Thread regarding Avaya layoffs

Head of = Demoted

And they don't want people to see their official title in the system, so they just c themselves "head of"

Sales folks should just all call themselves "Head Of" and create a delusional bubble of superiority. That seems to work for those who crash and burn in marketing.

The problem with Avaya has been its authorized resellers all go after the existing base for support contracts. Very little new account development. If a company isn’t growing its dying.

AGREE
Good On You!
(whomever completed The Murph)

Focusing on What People DO and not what they don't do, Congratulations 🎉 on Completing the Murph! Damn the haters. You are a girl of your word and YOU did it! Bravo 👌

So you want me to believe the theory that the AM and SEs are to blame for what happened to Avaya?

Ok. Then I will also believe that Personal Brand he/she/tree/it/we OMAHA will become the new Erin Andrews. Ha ha ha.

Get a grip people.

Holy YES

We have had to endure countless people who promised to cure cancer. How the he-l do you think Avaya journeyed to this spot?

And the PARTNERS don't Allow AMs or SEs the access they should have.

And what fool jumped in to discuss Mid Market on this thread?

Let's regroup.

1. Paid off Industry Analysts still giving Avaya benefit of the doubt. Nowhere near as extreme as before, but

• c'mon

2. Someone deciding that the hits against marketing/myopic budget driven analyst relations somehow should be transfered to AMs and SEs. SORRY CHARLIE! Tell me one AM or SE who has countless access to budget to TELL PAID Analysts or Partners to SPIN the Story? Yup. None. So now go pick on the little people. Bravo you mean ficks.

The story of the SE arguing with the customer…I swear we had the same SE except mine (BB) was in mid market. The majority of that organization is useless.

Funniest part of all of these.
Is batman was an SE reject. The guy who would tell every customer they could cure cancer. And then the other SEs had to clean up the mess. There were several people in services who followed that path as well. Once guy bounced around so many times he ran out of places to hide. He troled Salesforce for accounts in certain verticals that had guaranteed opportunities then got paid as if he created them from thin air. Handlebar mustache and all.

Batman found a place to hide and indulge his ego st-----g in marketing. Just as handlebar found the same via spider web in services. Until they couldn't hide anymore.

Truth is this. Stop pretending that you have something more special than the next SE or AM. Avaya is still Avaya. Fix Avaya. Stop blowing smoke.
/FIN

All can be answered following

86. 75.30.9

(A la Did you Know )

That story validates that Avaya Sales and SEs know what Avaya can and can not do.

Avaya needs to focus on enabling. Not disabling. That's not a story of an SE gone bad. That's an SE that KNOWS what is marketed is not possible. Where is the real problem? Marketing things that can't happen.

A true customer story about a large sales opportunity with an existing Avaya customer. The customer had a good sized network of Avaya systems supporting nearly four thousand of users. The meeting was to discuss options to migrate the existing platform to Avaya’s current platform. The regional Avaya Account exec and her SE attended. The Avaya SE off the bat began arguing with the customer. It got ugly. The Avaya sales rep had to tell him to stop arguing in front of the whole group in the meeting. Very embarrassing but not surprising. Avaya left the meeting and the customer said he was done with them. This customer soon after made a decision to rip and replace with a cloud UC platform. The customer is extremely happy they moved away from Avaya.

No skin in the game here either way.

BUT...
If Avaya sales were to ever step up as you speak, partners would be pi---d. Partners demand to OWN relationship.

With that said, Avaya sales spends 85% of their time navigating the mess that is the "too-many-layers" to get any simple things done, that the competitors do not have to contend with. They are NOT Sales. They are Operational Navigators.

To chastise them is ignorant and ill informed. It is not comparing Apples to Apples.

Avaya Sales is structured to enable Partners to profit. Can Ring and others say the same? Do Ring and others have to spend 30+ hours on operational navigation each week? It's a 50+ hr role just for the least productive.

I've only been one who comes in to help at times. And while I wish it were different, I know they are not to blame for the lack of ease to get anything accomplished. God knows they don't have luxury to play social media personal brand or evangelism cr-p.

And I've never met an SE who has nothing but encyclopedia level knowledge that AI is wishing to achieve.

Seems like a nerve has been hit. If you think the majority of people posting on here aren’t in sales you’re delusional.

I was in sales at Avaya before exiting…there were/are very few high performers there and not many I’d recommend professionally. Some of the QBRs I sat through and weekly funnel reviews were embarrassing. The majority of my former peers will have their minds blown when they realize that as a rep in most places you actually have to generate funnel yourself and are held accountable to driving your business through it.

Don’t get me started on the SE org either. My SE was a joke and I did anything I could to keep him away from any deal I cared about. While there are obviously a few exceptions, by and large the partners want nothing to do with them and want them kept out of their accounts.

