CDW Government Reviews

Pros

-Great Staff
-Great Resources
-Great training
-Lots of free stuff
-Great benefits
-Good opportunity to make money

Cons

-Willing to deal with a low starting salary
-Must be a self-motivated person

Advice to Senior Management

Raise the starting salary to help people make CDW a home long term. People need money to live.

Pros

It is a fun laid back atmosphere. You are typically not micromanaged. There is a chance to make a lot of money if you are in the correct segment, like healthcare, MedLar. HIED and K12, not so much. They have great benefits, decent vacation time, and promote having fun at work. They offer a lot of high level technical training, but unless you are already a techno/computer geek, many of the things you sell will be way over your head. They provode a great engineering/architect group to back you up, but it is often very hard to get on their schedules quickly.

Cons

Commission structure is terrible. If you have one bad month or are in a cyclical segement, you may not receive a commission check for several months until you get your average back up. They also take 20% of your spiffs despite charging vendors to even run the spiff. No printer spiffs if you don't sell toner. If you customer is under contract to get toner cheaper somewhere else, you are out of luck. Sales goal are huge, and will change in the middle of the month. I am writing this in late January and I still don't have my sales goal from January, or the rest of the year.

Upper management pretends they are interested in listening to your ideas on how to make more money, but they are really not. I spoke with the CEO and Sr. VP's about our international business and us missing out on $30M in business. Their response was to eliminate all international shipping which gave me a 30% pay cut. If you are technical and get an engineering job, great place to work. If you are in sales, it is a great place to learn to sell, but only 20% will make it. They are constantly hiring because of the high turn over.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the trailing 3 commissions structure and go to a month to month like any normal company. In HIED your have no chance to make goal in November and December because the schools are closed so much for the holidays. They puts you behind the 8 ball most of Q1

Don't pretend to listen to your employees, it is disrespectful. I have brought up several things to Tom Richards(CEO) that needed to be address so we could treat our customers better and make more money. Both ideas were swept under the rug despite support from my team, Sales Manager, and Sr. Sales Manager. Now I just keep my mouth shut.

Don't brag about huge revenue and profit numbers then turn around and cut commissions and spiffs. We all realize that Madison Dearborn wants their profit, but you loose a lot of good employees because there are so few sales people that make it and earn over $75K a year.

I am a current employee, but my team has had a lot of people quit in the last few months, I am getting close to, and I know of several tenured top peformers who are also ready to bail. That should tell you something about pay and job satisfaction.

Pros

Great opportunities to make great money if you work hard and lots of cool trips/incentives.

Cons

Dishonest and unethical mid-upper management (not necessarily Edwardson and company but somewhere in the middle).

Advice to Senior Management

Review ethics policy and pay employees by the pay structure previously laid out for them.

Pros

After my tenure 6 figs were easy to obtain

Cons

Managers they have there favorites

Advice to Senior Management

Grow up

Pros

Good management with overall interns

Cons

Boring work and gets repetitive

Advice to Senior Management

Be more interactive with workers

Pros

Great work environment, fun atmosphere, lots of give aways, training, ability to work with out a manager breathing down your neck, plan your work day.

Cons

Low base salary, you get loaded with low spending accounts and will not begin to spend with you over night..

Advice to Senior Management

Higher base salary,

Pros

The benefits are pretty good. The training is solid. The technology is obviously top notch. The discount on technology is also nice.

Cons

For those who are depending upon commission, the competition probably gives a better rate of commission. You are micromanaged and your manager may make your life a living hell. Cannot really price match the competition if you want to make a sale.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to be consistent in every level of communication for your employees. Ask a different person get a different answer. Get on the same page.

Pros

cool people lots of fun and opportunities. great place for networking. lots of perks and benefits. great resume builder if you dont stick it out

Cons

pay is absolutely terrible. goals are not communicated until the end of the month so it's extremely frustrating to plan month. the commission structure is ok at best but you can make good money.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay, Pay, Pay!! Commission needs to be looked at again. It's not terrible but some things need to be tweaked. Also goals need to be release in the first week of the month.. not with 3 days left!

Pros

cool people, good accounts to work with, easy to get time off.

Cons

Horrible base pay. Large amount of favoritism.

Advice to Senior Management

higher base pay

Pros

People I work with are great. I enjoy interacting with customers and coworkers. There are perks and benefits from vendors.

Cons

Stiff competition in the industry. Sales assistance can be difficult. Working with departments, manufacturers, customers, and others trying to put together an opportunity can prove very difficult. Goals constantly increasing to unrealistic expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

Make it easier to earn a commission. Don't increase goals and make other changes that prove impossible to meet. Allow us to compete.