Paychex reviews

Everything else. Management is terrible. They lie in the interview and make it seem like your income is largely within your control, when that is simply not true. Yes, there is training and licensing, which is expected, but even that process is disorganized. Some people are put on quota before they have even fully learned the products. Once training ends, you are expected to build relationships with accountants and business owners who often do not want to deal with Paychex reps at all. A lot of that comes down to the company’s reputation for poor customer service and the constant turnover. People do not want to waste time building a relationship with the 37th new rep they have seen this year. Management constantly contradicts itself and changes strategy every month. When their latest idea fails, they blame the sales team. If you hate micromanagement, you will absolutely hate this job. Managers can be rude, dismissive, and have no respect for your family or personal time. We were encouraged to use our phones to navigate the CRM and make dials while driving, which is reckless and unacceptable. The hours were brutal. We were working from 8 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. almost every day and were forced to work Saturdays just to try to hit quota. I saw a lot of sales reps lose themselves in this role. It drains you mentally and personally. And even when you do make a sale, good luck getting support from the teams that are supposed to help you. You are expected to be an expert in technical and operational processes without being properly trained. You eventually figure it out on your own, but that says everything when even my own manager did not know how to do some of it. I had to get out, and I would not recommend this company to anybody.

The sales process is totally broken. This job is mostly trying to sell handbooks to 2 employee businesses. Imagine trying to explain to a pizza shop where the employees are a husband and wife that they need an employee handbook…hopefully you steer clear and you never have to do this. Every deal is discounted. Even the best reps practice this and remove a number of fees. You will then need 3-4 levels of management approval to push this through. Why leadership gatekeeps this process is beyond me because it’s a giant waste of everyone’s time. Clawbacks are very aggressive. Some offerings get clawed back in a 6 month time frame. So you have to: get a small business on the phone, convince them that their family business needs a handbook, pray to God they don’t hang up on you while you wait for 4 levels of leaders to approve your heavily discounted pitch without push back (yes sometimes your own leaders will challenge you even when your client has already verbally agreed) and then pray again that they don’t cancel in 5 months and 29 days… You have to over perform by a large margin to make any meaningful money. There’s about 1 rep in every territory doing this and they have usually been at the company for years. Everyone else (you) will make $20-$30k at best on top of your base. This wouldn’t be so bad if this was honestly pitched in your interview but leaders will make it sound like vast riches are attainable for everyone and that is just blatant lie. Turnover is out of control between people quitting or getting fired. Be prepared to watch entire teams disappear in 6 month intervals. HR business partners are also at the whim of the clawbacks so be prepared to get push back from your internal partners as well if you sold an offering that does not take long to complete. Forget about work life balance. You take time off, you will miss and be living off your base salary or get a pittance of a commission.