Cbeyond Reviews

Pros

One of the best training programs in the industry, help to educate about technology and create a sales foundation that successful reps will utilize and grow upon for the rest of their sales career (cold calling, teleprospecting, sales model and overall approach)

Cons

High energy right out of college "party" atmosphere, young managers that micromanage, life-work imbalance, "do what it takes to get the deal" tactics

Advice to Senior Management

Crisis control training (it's telecomm, there will be minor issues), uniform quota and compensation (changes monthly)

Pros

The company culture is like none I've ever seen before! There is always incentives and bonuses, and they always find a way to make your job more fun and motivating. On a weekly basis you are recognized for you hard work, and always given feed back on how to do better. I really learned solid communication skills, time management, and negotiation skills. It was the perfect first time career outside of college, because it enabled me to learn about myself, and how to work as individual and as a team!

Cons

Cold calling- no one likes to do it but its a job, and money! Also the majority of the time you are out on your own finding new leads to write deals; so if you are not self-motivated this is not a job for you! But it is also so rewarding because you learn communication skills, presentation skills in front of business owners, and you really learn how to sell yourself, and how to never feel uncomfortable. Gas money is also a variable, but you can write it off in your taxes at the end of the year!

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership at Cbeyond was great! One of the best training programs; the management is so detailed in preparing you for your career. Thanks Jasmine (Houston) ! Miss you!

Pros

great training and instructor.
teach you how to be a sales beast

Cons

very negative public image
no work-life balance

Pros

Great opportunity to gain outside sales experience. All promotions are based on selling performance. Helpful management who has had your same job starting out.

Cons

The work extremely tough in certain markets and hard to sell Cbeyond serviced based on value. Must sell on soft costs. Hours are long and territories have been hit really hard by previous reps.

Advice to Senior Management

Micro manage less, trust your employees, downsize your sales staff and use that money to market Cbeyond and its services to gain brand recognition and more positive views.

Pros

Debt free, growing company, I earn what I'm worth. My promotion is based on my work not politics. All the managers sold atleast 20 deals to be in a manager role, they know what they are doing.

Cons

The company is growing and the corporate office is doing a great job at keeping us in the loop. I wish we had EFM

Pros

Health benefits
Learning how to survive at a political, hostile environment.
After a few months of work, if you don't care about making the bare minimum you might be able to fake it and just come in for the morning meetings/nightly meetings and make the base salary.
If you are a hot girl, you will get house deals. If you speak the corporate line, they will promote you.
Good sales training. This is probably the best thing here, learn sales training, and how to sell ice to Eskimos, and how to put your nose to the cement and grind out a day.
They don't track you (GPS) on your cell phone! Also, use bbs so they can't track your messages.

Cons

You will end up hating your day but will be too drained from all the bs to make a resume. You and your friends will all talk about how shitty it is, but the people will keep you there for a while. Eventually you will end up daydreaming about being hit by a car while working so you can get workers comp.

Everyone there hates it, (But you don't notice that at first)
The hours and work they demand from you are ridiculous, and would burn anyone out, (anyone who actually does it 5 days a week every month).
You are selling an inferior product, with way better sales training, but trust me, its a really really inferior product in an over saturated market (San Diego)
Management constantly lies to employees. They don't even have enough respect for employees to do a good job at lying to them.
The prizes they advertize will ALWAYS be worse than what they say. ie if you won a weekend on the beach at a beachfront house, you get an hour of happy hour at a beachfront bar. This. really. happened.
Driving; in San Diego, you probably are going to get stuck driving at least 1-2 hours a day, and it could be as bad as 3 and a half hours a day. They give you 50 bucks a month for gas I think, but that's pretty laughable.
-Playing Favorites, if you are a hot girl, you will get house deals. If you speak the corporate line, they will promote you. - therefor if you are not, good luck
They will fire anyone, and constantly do, from any position in management, on the sales side at least.
They will force you to use AWFUL software so they can try their best to micromanage you. Its named XLR8R or something after an actual good sales software program called accelerator. But its Cbeyond made, to save a few bucks, and you will learn to hate this thing.
Oh ya, micromanagement. x 10. If you are good they will get off your back, have a bad week/month and they will be back.

Advice to Senior Management

You already know how corrupt this whole sham is. Enjoy riding those suckers!

Pros

Great commissions with good base and benefits

Cons

Hard to sell. Territories have been blown up by other reps and most businesses we walk into hate us. Hard to stay motivated to keep going. Always seems to be drama at the office, carrots dangled in front of you to make you keep going. Started with 9 in my training class, down to 4 after 7 months. I've been a steady, high producer, but completely burned out and unmotivated at this point.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire sales professionals instead of every kid that just got a degree and quit micro-managing.

Pros

If you can sell (their way) they will pay you well, the new comp plan they rolled out mid 2011 was solid and finally included retention bonuses and recurring profit. The benefits were pretty good once they actually kicked in 90 days later. They do hire some pretty good people. The sales training was pretty good too, very thorough. Really good if you have never been in sales before. They teach you how and expect you to work hard and be very aggressive. From the beginning it starts off looking pretty good... But...