The Preeminent Statement May 10, 2022

"Although Avaya’s numbers came in light this quarter, they don’t tell the whole story. A skeptic would say that Avaya has been talking the transition story for years, but years is what it takes. Government agencies, global banks, insurance companies and other massive companies have long depreciation cycles, so Avaya’s opportunity to transition the core of its business will track along those lines"

If one looks beyond this quarter’s numbers, one will see the business trending in the right direction and that’s more important than any one specific quarter

https://siliconangle.com/2022/05/10/avaya-shares-fall-disappointing-earnings-guidance-cloud-shift-advances/

Yet it's the marketing, analyst relations, so-called-"ANALYSTS" and even the tribe that defends shafali shahs obvious black and white well established crimes who spend all of their time defending themselves on here. Don't see too many sales people doing that. 1:25 ratio of sales people on here.
Guess they are too busy putting fires out.

The sales org is horrible and you’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Get outside the bubble and you’ll see how bad it was.

The AMs do absolutely no business development and GAP plans are “let me see what my partner is working on”. Partners sales teams want nothing to do with the Avaya SEs, especially the mid market clowns who find a dark cloud in everything.

Look at how Ring sales teams work. They’re all over their funnel and they drive the opportunities. Look at Oracle…those are sellers. C1 - they hate working with their counterparts (there are obviously exceptions here or there, this is speaking about sales broadly).

If the Avaya teams had to carry their own book, they’d be screwed.

It’s funny how “sales is only as good as the product they have to sell” yet you all hold marketing, AR, PR, Finance, and anyone other than yourselves to a higher standard, hypocrites. Hope you never land outside the company because you’re in for a rude awakening,

Avaya sales organization is the only reason accounts didnt Bolt!

Sales organization is only as good as the product that is available. They have worked daily miracles pulling rabbits out of hats. To keep your base of business through 2 bankruptcies (3 in some cases) is remarkable.

The Avaya sales organization is one of the weakest in the industry. Constantly following behind the partner, who think the AMs and SEs are a bunch of clowns good for nothing other than rubber stamping a special bid, have next to no relationship with the customer, and get outshined by their counterparts at Ring and other places.

Most will struggle when forced (through layoff or acquisition) to survive elsewhere.

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Avaya Cloud? Avaya Cloud? Avaya Cloud?

Everyone on these boards are experts in marketing, analyst relations, finance, and basically any other job function other than sales.

It’s all woe is me, if THOSE people would just spend X more time doing Y…how about yourself. I’m out of Avaya and lord knows there was disfunction all over the place there…but everyone owns a piece of it. Everyone.

If you’re doing nothing but coming on here, bi--hing about everyone else, and patting yourself on the back…newsflash - you’re part of the problem too.

So my advice is to stop bi--hing and get out…I can tell you it’s MUCH better on the outside but I’ll also tell you that you’re going to have to work a lot harder than you do right now.

The 1300 was referencing zooms layoffs, not avaya

What I head on that was a layoff total

THIRTEEN HUNDRED

1300

First time that's been totaled

Many of the remaining Avaya/Nortel systems are supported by independent techs. The only loyalty is for cheap support until the system crashes for good.

Agree. It was lacking the previous over-hyped support of last year. Happy to see that. And he did accurately follow up with "because clients have other priorities and it's easier to not overhall their communications" or something along those lines. But it is note worthy that Avaya no longer has "loyal" customers. That was the reality of Nortel clients for years. That loyalty evaporated after the last BK. It should be summarized as "some clients just stay" which gives Avaya less attrition than would be expected. Yet I'd argue it is "for the time being" and no where the definition of loyalty.

I will go on record sharing this was a vast improvement from the past. Objective. Fair.
What no one is saying that must be said is this -- Emerging from Bankruptcy is NOT a Victory. It's an eventual result of some BAD behaviors and unethical decisions. To discuss Avaya being a candidate for Acquisition without one mention of the shareholders (including us employees) is myopic and I hope those on that video read this and champion integrity by discussing that very critical point moving forward.

However, I trust the head of analyst relations will immediately forward this message out (we will see at top of screen if this was shared) and use Avaya resources to have it taken down. Avaya analyst relations spend an insane amount of energy and resources controlling the narrative. If only they'd spend 10% of that energy focused on realistic growth Avaya wouldn't have been in this situation.

In all honesty, why are they even called "Analysts"? Why not "Promoters", or "Media Consultants"? Analysts imply 'not paid' or a proper agreement where all are paid to participate yet not paid for guaranteed positive write-ups.

Why is it that UCaaS/CCaaS have PBX carryover analysts who are exclusively paid on retainer when the broader tech industry has a balance where you actually do have critical thinking and objective sharing? For the last 3-5 years the OG PBX analysts, who moved into UC/CC for the past 10 years, have clearly tried hard to branch into general tech as they know this niche is End-of-Life.
I personally have yet to open that link. Today we were bombarded by Constellation. I closed it 30 seconds in. It's the same 'ol spin with zero objectivity. We can only hope that now that they have evolved into general tech they may also evolve into more fact based objectivity. (however, they have significant influence over marketing. Avaya needs to accept what we are. We are not general tech. Heck, we really aren't a technology company at all. The emcee is a perfect example of Avaya trying to "dress up" to be something it isn't. We have a lot of that going on. Too much).