Entercom Reviews

Pros

- Perks of working in the radio/media industry: concert tickets, events, artist performances
- No micromanaging
- Appreciation and encouragement of work/life balance
- Fast paced and high energy environment
- Kind and caring local management team

Cons

- Local management is often undermined by corporate management that is out of touch with reality of day-to-day business locally
- Way too much turnover
- Pay scale is drastically under market level
- Little room for career advancement
- Lack of communication can be very frustrating
- Too many managers and not enough staff

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more of your time and energy into your employees, rather than your managers. The company is incredibly top heavy and this impedes the efforts at success.

Pros

Good resources, lots of sales training, research and schedule planning tools, decent benefits, very good understanding of the work/life balance.

Cons

Too much emphasis on the useless Perks program, setting unreachable goals, hiring inexperienced people and letting them fail, poor commission structure.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop trying to be Groupon and be a radio station. Stop firing good people so your managers can hit their bonus and treat others like dirt.

Pros

Working with and meeting some great people
Fun radio station perks like concert tickets, business discounts, sponsored local events
Nice office building

Cons

Largely reduced benefits
High turnover rate in most departments
Heavy bottom line and numbers mentality with minimal emphasis on quality content

Advice to Senior Management

Foster more creativity and quality programming, Take better care of employees to keep them, Broader vision beyond bottom line numbers, More communication and input from the corporate level

Pros

The company has good people working hard to do what meets the bottom line. The offices were in a decent location.

Cons

There was a lack of action regarding emoployees who didn't tow the line of professionalism. It seemed that much could be looked over for what was perceived as an investment no matter the cost.

Advice to Senior Management

It is difficult to comment on managment at this time as the entire area team is different. Based on being an audience member now rather than an employee, it seems that the loss of the more "local" flavor may not be the best direction to go.

Pros

- Working with some great radio stations in the market
- Working, and meeting, some great people
- Lots of tools to work with (good and bad, see below)

Cons

- Management at all levels are out of touch with the realities of the marketplace
- If anything ever fails to live up to expectations, it's always the sales people who are to blame....management is infallible
- asking us to sell way too many thing....radio, online, database marketing, events, revenue sharing deals, search marketing, etc.
- short term focus of management on revenue for Entercom
- not client focused
- high, high turnover
- empty promises
- Micro-management (submitting minute by minute accounts of each day)
- reports upon reports upon reports
- management playing favorites in the sales pit....taking away account from AEs and giving them to other reps with no explanation
- all the good billing clients are already claimed
- hard to establish yourself if you don't have a list of clients already assigned to you when you start
- they unilaterally cut commissions, even on booked business, when the company's bottom line needed a boost.

Advice to Senior Management

- Don't micromanage us
- Come out of your ivory towers every once and a while
- Treat us like people
- Come back and focus on radio and results for the clients

Pros

The people, the people, the people!

Cons

It is hard to get hired as a full time employee.

Advice to Senior Management

People love working for Entercom and they work hard, and from what I've seen they would still work longer and harder and a little compensation would help.

Pros

The health insurance is above average.

If you want to take a day off without telling anyone, no one ever notices.

Absolutely no accountability.

Cons

Huge turnover. I mean HUGE.

Big promises in the interview. Concert tickets, backstage passes, great accounts, etc. Completely untrue.

70% of the sales force is naive and straight out of college, jaded and at the end of their sales career, or simply incompetent.

Nepotism is rampant.

Most of the management are weak or inept when it comes to leadership, think Gervais or Carell in The Office. (Seriously)

And finally my favorite little bit of irony...

Entercom Kansas City's "Groupon" type website, KC Perks, is the #1 advertiser on all of our stations and NOT ONE business owner I ever talked to has heard of it. Pathetic.

Advice to Senior Management

When David Field (CEO) came to visit a few weeks ago it was completely ludicrous. First, the week prior to his arrival, a plethora of "environmental" fliers and displays started appearing around the building. David Field's wife is an avid environmentalist. Draw your own conclusions. Second, all questions for the "town hall" meeting had to be submitted and approved in advance. What a farce. It was exciting to hear his response when someone asked him, "were will radio be in five years"? Fascinating.

David, if you’re really interested in knowing about Entercom KC, talk to the AE’s with impunity.

You'll find answers, and Entercom KC will improve.

Pros

Good radio station brands. From talking with others, Entercom has some of the best training in the industry, but if that's the case I'm actually shocked as the training was minimal.

Cons

Very hard to make a living if you don't get a billing list of clients when you start. At the end of the day, it's all about money, money, money there with many clients getting alienated by this focus by management. Long term relationships aren't valued, it just about what the latest deal is that you've closed. If you like micromanagement, this is the place for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people as people. Come out of your offices every once and a while. Show some personality. Just because a deal didn't close doesn't mean that it's the end of the world.

Pros

Great team of sales people to be associated with

Cons

stress of goals can be intense

Advice to Senior Management

keep your sales people happy by open communication, benefits and commissions

Pros

Fun, energetic, atmosphere

I don't think I will be micro managed

Reps that stay, stay for a long time.

My manager respects me. (biased opinion)

Completely not PC (very big plus, in my opinion)

Cons

Only two months in but, noticeing issues, maybe....

A lot of possible backstabbing

Fellow reps are not overly coopertive

A lot of early turnover (6 months or less)

Advice to Senior Management

You get what you pay for. If you want a really good sales force... I mean REALLY good...you have to make an investment. You MUST to provide a base salary. It should be at least 50K. You MUST give them a car allowance. It should be at least $500. Where are the top sales reps? They are at companies that pay. Why are they there? The companies pay them well. Do the best sales reps get results? Look at the annual reports.

How many sales reps have started at Entercom, left for greener pastures, and become INCREDIBLE sales people, FOR OTHER COMPANIES!!!

These companies love that you train these reps for them.