Who is running the ship here? The SVP is clueless on the day to day, the VP is the SVPs buddy, the directors are a majority of the SVPs pawns from his years moving up the chain. Account Managers are doing nothing but collecting orders and being paid $500K+ doing so. When you talk about doing a shake up, this leadership team needs to be separated, laid off or deployed to other parts of the business.
19 replies (most recent on top)
@1y5
I was starting to feel like you and quit. Sounds like you stuck around too long and let things get under your skin.
Don't let people that are running a once great company into the ground bug you. Leadership can't really hide their mistakes like in the past since our current C level and those below them plug this many holes on the damn.
@1xk
Those are bad reps with no common sense that think they do something no one else can.
I gave of myself and made sure every request pre and post were taken care of. I solved issues.
I however also got sc--wed by some smaller partners with pricing before I quit where I OWNED the client and found out that pricing was provided even before I was brought in the mix by MY customer (which they forced the partner and distributor).... with internal bid adders (not my fault)...I was provided pricing that would put me 7% negative in total margin.
I let the customer know but they know the game already. To not drag things out...I ate the loss (thus happened many times over my career). I ate losses to make things right for the customer.
Glad I did well enough to now be retired and young. Loved 99% of my customers but I'd say 1/2 or more of both the partners I dealt with and also my fellow coworkers were terrible people that didn't put loyal customers first.
Glad I'm free of people being fake to me. I was always honest with everyone and treated people how I'd want to be treated. Now I honestly have hate towards the bad people I left behind. May all those bad or ignorant people get what they deserve (I already see it happening with layoffs and pay cuts....I don't feel bad for 99% of the people...only the handful of true friends I made over the years (key word being handful...everyone else...hope you have issues paying the bills...maybe lose a home or can't get meds). I don't feel bad at all...it's major karma 🥳
@1x8 yes also bullied by these two sellers as a partner. It is getting very old and I have started transitioning business away to WWT, Insight, SHI, BLUUM.
As a partner I can tell you the account manager running long Island NY and the field seller in upstate NY are not ethical. Customers who are reading this should know they are price fixing bids making their responses limited from other resellers. They both bully partners in the most passive aggressive way. The manager they report to has no business managing NY and does nothing to keep these two sellers in their lane. The inmates are running the prison.
@1kj
Customers moreso notice their tenured AM's being replaced my newbies and that all their interactions with AR/AP are all coworkers from India.
They'll soon notice thier technical contacts will be a majority of overseas coworkers.
I'm sure US entities spending big money on security will want their data touched by overseas actors. Wonder how CDW-G feels aboit that (I'm sure leadership will only provide the G side with US coworkers).
What a dumpster fire. Also like the other poster mentioned...I also worked booths for my segment. My director traveled around the country working booths and we all worked at these booths regardless of which customer approached to strengthen our division. The stronger the segment got ... the more resources we received (things like more ISA's which we should've already had access to but which got hoarded by other areas of the company due to individual segment budgets).
@1kj
What complicated tech do schools need as opposed to customers from other segments
CDW was doing tradeshows and booths before they had strategists and ambassadors.
Whoever said I'm wasn't in the EDU segment is correct. I was in CDW sales for 20 years and seen it all since the CDW was $3 billion.
No one helped me with my sales in all of me 20 years.
I also worked CDW booths/tradeshows before. Managers and Directors should be doing those...maybe even VP's or higher.
Those former educators that were brought in...they had the same type of industry people hired into other segments as managers.
Strategists and ambassadors get paid more than managers. Unless they are working directly with AM's...they aren't selling. I've seen plenty talk the talk and produce $0 and they're kept around for their industry "expertise" then fired once rumblings occur in the sales team that those people mostly just collect $ that sales brings in.
Sales is slowly being replaced with new hires and tenured people who stay are basically getting their commissions and pay cut to fund acquisitions like Sirius and the new Ai acquisition that'll fail and cost another 1/2 billion.
The same VP that ruined EDU is now ruining all of Sales with her BS JP Morgan experience.
You know the numbers of people fired but you don't see the # of smart coworkers who quit on their own.
VP's and Directors are quitting as well.
But keep defending roles and people that are draining the company. It's not like Education is the only segment to have "Ambassadors" and strategists. Those people wine and sine potential customer...same as CDW did before those roles existed. Now our incompetent leadership HAS to cut costs because the yearly growth is stagnant and investors see all of this from sites like this, comments in LinkedIn after layoffs, and customers complaining on sites like TrustPilot and Reddit.
Cats out of the bag. Margins are down because new reps don't or can't add value with all the BS changes in operations.
