Technologically, this company is stuck in 2008. As a sales rep you will use rudimentary sales/prospecting tools to make dials and it will be highly inefficient. Just as a note, most, if not, all other salesman working in the same industries are afforded far more advanced tools to make themselves even more dials, and thus more money. Mid-level leadership, those just below the C-Suite executives, oftentimes seemed very worried or stressed about how their team was performing so they could save face and maintain their position. The company is also EXTREMELY cut-throat. They had, at one point, one day completely let go 4 IT employees with zero notice because they needed to downsize. I understand how a business must operate but I felt that was genuinely heartless and sudden towards those who were let go. After the mass IT firing, the mood towards it was lighthearted, and many cracked jokes about them being let go — I didn’t think that was funny at all. The word “fire” or “fired” seems to be everyone’s favorite phrase. There ALWAYS seemed to be a looming fear that you are being watched, monitored, and listened to, even at home for some reason — it’s odd to understand but if you worked there you’d understand. The fleet card sales team as a majority was a group of highly competitive people who were (mostly) very nice and helpful, but also could be very egotistical. A lot of sales strategy meetings would be derailed by non-constructive arguing over who had the best methods, who made/makes the most money, and the flow of information of sales tips was constantly halted because everyone had their own secrets that they would pawn off to other sales reps for commission splits. I enjoyed the people I worked with but my God, this had to be the most toxic work environment I have ever seen in my life. A case study could be done on this department for college courses. Mid-level leadership also seemed to obtain their positions within the company by being extremely fake, overtly “helpful”, to C-suite executives, as well as cunning in their measures to climb the company ranks. When our new VP of the fleet card department started in late summer of 2023, he attempted to completely overhaul the training that was already absorbed by the entire sales team. He dismissed the old training and often criticized it heavily despite that training being helpful and producing success for the reps. This made no sense. It also seemed that any successes from the department were heavily enjoyed by the VP, while any failures or shortcomings were deflected to the sales reps, which displays poor/weak leadership and fear. The reps were treated merely as foot soldiers to bang out calls, with an “every man for himself” mentality. The sales reps would rarely receive any form of praise beyond the quarterly commission bonus (which, if all you care about is money, I guess you’ll be satisfied and fulfilled). That leads me to my next point — commissions are paid out quarterly. You will wait 3 months to receive a large check that is taxed heavily based on what tax bracket the dollar amount on that check places you in (typically the highest bracket) — therefore you may crush it quarter, and receive a $20,000 commission bonus. Well, a good $6-7k of that large check isn’t going into your wallet, keep this in mind. Also, there seemed to be a looming rumor that a 5 day in-person work week will be implemented soon. All tasks of the job can be performed at home, with no commute — this means more time for sales calls and more $$$; but I guess leadership would rather you sit in your car for 45+ mins commuting than making money…? Not to mention, on numerous occasions, sales reps would lose calls and as a result, money, due to the poor network connection at the office. Many sales reps’ concerns regarding better internet performance at home fell on deaf ears, as did many complaints. Micro-management is rather rampant here (hence the push for 100% in-person work). Employees are essentially forced to scan a QR code on flyers around the building that will allow you to submit a “Fuel Success” idea, an idea that you feel may benefit the company. Many times these ideas were just forced, fluff ideas so people could reach their mandatory 2 fuel success ideas a year. This is foolish as it forces employees to try to submit ideas that may not be valid or good ideas, but they do it for the sake of reaching a requirement and fear of being fired if they didn’t do it. I must also say there was a fleet card vice president at Guttman Energy for a period of time who might be the worst leader I have ever seen in my entire life. They were extremely combative to all ideas, they knew nothing about sales or selling the product because they had never done sales in their life (why would you make them your VP of fleet card sales?), and they did not care at all about the performance of any sales reps. They had a very relaxed position with an exorbitant salary to sit around and do nothing. Not to mention they displayed the dark triad perfectly in leadership; if you don’t know what that is Google it, and there you go. This person is still in the company and God bless anyone who must work for them.
