Toyota Motor Sales Reviews

Pros

Big Company, has great room for growth and input

Cons

Travel time and hours can be draining.

Pros

Industry-leading benefits. (But they may be cut if things don't turn around).
Stability. (Toyota has a large amount of financial strength)

Cons

Lack of design and product knowledge at TMS. Good product people get frustrated with lack of progress and most leave to use their "Toyota education" elsewhere craving growth and more control over the process. (Toyota is almost paralyzed by it's many silo's and differing, sometimes counter-acting divisional priorities)

Toyota has promoted generalists - usually those who have spent more effort on managing their career and connecting / trying to be friendly with upper management than becoming product and market experts. This has left Toyota with a lack of direction and management that doesn't know where to go. It's led to bland cars, safe decisions, and general malaise.

Advice to Senior Management

Please stop letting your experienced product-knowledge experts leave for competitors. They don't want more money. They want streamlined clear, product-related decision making. They want you to quit promoting the fast-talking generalists who always make the internal political-decision over what's right for the product. Please stop taking direction from the production side. Stop allowing them to wash-out the designs to be easiest to manufacture.

Ask the Japan-staff who are the true leaders in each department. They seem to understand who is really knowledgeable and suited /deserving of promotion better than the American management. Stop promoting your friends when they aren't the most knowledgeable. Stop saving your friend's management titles by rotating them into departments and positions they are completely unfit for.

Pros

Great place to work
Openess to share ideas
Relaxed environment

Cons

No upward movement like it once was
Too many managers in the same department

Advice to Senior Management

Simple interview process and everyone is very friendly.

Pros

Job security; as long as you follow all the rules, it's pretty hard to get fired. Decent benefits (though they are recently fading away, year-by-year). If you are in sales/marketing or HR, it's like being a senior class in high school (you RULE the school).

Cons

They (management) insist that they want to hear your true thoughts and opinions, but if we actually say what we are thinking, it is a serious career-limiting move. Consequently, lower level associates are pretty much head-down drones, with rule number one being "make your manager (and his manager) look good so they can get promoted".

Advice to Senior Management

Stop focusing so much on politically-correct, "feel-good" endeavors, and on building/maintaining the company ladder for yourselves and your favorite underlings. Start hiring proper, experienced Managers with actual, pertinent knowledge and skill sets. Commit to becoming a serious car company again, rather than a house of cards based on marketing, marketing and more marketing.

Pros

It's Toyota, pay is good even for a temporary position. Co-workers are nice. Close to where I live so don't have to drive far.

Cons

Temp position
No chance at full time employment
Way temps are treated. We are like the unwanted step child.
No praise for doing a good job

Pros

Ability to rotate to new positions and take on new challenges.

Cons

To move up in sales organization and / or senior management, you must relocate several times.

Advice to Senior Management

Times are changing and your young leaders value work life balance more than you may have in the past.

Pros

Great place to balance work and life

Cons

It should improve the promotion system.

Pros

Great benefits
Good work/life balance
Overall good products & people with good intentions
Employee car lease includes maintenance & insurance
Opportunity to work in different groups if you're looking for a generalist route

Cons

Career advancement is limited & is not always based on performance but more on time served & field experience
Pay for performance is inconsistent
Even if you're a top performer, that is not always recognized as ability for promotion
There's a reason the U.S. arm is called Toyota Motor SALES...
There a lot of people who have become ambivalent & lack motivation

Advice to Senior Management

Have a vision & strategy & clearly communicate it to all levels of management & associates
Be inspiring to associates.
Truly pay for performance
Have a career succession plan for valued associates
Consider that you may have to change the way you manage, develop, structure people as the workforce gets younger & how you can be competitive to attract new talent

Pros

Lexus is a great company that values respecting your peers.

Cons

The communication between supervisors and employees could be a lot better.

Advice to Senior Management

All information shared should be parallel. Sometimes, there are huge differences in what people are told but yet they do the same exact job.

Pros

Great Benefits
Stability
Above average salary ranges
Work/Life Balance
In general, good people

Cons

Toyota has built a solid reputation for being a stable company that does not lay people off. It has a strong consensus-building, "don't rock the boat" culture. Unfortunately, that results in low attrition, very little career growth or promotion, and bad employee behavior that rarely, if ever, gets addressed by Senior Management. The employees who floated from random automotive job to job as generalists end up as the ones staying for 20+ years.

Not that time guarantees any upward mobility. It is common for talented people to take lateral jobs for 10-15 years and not make it to the next level. Some of the jobs are so automotive-specific (vehicle operations) that you will have more opportunity cost staying than leaving, unless you make it to 55 and take the early retirement package. The talented people are smart enough to leave.

Senior management is stale and uninspiring. Again, they make no motion to identify and promote their most talented associates. And for those acting up, they appear to turn a blind eye. They do not seem to stand up for the people below them. Many of the managers hired do not get training in managing people, and it shows. Some managers are downright painful to work for.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees like smart people, not sheep. Develop a more aggressive method for weeding out the slackers/incompetent employees and promoting high achievers. Stop rotating people in from the field and pretend they can perform at specialized jobs: finance, marketing, etc.