest insurance companies in the auto industry, and when I travel I get $75 a day for food alone.

Yeah that's pretty much what we get $75 a day, but asked not to go crazy about it.

The entire thing comes back to this post here. The only change I'd make is the seats are on fire and not warm and the company might be in more dire straits than what they want to admit. Whenever you see things this strange, it usually means something is up.

The strangest thing I see hasn't even been listed in this thread. The company is only giving you 75 dollar a night hotels, but you have multiple people going out on trips before they even know the exact agenda for the trip? That's very strange behavior and screams desperation to me.

Didn't want to start a new thread for this so I'll bring back an older one. Quick question for those in the know - is the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification valuable and worth the effort? My company is asking me to become more of a real project manager these days, so if the PMP is worth it, now is the time for me to ask them to fund me getting the cert. Anyhow, just looking for opinions. Thanks.

I know when I was looking before that the jobs I saw posted for PM work required some sort of certification. Not sure if it was PMP or what.

PMP is noticed and, all things held equal, will be a differentiator. So yeah, I would go ahead an get it.