Pros
Great opportunity to dip your toes into corporate sales, but only if you are comfortable with simply dipping your toes into a full sales cycle and not advancing your skill set past that until you leave or on the rare occasion transition internally. The BDAs are solely responsible for initial meetings, and the directors they support do not schedule any of their own cold outreach... This is the sole responsibility of the associates. If you want to learn how to cold call + email or learn how to converse with C-Level executives on the phone, this is a great role for you as the communication skills I developed are definitely valuable and substantial to have throughout my career.
Cons
The culture on the sales team is horrendous. I can recall numerous colleagues whom I developed relationships with, myself included, that legitimately had to go on antidepressants while in seat as it was that toxic and draining. Massive internal issue surrounding seniority and authority, with job security consistently on the line and alluded to by mid/upper management, even in group settings via emails to the BDA team or in team meetings. Turnover was extremely common, with a few people coming and going each month. Something clearly isn't working nor motivating any associates to succeed, they are consistently pressured to input robotic and borderline harassing outreach metrics to get hold of clients (ex. scraping sketchy websites and finding personal cell phone numbers for C-suite executives was an everyday norm and expectation, using fake VOIP numbers to dial from random cities, recording of our cold call conversations with prospects without any mention of consent, etc.). I was in seat for over a year before transitioning roles and was consistently in the top 50% of associates performance-wise, yet made less than $100 dollars a month on average in commission and was told during the hiring process the AVERAGE would be around 8-10K a year. As an above average performer, I can generously say I made around $2000/year in commission at most, with the extra few hundred bucks here and there coming from deals closed by my respective director originating from meetings I had scheduled. For context, this barely pays the bills for anyone living in the DC area and candidly, it was hard at times. The aggressive culture stems from the mid, upper, and executive level management, which has been expressed by several of my colleagues as well as myself at times during my time at Hanover with no change. Diversity both from a demographics perspective and from diversity of thought is also a mess. They constantly mention means to improve this, saying how proud leadership is by patting themselves on the back for implementing little things like charity matching for specific, pre-chosen leftist non-profits or implementing company observed holidays for Juneteeth and Indigenous People's Day, but I will always remember this one time on a company-wide all hands call the CHRO came on and presented this entire initiative to double the referral bonus for any candidates we submit that identified as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or Veterans. Really inappropriate and uncomfortable sentiment that did not sit well with me nor my colleagues whatsoever and I’m surprised this was acceptable. I write this entire thread in hopes that Hanover reflects and refines from the several issues expressed above and to hopefully attract prospective employees that are willing or looking to make a massive impact and culture change, as this is a major issue impacting sales and the team needs to reform how they’re thinking to achieve the caliber of success that they want.
