This is an old company that might have been successful 25 years ago but is failing horribly now.
Zero work-life balance in the field. No accountability in head quarters.
Zero sales direction/leadership. The senior leadership in the sales division has very little to no actual sales experience. Because of this, there is no clear sales direction, no sales programs, and little understanding of the marketplace. In fact, because the company is performing so poorly, The Executive Team has brought in 4 highly paid consultants to do the jobs that the Executive Team should be doing. The consultants do little more than collect their paychecks while this company tanks
Du.e to continuous cut-backs, sales training has gone from mediocre to epic failure. Not only is there no actual sales training, there is little product training. If you don't already know how to sell and if you don't know very much about coffee, you will not learn to be able to succeed here. If you already do know how to sell and you are very familiar with coffee, you will be working somewhere else!
District Sales Reps (DSRs) and Group Sales Managers (GSMs) are blamed for the failures of leadership to provide good products, fair pricing, great promotions, and adequate training. Sales are significantly down because of pathetic leadership decisions, not because DSRs and GSMs aren't working hard enough. A route sales guy could work 24 hours a day and still fail to grow sales due to lack of company resources and poor infrastructure.
The comp plan in sales is a joke. No one can tell you how they make commissions and the bonus program is based on whether they like you- it's not based on any real numbers. In fact, you will never see an accurate sales report. The ones that they sometime provide are so full of mistakes that you cannot trust them.
Service Techs are really overworked and undervalued. The old EQ that Boyd uses is always breaking down and customers need repairs. With 1 service tech per region, it's impossible to provide decent service. Service Techs are expected to work overtime but face severe discipline if they request overtime pay.
The delivery trucks are so old that they spend more time in the shop than they do on the delivery routes. DSRs struggle to make deliveries using rented trucks with no shelves. Customers either run out of coffee and other products or they get overstocked because of the intermittent issues with deliveries.
Morale is so low both here in Portland and out in the field that most employees are looking for other jobs or just trying to hold on until they retire in a year or two. Every other day, someone in leadership complains about how badly the company is doing and how we are going to have to shut the doors for good but, no one does anything to fix it. Maybe they don't know how?
Overall, Boyd is company that failed (and continues to fail) to be progressive and forward thinking in their approach to new products and the new coffee/beverage marketplace. Today, there are many, many coffee companies out there doing a much better job growing their business. They all have better coffee, better branding, better marketing, better equipment, better pricing, better delivery and better service. AND, they treat their employees much better!!