Why are there so many Sirius sellers leaving, or left, the company? CDW is hemorrhaging all the 20 year customer relationships? As a CDW seller, I was assigned a lot of these accounts, that came with very high quotas and they don't want to do business with me. My management said these all would be easy accounts to farm and my income would double. I am starting to realize CDW management doesn't understand why customers buy from who they do and most of them that I know of never had a job selling directly.
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CDW does not care about building or keeping relationships. What I’ve learned is the CDW model is churn and burn and treat every customer like a number. Since the conversion from Sirius to CDW as an engineer it’s been hard to build real relationship with legacy CDW customers. Projects are typically small and fast with no meaningful interactions.
@qa
They think relationships don't matter.
Customers were buying and paying a premium for most things they could buy direct or find a lower cost just spending 5 minutes on Google.
They did so because they had built relationships with their AM and knew they'd be taken care of if a DOA happened or whatever post sales issue.
RMA timeframe went from 30 days to like a week now...
More red tape stands in the way internally just to take care of customer sat issues. Most accounts have been seeing the glaring issues with AP/AR.
The "newer/cheaper" only benefits CDW... that's not a inherent value to customers.
Why you think earning were missed for like 8 straight quarters after that never never happened in the last 20 years.
Customers can and will quietly shift chunks of thier spend to other companies.
Just because coworkers don't see it...doesn't mean it's not happening.
Remember..."people do business with people they like" that's from Krasny.
I am hearing CDW is paying it's sellers 1/2 or less than what others resellers are offering. I am not sure that will work out for the executive plan in the next few years. They are out with the expensive old and in with the cheap new and the accounts will continue to do business with us.
@mw
Could've been easy. All those BDM's and other growing middle roles that proliferated the last 5 years but whom we know most don't add value.
Take those low level biz dev or like titled roles and put them in the middle between CDW AM's and legacy Sirius Field/engineers. Use ServiceNow or some easy to use/enter tool to get linked up on Services Opps... split the project so everyone gets paid fairly and let the Sirius contact build the service/high level tech relationship.
The Sirius side can have CDW specialists looped in as well to help the AM build quotes for anything hardware/software or legacy CDW and the Sirius side take lead on getting SOW's etc.... use the CDW AM as the main lead to coordinate (QB) and BO-M...team driven all encompassing solutions from hardware software services etc etc. Comp will need to be worked out but that was done plenty of times in the past where everyone ate.
Just my quick 2 cents. Slow doesn't win any races in the tech industry. We got too many tortoise minds in the company moving and thinking too slow and d-mb.
Sirius was a model where the Field led and the inside were Operational people who inputted orders into the system.
CDW was a model where the inside person was generally the lead on the account. Even on the accounts with a great field person, the two roles were then equal. That "inside person" may have travelled to the customers often or even lived in the market they served. CDW always defied what others in the industry said could be done from the "inside" and got to over $22B big with the model.
CDW was always bad at integrating companies in. Berbee took forever. But somehow CDW always got through it. The challenges with this acquisition were not that different than Berbee, but at the same time we started having more and more external Executives brought in and more and more consultants brought in. The constant change of strategy and lack of internal leadership that grew up knowing how we operate has brought this acquisition off the rails. We also lacked a guiding voice making decision for "this is something Sirius did we all should now did" and / or "this is something CDW always has done and we ALL now need to do it". So, we still are debating what will be the "one CDW way of doing things" years later.
@k1
Correct...but both sides couldn't integrate somehow.
I'd try to push projects and things moved to slow. Too much red tape. Then they made it not worth the drama and effort via comp strategy. Engineers I worked with were cool and I'd team if it wasn't all the redtape.
If it worked out....could've netted more revenue and profit for everyone and stock would be pushing $300 as we'd be playing with the bigger boys in the space.
Sad leadership got in its own way...wouldve worked out for everyone.
I see the current situation as tightening the belt and resetting and maybe pushing with a younger team willing to work for less while things slowly improve.
That's my hope for my shares. Olympics is branding reset. Start selling!!! Shares to $400
@jd you forget why Sirius was acquired, because CDW didn’t know how to sell large project services or managed services!
Every Sirius seller (and Manager) I met had a huge ego but when they explained what they did, it was basic sales 101 but easier. CDW Account Managers actually ran accounts while Sirius CEs just tried to “book deals” and move on.
@fp
I was just a plain CDW AM not a Sirius "AE"
I left before the real drama hit.
Under 40 and no longer need a job or career. If Sirius was so good, some of the leadership and employees would've endured instead of bend and succumb to CDW's "leadership" ... guess those circles they were running weren't good enough for CDW C level to go full dumpster fire on both workforces.
Acting like everyone's p-o doesn't stink in this situation is you just tooting your own ho-n to feel superior.
I'll play and toot myself...you still working or looking for a job? I'm not because I made so much at CDW slinging "just hardware and software" at "low margins". Just pushing boxes and no services at all. People forget who got acquired and parted out.
Good luck to everyone regardless of side because I know most of the people I left behind can't afford to quit or lose their job. Feeling stuck is how they want people to feel.
@bq Sirius Account Executives would run circles around any CDW AM, Sirius was more interested in high margin services and solution selling. Not just hardware and software!
Because CDW doesn’t want to pay what we used to make and in some cases losing over 50% of their income! Also, most where 100% commission and no splits!
Any account I inherited from a Sirius seller has been a walk in the park. It is like they never tried to sell them our entire portfolio. They just kept selling the same stuff over and over each year. The most difficult part has been the lack of any decent information in the system like detailed notes or an actual pipeline. But taking over for them has been pretty seamless.
For the same reason that the Sirius engineers are leaving or have already left.
they have no clue what they're doing and probably asked copilot if it's a good idea
You can name the people in VP and above roles that can actually sell. It’s the rare exception not the rule. For the rest, it’s theory.