Integra Telecom Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Integra Telecom full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – There are some nice people there

Cons – In my 25 years of working I have never seen such a messed up place. Almost every employee seems to be on the verge of snapping. Much of it comes from completely unpredictable behaviour and blindsiding..you don't know if there will be an ok day or if you will be escorted out the door before you can even get to your desk.
My general feeling is even the most upper level managers are pawns in an international financial chess came and everyone else is just the chess board. Everyone is just watching the players being knocked off and moved around and waiting to come in to work one morning to hear that the company has been sold and that we will all be gone.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – I'm not sure that there were too many pros to working at Integra. I was able to get a lot of material produced in a short time, but that wasn't due to any Integra benefits.

Cons – The decentralized model made everything 10 times more complicated than it needed to be, and senior management was barely engaged so as to be ineffectual at organizing anything and keeping projects on track. When they acquired Eschelon, they laid off the most competent employees in an effort to make themselves look good, which was a huge detriment to the merged company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Integra Telecom full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good compensation when selling. Competitive pricing. Overall, a good group of salespeople to work with.

Cons – Motivation by negativity. Fear induced motivation with a shape up or ship out mentality. Average tenure geographically was 5 months per Senior Account executive with an extremely high turnover. Stressful atmosphere, as everyone seems to be running around scared of losing their jobs.

Advice to Senior Management – Less negativity and fear driven leadership tactics, and more positivity and motivational type strategies.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Integra Telecom full-time for more than a year

Pros – Sales Environment
Contests with payouts for those that do well.

Cons – No Company advertising. Few tools for the salespeople (have to purchase your own portfolio and/or briefcase otherwise you are using a BIC pen and a notepad). $20.00 a month cell phone reimbursement (impossible). Complex technology and not enough time to learn it all before production is expected. Low if not the lowest base salaries in the industry. Only a handful of people and one Manager are doing well. The rest are struggling.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop churnning and start developing. Believe you have the right people in place both in Sales and in Management and train them. Develop tenured, long term employees by supporting them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – Provided great medical benefits at a reasonable costs. Some great innovative products.

Cons – Quotas too high for the market that they serve. Poor Training. Only training was by giving at least half of your deals to get help from Sr. Account Executives. But even then they would just do things and not show or tell you how. Sales Engineers were bad and often couldn't support deals. They didn't understand the basic sales processes. Two different rule books. One for the new people that we got in training and another one that senior, successful sales executives were using.

Advice to Senior Management – Make sure you have competent Sales Managers that really know pricing, contracts, systems and ordering process. In the same manner, have competent Sales Engineers and Trainers. Make sure that the training isn't just a bunch of bull (it was way too general). The pricing, policies and processes that we learned in training was not the ones that the successful Account Executives were using. In other words, don't have two different rule books. Lastly, hire people that already know telecom. It is too hard to learn that and company processes and policies while learning the market and how to sell to it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – Good support people. Large market share. Company has a fantastic asset in the Electric Lightwave fiber backbone. Engineers are smart and helpful in formulating solutions. Comp plan is lucrative if you are one of the chosen sales reps.

Cons – Company still lives in the culture of the haves and have nots. New leadership, again and things are not compleated yet. Management needs to rip off the bandaid and enforce the "Rules of Engagement" so that all Enterprise reps can make money. As it stands of late there are 5 reps out of 18 that are makeing money. The rest are making their base only.

Advice to Senior Management – Rip off the rules of engagement bandaid and let the Enterprise Sales Reps sell to the Enterprise accounts and let all the Enterprise sales Manager boats rise together in their specific vertical market! Good Luck.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – Nice co-workers, located in renton, in this complex there is a free workout room,

Cons – Politics mean unless you are a favorite you wont be promoted no matter how well you do your job. No recognition for good work. No stability, re-org at least once a year,

Advice to Senior Management – get your act together,

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – Pretty Good Product low price leader.

Cons – No training at all. I was new to the telecom industry but not new to sales. The training focused on how to cold call, the importance of a good handshake...I was embarrassed for the company. They have tremendous turnover because their sales team with just a few exceptions has nothing beyond surface knowledge. The product, phone lines, T1, phone features are commodities and every month the prices get lower and lower.

Advice to Senior Management – Fewer feet on the street but make them true telecom experts.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – Good medical, decent base pay if you are just starting out in sales and Good technical/solution based sales training. Can have real fun with this job when things are going smoothly.

Cons – I have been in sales for over 12 years. This could be a real nightmare if they have not fixed things since 08-09 it was like going through a maze and having to hit every dead end to figure out there way of a solution to sell there product. Customer service answers the phone when your customer calls! The problem is your customers may have to call too much. Two different types of paper work. All services not offered in all metropolitan areas in Washington state. Once you do find maps of what product you can sell and which paper work to use for what area. The maps are hard to read! Once you get past that, good luck on them installing on time or expecting management to help you out. No territories, No good leads, and may very well be told when your cold calling you are the fourth person to stop by there company this week. Good example of a company that floods its sales staff with anybody they can.

Advice to Senior Management – Combined customer retention duties and re sells with AE’s duties, increase base pay consider going back to part residual income for commissions, either add territories or better leads strait from customer service, fix install times, present better readable maps, only have one type of paper work, don’t just hire anybody and respect who you do hire.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Integra Telecom

Pros – It is a good stepping stone into sales and great way to get off your parents insurance after college. You meet some great customers that can offer you a future possition after you leave.

Cons – The offices are completely unprofessional! The average life of a sales rep is 6-8 months. Commission mistakes are made OFTEN and not corrected for months... if ever. Management can issue a "commission hit" They encourage a model where you do not have all details before throwing you out on the streets to get 50 business cards and "one call close" customers. They will take away commissions if a customer cancells service within 6 months of you selling- even if the company closes. It is run with a "high school" like mentality instead of with a business mind.

Advice to Senior Management – respect and train your employees. Listen to their imput and take it to heart. Value both your employees and your customers. Give the customer care and provisioners bonuses for doing a good job and create more loyal "good" people rather than the "turn and burn" mentality of today.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend