Cbeyond Reviews

Pros

Cbeyond gave me absolutely phenomenal training in the beginning. Since I was brand new to sales, I learned the basics extremely well and sponged up loads of product information as well. My direct manager helped me out immensely and put in lots of extra time to make sure I was equipped with the right tools to handle cold calling, tele-prospecting, overcome objections, close and build relationships.

There are lots of young, energetic people straight out of college (or 2 or 3 years out) and you can always feed positive energy off of them. However this also plays a negative role in the work environment as a lot of these guys (by the way, literally a 9 male: 1 female ratio) are not used to being in a professional setting.

Fully loaded blackberry (Employee tracking? :]). Free laptop (for a Lenovo it's quite disappointing)

Cons

Too inefficient with employee time. Too backwards with 20th century micromanagement. Too numbers driven in terms of business cards per day etc. Too little flexibility even for those who perform. Too pushy at times. Gas compensation is a joke. XLR8R is a pathetic excuse for a sales tool. Some managers are incompetent. Terrible new compensation scale for larger accounts; how dare you try to make it seem like we're earning more money than before, this is why there is such a disconnect (and distrust) between management and reps.

Believe it or not on this one: Too many sales incentive events. I don't mean the quota events, those are nice. What I am addressing are those "2 deals by the [XXth] for $300!!!!". Get with the times Cbey, repeating incentives like that have been shown to hinder employee productivity in any non-mechanical task.

Advice to Senior Management

Work smarter instead of working hard inefficiently. News flash: calling prospects at 7 pm will earn you praises from managers, but only tick off potential customers.

Pros

Clear-cut promotional path with management opportunities, award winning training, and the opportunity to make a lot of money with uncapped commission

Cons

long days, but that was set as an expectation early on in the interview process, so i knew what I was getting into.

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good work.

Pros

-Base + uncapped comission & constant opportunities for monetary spiffs and promotions.
-Exceptional training and coaching.
-Team unison/support and fun work environment
-ramp-up period to provide time to acclimate

Cons

-requires high energy and motivation to be able to stay active out in the field throughout the day, but it's all about the payoff of uncapped comission! Your effort is directly related to your final paycheck amount!

Pros

Great training
Decent compensation
Great first sales job

Cons

Young, immature sales force that likes to gossip and play politics...this can create (and often does) a general sense of entitlement/low morale/unrealisitic pessimism concerning the output of the branch and company. Best advice to someone looking to work for Cbeyond is be ready to work hard and earn that money. Also, don't get caught up in the 20-something-year-old gossip game about "all the problems with Cbeyond." It will kill your work performance. The best sales team in our branch outperformed the other teams almost every month and the main difference was that their team lead forced them to never get involved with the gossip in the branch. They always kept to themselves and it looked very elitist but the fact is that it worked.

Advice to Senior Management

Sales is all about revenue and I understand that, and I also understand setting the bar a little higher than what is realistically attainable. However, it isn't fair to a prospective rep coming in to be hyped up on how easy it is to sell 5 or 6 accounts a month. Because any intelligent person who looks at the national rankings of the 700 reps in the company will see that the highest selling rep in the entire country averages 3.8 accounts per month. Therefore, give us a more realistic idea of what we are going to accomplish so that when we average 2 sales a month we aren't freaking out that we are sub-standard salespeople.

Pros

Cbeyonds sales training is very excellent. This sales model really works with the proper management and operational back office in place to support it.

Cons

-sales force is young and immature.
-management often treats reps like children instead of professionals.
-there has often been in appropriate none professional behavior between managers and sales reps.
-A very high amount of turnover. A seasoned sales rep is someone who has been there for 6months to a year.
-They can’t get orders installed properly and efficiently.

Advice to Senior Management

Don’t promote children to management roles. There is a certain amount of maturity and professionalism that is needed to lead others. You can’t promote frat boys and party girls to management positions and expect the work environment to stay professional and efficient.

Pros

This job has great upward mobility and there are so many opportunities. The training provided here is some of the best in the industry. The pay is very competitive for a sales job and they actually provide a permanent base salary - a rarity in the industry. The fact that Cbeyond is willing to take this risk shows that they are willing to put it on the line when bringing in new reps out of college. Many companies will often put new reps on a declining salary expecting them to make comissions or not get paid. If you dont put in the effort, you wont last long but as long as you work hard management will do everything they can to make you sucessful. You will be highly marketable after working here for just a few months.

Cons

The job is extremely tough. You will be expected to work hard and talk to at least 50 customers a day. The job does involve cold calling (visiting unannounced) to businesses and you will find many owners and secretaries are less than happy to talk to you. Communications are an important part of every business and its always going to be difficult to convince owners to make a change.

Advice to Senior Management

You have made so many great improvements, this is definitely a great place to work! Two years ago management was very difficult and they would often churn and burn reps. This is no longer the case. Management is great and very supportive. The job is still tough but management is top notch. Please continue what you are doing.

Pros

Training is one the the strongest points about this company. The Opportunities for growth depend on you.

Cons

Long hours, there is a lot of driving involved, competition is tough

Advice to Senior Management

Keep focusing on training, specially with the new products. Listen from the bottom up.

Pros

excellent opportunity to learn how to sell product

Cons

have to be very aggressive with clients

Advice to Senior Management

excellent opportunity

Pros

Many people I worked with would go home when they were supposed to be our in their territory..and they still were making a base of $30K.... they also bribed us with free breakfasts, contests, happy hours to make us forget how horrible the job was... A lot of people you coldcall, will end of offering you a job with them..

Cons

Crappy management, I constantly got hit on by my "mentor"...super creepy...
My "Team Lead" was completely rude and unprofessional. I didn't get 50 biz cards one day (which is how many you have to have every day.. "every door every floor") and my "manager" screamed at me, flipped me off and told him that was the message i was sending him. It was my second week on the job...and my territory was COLFAX.

Cbeyond has saturated the Denver area...people would scream at me to get out of their offices when they knew I was with Cbeyond

They have multiple hours of ridiculous meetings every morning...it's like being in a frat house where everyone is screaming and acting psychotic..

Advice to Senior Management

Be kind to your employees, screaming at them, harassing them, hitting on them, etc. doesn't get you very far.

Pros

Excellent work environment with long hours. There is little chance at advancement though.
Senior Management works very hard to promote openness and information sharing.

Cons

Long hours.
Insurance benefits are subpar.