Thread regarding Dell Inc. layoffs

Having my leader scream at me because no one can reach the impossible targets. I screamed back. I cant afford to pay my mortgage or school fees with the huge pay cuts that come from the target increases. No threats will make that worse.

Yes we've seen a lot of sales people who are closely related to the regional manager cleaning up with tiny targets whilst the rest of the reps carry impossible numbers.

"Yeah; it's really bad to work at Dell - unless you're related to a senior VP..."

There, I fixed it for you!

Yeah; it’s really bad to work in sales at Dell - if you’re not a very good salesman...

There is always a way they make sure you dont attain. The targets are now impossible. The year has been horrible. No one smiles and every week someone good leaves.

This is why we are losing money and cant get good targets. Too many staff. I have 4 storage specialists and 3 Server specialists and big number of overlay staff . Then there is alliances and channel specialists in a little vertical.

All of them are fighting over a tiny pie trying to make deals go to them. We have employed too many staff and these are high paid people and there is not enough business for them to go around so all of us wear it.

Managers are obsessed with growth. More staff must mean more power and a better role so they just cram more more more in even though they dont have enough business.

Our managers constantly find a reason to up the targets. It is ALWAYS "the biggest quarter, the strongest quarter" , "we have all these extra staff" " the market is always strong this quarter" . . lies lies lies. No one in our retention team has hit for a year now and lets face it you dont take a sales role to hit, you want to over achieve. Yet he is able to show growth growth growth because he has forced us to take higher numbers and pay us less. His results went up but our customers suffer

This thread should be read by anyone thinking of going to Dell.

I worked twice (yeah was dumb enough to come back a second time) for Dell first as a Storage overlay then in Networking and BOTH times it was in the end terrible. Constantly seeing my goal raised by a million or more the last month of each quarter, sales plans that paid the AE's who did NOTHING to promote my sales and in fact in many if not most cases would obstruct me from doing my job as they sold the commodity products (PC's and Servers ) that Dell is really all about. People put on PIPs due to the changing goals constantly and the minute you hit 50 or above your a marked person for extinction yet the spouses of RM's can miss their number quarter after quarter with no worry. Its all about two you know and blow at Dell. The company is nothing more than a blank check for MD to take from and management is completely corrupt and incompetent. After working at Cisco, CA, EMC, Oracle and now RN (close hold) I can honestly say it was Dell Hell. The day I quit a few months ago was the best most stress relieving day of my life in years. Dell in a nutshell s---s.

"can someone share the details of the commission plan? like how are sales suffering if you get commission from a million dollar deal. seems hard to go wrong. even if the next target is higher you got your money and leave to another sales money making. Sales are not meant to have job security. It is a quick capital building job."

You've not worked in sales have you. You get a a few large targets in different buckets in a period you need to hit. You can hit one bucket but have some crazy number in another and not get paid. Whatever you did reach add a lot more to that number for your next target. You can literally bring in millions for the company but not get paid as there is always a way they will penalise you..

can someone share the details of the commission plan? like how are sales suffering if you get commission from a million dollar deal. seems hard to go wrong. even if the next target is higher you got your money and leave to another sales money making. Sales are not meant to have job security. It is a quick capital building job.

My experience exactly .. couldn't have worded it better. It all addsup to a totally unethical way to run a company, and the double deception is forcing employes every year to complete mandatory "ethics certification training". A multiple choice set of questions that are all variants of "Dell or any employee will not sell tech to known terrorists/anyone on the Fed list of prohibited countries/organisations". This charade of "training" can induce the employee to think they work for a company that behaves ethically. The opposite is true. If you have integrity and value it, stay away from Dell.

They want you to leave!! You dont get it. Older staff above 30 can be targeted out even if you bring them millions in revenue they want you to go. It's a plan our managers told us was happening. Reduce the experience

what are we supposed to be selling? contracts?

Customers are getting tired of the sales rep churn and the never ending sales pitches for adding things they don't want or need when placing an order. Saw an email reply from a customer that said "just place the order for what I asked for and quit with the F***ing upsell, if I want I'll ask for it!"

Great way to improve customer satisfaction and keep them buying, not...

Hah! You dont get it. they WANT you to leave so they lose any potential RIF and any long service leave. So what if the customers get disrupted! The managers only think short term and turn the wheel every week doing the same thing. Leave and come back in a year at a higher pay in a different path!

just leave and rejoin a year later with lower target

If you win AE of the year award its a sure sign you will resign soon after as the numbers will be so massive and your customers lose focus. This is how Dell gets rid of it's BEST sales people and how other vendors benefit from their contacts.

Who ever dreamed up the sales plan is an id--t. no one is hungry for business when the numbers are so impossible it doesnt make a difference what you do or how hard you work you will still miss.

tbh Dell hires motherload of salesmaker so it can hit quarterly targets and look good on paper. It is just a churn of self-preservation at executive level. Blaming anyone and any department they can point their fingers on to bail themselves out while screwing the replacable sales people.

I was on overachievement but was demodified to underacheive by nearly 30 percent. I resigned. They dont want to pay anyone and the commission plan is designed to lose you money and pay the house. In every way they can they will squeeze the reps and reward the execs.

My customers want me to stay but I cant afford to work here anymore. My pay has been cut back so much i may as well work at Taco Bell even though I bring in more revenue than most. it

The commission plan you are made to sign says they can change your quota at any stage in the quarter. Of course they will

You too? One of our team had her quota changed on the last day of the quarter just to make sure she didn't get paid over achievement. She resigned after many years of service and as always she was told to keep it secret. She didnt. Since then it happens all around so they just make the targets impossible at the start of the quarter so they don't need to do it on you at the end.

Sorry to hear all this, please come and work in NDC as QA. Huge pay with bonus and no work, look at all principle QA and most importantly with no productivity, just politics.

I left part way through a quarter and something changed in the attainment plan afterward. End result was many reps wound up having to give back $ that had already been paid for sales attainment. They sent me a letter saying they wanted a significant amount back which promptly went in the paper shredder, too bad I never accepted the revised quota plan that rolled out after I left. I feel bad for the folks still there that got screwed in that money grab, just another example of squeezing as hard as possible to keep paying for the giant EMC boondoggle. Agreed it can only get worse as cloud migration gains momentum and sales of on prem gear slows, shows the shortsightedness of Management in thinking there is no need for a cloud centric strategy and will be the ultimate downfall of the empire.

Will only get worse It cant get better.

It's horrible. We've basically taken a 40% pay cut and people are borrowing money from family and savings. Even those lucky enough to hit are finding it takes months to get paid after multiple review committees and scrutiny. Targets are gated so high you can never ever hit your number.

The best customers suffer as the number is tied to a customer. No one wants to carry the poison challis customer with growth targets against one off projects that will never happen again. Designed to make us leave and pay everyone less.

I left Dell earlier this year and would agree with everything you just said. It's a total disaster, and I'm not sure why anyone would stay there in sales. The company's only interest is to weasel out of paying for sales that have been completed and documented. Not only does this reduce their costs in incentive comp, it also has the added benefit (to the company) of forcing attrition without paying severance. Whoever is still in the company will be subject to forced separation in a RIF as the company goes public.

An absolutely terrible company to work for. This is all part of the scheme to squeeze every dollar out of people.