Cons

Management tends to yell at employees (a lot) and no matter what you do, it is never good enough. There are a few good managers but they usually leave once they get the title they want and take their skills elsewhere. Most of the managers are there because they were foolish enough to stay there and/or don't have the social/people skills to get a better job. They don't understand people and think that hard selling is the only way to sell, and if you don't follow the "model" they will embarrass you in front of your peers and scream at you while you are on the phone with customers. Just imaging the hazing in a bad college movie stereotype. I watched them ridicule and publicly humiliate people which only stifles their future performances and retards their growth. It is humiliating and the customers actually don't like it either. They try to lead through intimidation and if you offer your opinion they will squash it immediately as balderdash... and try to make you feel stupid for trying to improve on the current topic.

This company creates robots and want you to follow a "model" that is overly aggressive and makes sure you only hard sell the customers and pressure them to sign right there on the spot. God forbid you go back to see the potential customer more than once, otherwise they tell you to move on to a new prospect. This is not a relationship building position, you get in, get out and move on to the next customer.

Now when you are in the field, the aggressive tactics can get you the "seat" with the potential customer, but that is only if the Cbeyond employee who had your territory before you didn't annoy, irritate, insult or offend them by coming in week after week belittling the "gatekeeper" and forcing his/her way into the office. They commend the employees for getting kicked out of the office just as much as they do for getting "the seat"... This not only gives the company a bad name in the public eye, but also makes the job much more difficult for future sales people. Oh and that is if you are the only one in your "territory." It isn't uncommon to hear a potential customer say, "you guys were in here yesterday" or "last week". I was once told by a receptionist that "if anyone from Cbeyond comes in I am told to immediately ask them to leave"... Seriously.

Now as far as HR issues... They verbally harass employees and constantly threaten people with termination as they think is "motivating" when in actuality it only makes the person work hard enough to not get fired, thus making them a short term employee. This has a direct correlation with the next topic… Micromanagement. Since all the managers are so busy watching their own backs and the threat of termination is always looming around the office, they micromanage people too much. They make you start your day in the office, which is fine I prefer to be in the office early, but they also insist you check in at the end of the day and they will literally count the cards you collected and judge you on the spot. Again, when they call for “high activity days” people will go out and just get cards and not focus on quality leads just so they can make the predetermined number set in the morning meeting. They do not believe in quality over quantity. Nor do they believe in trust or loyalty. They also mark your cards with different color markers or punch holes in them so you don't/can't use them again.

I was in a training class of 10 people and after 8 months there was only one of us left... and the remaining employee has been looking for a new job. High turnover is par for the course and as I mentioned they also force people to quit. There are not too many people that are there for more than a year for a reason. A few of us had a discussion with the HR people outside of work, and one of them was in tears when we discussed what was going on during the day in the office and in the field. This company turns and burns people faster than they can get them hired, for all the aforementioned topics and more... These are just the ones I think need to be discussed.

Lastly the managers are all the people that were able to sell and follow the model exactly and don't care about customer (or employee) satisfaction or ethics. They just want to hard sell the customer and move on. They all try to be just like the VP who is actually a pretty good guy, but he is convinced the authoritarian way is always right... because it is how he was taught... (more cloning). They all act obsequiously to get the position they have and sadly they don't have minds of their own. The worst part is they all use the same jargon and if you do anything differently after you get yelled at in public they will then deem you as "un-coachable" which is ironic is that one needs a coach in order to be "coachable", and these people are definitely not coaches. If they were coaches, people would stay longer and would actually respect them.
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Advice to Senior Management

I'm not sure where these tactics originated, but if they came from the corporate level, this would be a travesty. I'm only assuming that this is how the California offices are run. I have been in sales for a long time and I have never seen anything like this before I started there or since. I was scarred by this job and left the telecom industry completely.

They need to clean house on the management and/or teach them how to really “think outside the box” instead of living in it. The managers they have as previously mentioned are only there because they cannot get any other jobs. The managers are immature and very insecure. They are clones who all have become “yes” men (yes men only). The only thing I can say is that if they treated all the employees as human beings and took a real interest in their success this company would not only be palatable but could actually be a good place to work.

Pros

Very good Sales Training during the first week.

Good place to meet other people fresh out of College.

Decent Base Salary for someone without any formal work experience.

Cons

Most everything that needs to be said has been by other Cbeyond survivors but there are a few things that stuck out to me:

Some of the territories have been hit so hard by so many reps, businesses have put up No CBeyond Reps signs in their windows. Wow...

You will be driving your car up to 100 miles a day and you will be paid back pennies on the dollar for fuel costs not to mention wear and tear on your car.

You will work a bare minimum of 60 hours a week.

Micro-Managed.

Pros

amenities, health care, pop machines are .25 cents

Cons

Don't expect to move up unless it's sales based

Advice to Senior Management

hire from within.