@1jy You’re displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ambassador/strategist actually did at CDW. They’re not just solely to support you in your sales goals. These were former school and district leaders that have more connections and knowledge about education than you can even imagine. They actively helped school districts with their strategic planning and their technology planning, helped them map out budgets, brought those budgets BACK to you so that you can help parse out the best sales pitch, created content for regional and national educational conferences, gave workshops and professional development for customers…all as a VALUE ADD for our customers at ZERO COST to them. Since you seem to think CDW is all about sales and that these positions aren’t needed, would you feel comfortable running a professional development to a group of school superintendents? Would YOU want to do booth duty at a conference and speak to 50+ tech liaisons at a time about CDW’s mission? No? I thought so. Therefore, this is going to be a huge shake up as we continue to go into this school year and as conference season begins. Customers are already noticing that these teams got let go and they are not happy that the these zero-cost additions are gone.
@1jy I can tell you don’t come frkm education…
I don’t think you understand, the strategists and the ambassadors WERE main drivers of the contacts outside of IT in education. They also basically ran the content rooms and booths at our large education industry events that helped drive revenue and generate interest in the company. They weren’t “made up jobs,” they were genuinely helpful and now they’re gone. A lot of customers have lost faith in CDW education now because roles like the strategists and ambassadors helped set us apart (Google, Microsoft, and Dell had already by and large gotten rid of their strategy roles by 2023). With that also now gone for us, we’re just another company. Not much is setting us apart from the competition.
Who was VP of education...anything she touches goes to cr-p. Now she's VP of sales....how's that going for everyone.
And all these strategists and ambassadors...they can get bent. Made up roles like the prolifileration of BDM'S and CSM's. With so many roles that are outside of the customer/AM relationship...you'd assume connecting to specialists, partner contacts, etc would be so much faster but none of those people really do anything except cost the company more money.
Don’t forget that many of the Amplified team members are gone and they laid off the ambassadors AND the education strategists, which is having a huge impact on our customers…a lot of these people provided no-cost services like workshops and professional development and strategy planning for schools and districts and now they’re just completely gone. Whenever I go into a meeting now the customer is pi---d that my strategist is gone and now every conversation with them truly feels like a “sales transaction” for the customer. Without that industry knowledge person with me it’s been hard to have conversations with the people who actually have the authority to make purchasing decisions. So thanks CDW for getting rid of some of our most valuable people…I’m going to start looking for a new job today because this is just not going to work out.
Backbone support person here - Education has the biggest whiners in sales. they also have front line managers and directors with no backbone that cater to these entitled, overpaid sellers. Lastly, they have senior leaders who love to get escalations and try to help by solving the problem themselves instead of using set escalation paths or resolution points.
They all mean well.
However, the Sellers need direction, guidance, and boundaries. If they are not set, they will become what they are: Complainers that will never be happy and are overpaid for the order taking they do.
The Manager and Directors need to be empowered and held accountable. Without this, they will keep getting walked over by Sellers and only "push" what they think their team is good at as opposed to what is best for business.
The Senior Leaders need to set a tone and let their team run without setting the expectation that all issues need their magical touch to resolve things.
I think all levels have good people with good intentions. But the culture is unhealthy and everybody finer points without seeing what they can do to make it better.
@qg This person gets it! Zero assistance on bringing in business, all assistance which is limited is trying to remove internal obstacles.
Being the lead rep inside for NYC, I can say there is no support from leadership top down, SVP, VP, Director, Manager, all do not help at all. We need fresh new leaders to help us get things completed.
@nc Gone!
What happened to the Amplified team from the acquisition? It seems almost all of them have left.
Leadership is very dated and no real go to market, keep pushing attach amplified services because of a bad acquisition driven by the SVP and VP. Zero help working the largest K12 district in the country, not sure if that is because I am female and not in the boys club from softball or they really just do not care. How many times has the SVP or VP visited the largest customer in K12, zero!
I can’t sit here in good conscience and listen to you badmouth Derpy Koczera and Fruity Pebbles Vitale like that
@cc
What you described isn't just in EDU...
All of sales from SMB to MedLar and every AM in-between has to have eyes and hands on every facet of the sales process to push things to happen from RMA's to cases, to Credit approvals.
Leadership itself has slowed down the once quick processes with their urge to put their personal stamp on things to try to make themselves seem like their jobs are justified.
I’m in Education and in Sales. You’re absolutely correct in that I’m an order taker and have been for years.
However, I can also tell you that for most is us in Edu Sales it’s only due to that same “leadership’s” lack of investment in both people, technology or process improvement, forcing us into operations. Most of us have been begging for help for years even remotely close to being “on par” with what other segments get so we can actually sell again, only to fall on deaf ears, leaving sales to have to handhold every single pre and post sale process, completely taking us away from out actual job of being able to sell.
I want nothing else than to sell again, I genuinely miss it, but due to the lack of resources that we’ve been promised countless times by the same SVP/VP crew you mentioned, nothing ever changes. As a result,we’re left processing orders and fixing issues to take care of our customers instead of finding new business and get a paycheck by “taking orders” and it all points back to the lack of leadership in understanding that we’re all drowning in quote/order/RMA/CSR/AR/CPQ/Pipeline/Opportunities etc etc and having a minute in the day to p-e, let alone sell. It’s quite sad