Sell 1-3 years and bail, become a lifer sales rep, or squeeze through narrow chances to promotion
Pros
Excellent initial training, above average health and wellness benefits compared to the marketplace, pay for performance, lots of rope to run your business the way that you choose like an adult if you have the right district sales manager, high end industry accolades, selling from a position as one of the top vendors for small business payroll, widely accepted by the CPA community if you are in a territory where accountants do not do tons of payroll for a profit, good deal of money budgeted to spend on networking and local events, sell at quota or above and you are as good as an entrepreneur with little to no risk and great reward. Excellent place to break into the respected B2B market and position yourself to move into more emerging, higher compensated roles, this position is an external recruiters dream if they see sound performance for 18-36 months+. Do not take my concise comments as a lack of positive, you just need to enjoy the good for as long as it makes sense in your life and know when to hit the eject button. In the mean time, build your own brand and authority as a respected business figure before you burn out, or face the music of wasting an opportunity like so many who didn't come to work hard. Turnover is much better than many other sales careers and that benefits you, but it is still higher than the prospects and referral partners you find in the community will understand. Opportunities to thrive in a territory for long periods of time exist, and benefit those who are comfortable at the individual contributor level and who wish to build more of a vocation around the always existent need for tax help. Many of them are financially rewarded into the low 100 range, but less than 20/1500 consultants break into deep deep money. If you're looking for Tom Brady money, go fish in another pond or be ready to schlep payroll for two years and then move into med devices, pharmies, or sell into the C-suite with a tech platform of some sort. If you are patient and manage to hold quota, and wait for a whale to drop in your plate to push you over the magic line to conference or circle of excellence, and thus immortality in the company, insanely cushy opportunities present themselves for you, but be ready to lead with constant challenge and change,and walk the Paychex tightrope.
Cons
Quota has reduced by an average of $100 per sale, but market pricing has dropped $300-400, leaving mysterious gaps on the revenue side, which is how you are compensated like many sales positions. High levels of churn activity needed to generate the amount of face to face time to hit at or above quota. Expect to be busier then you ever have been before and also prepare for days at a time where your pipeline is stuck like cement regardless of the effort you put in. Inside sales team in corporate location calls outbound to set appointments but continually calls on the same 500-700 prospects and books them year afer year, leading to junk appointments (however, you need to dig through the junk and can find excellent diamonds in the rough). Uncomfortable teeter-totter between managing amount of activity and effectiveness of activity (the old closing % versus number of demos crisis). Forget the whimsical dream of attending the sales conference designed for the top 5-10% of the company who are sitting on perennial referral source monsters, or the occasional rep that stumbles into a business acquisition out of sheer luck and timing. All promotions out of field sales are focused on the top 5-10% of performers, with little to no regard for leadership skill or aspiration. Generally speaking the top 10% have an insanely difficult time managing the bottom 66% of the reps, who are all behind running quota year to date. Plan for no life between thanksgiving and February 2 if you truly want to be successful and make money in the heaviest of the business seasons. That is made up for during a more lenient spring and summer, but this is and always will be a "what have you done for me lately" business. Customer service champs beware, this is a drive-thru business. You work like hell to find people to come take a look at the menu, and after getting their order, your job is to only take care of them until they drive around to the next window and receive varying degrees of service. Sometimes the hamburger just doesn't look the same as it does in the picture once its served,and while your intuition as a human being is to work at making them happy, your job is to keep that line of people ordering and moving around the corner. That is one of the largest issues, and in addition to underpaid service personnel managing massive books of business, clashing compensation plans between sales and business operations cause for an over abundance of frustration and finger pointing. Everyone is truly trying to do their best, but frustrations take over. Be prepared to absorb an insane amount of content, prospect, stay organized, network, present to prospects, close business, pick up all of your paperwork, complete everything and get it into a neat little pristine pile of attachments, and do it all over again, all while keeping things aligned and tracked in salesforce.com (which is a wonderful tool but this company has massively trashed their own database, causing hours of repetitive tasks, multiple duplicates of prospects, current, and former clients all over the place) even the most savvy millennial will hit their breaking point with changing data entry expectations and reporting.
