Sleep Number Corporation Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Cons

DO NOT consider Sleep Number for retail sales if you live in Minneapolis. The company as a whole is doing well. They have had two record quarters. This is not true for the Minneapolis district, which is sad, since this is where the company is based. I have watched the Minneapolis district steadily decline for over two years now. The turn over rate for store managers has been high, and the turn over for sales people is one of the highest I have seen in retail. This should not be the case in a commission based structure if everything was working as it should. The goals of the Minneapolis district make absolutely no sense. Due to this issue, even a long standing district manager has turned over, and was most likely blamed for some of the shortcomings of others above her. The goals come from higher up the corporate ladder, and it has become increasingly apparent that they either have no idea how to properly set goals for Minneapolis or they simply don't care if this district turns over employees faster than a fast food restaurant. Many salespeople who had been with the company for years and years, who normally would be top producers, have left due to this ongoing problem. When you lose half a dozen of your top people in the entire company from just one district is less than a year, you have a massive problem. For over a year the district has performed in the bottom of all districts. The only months this doesn't happen is when the Minnesota State Fair takes place (only a handful of reps get to attend and sell there), and when a Friends and Family event happens twice a year (zero commission is paid on these sales). Other than those four months, most stores can expect to completely miss their sales goal or do barely well enough to pay their bills. In a normal month only 2 or 3 of the ten or so stores in the district will make their goal. The goals are also never consistent. One store might be goaled to be the #1 store for months due to sales volume & trends, then suddenly another store that sells much less is far above them for no good reason. This has caused dozens of employees to leave in just this district in the span of a year alone; it has also causes the ones who have chosen to stay to generally take massive pay cuts from what they have been used to. On top of that, they keep building new stores in Minneapolis, which further takes away from already declining paychecks. People who used to make 80-100k a year, now make 35-45k, if that. Upper management can respond and claim that they have a system for creating the goals for the districts. I do not doubt that. They might even say we could call and have them explain it to us. I will say in instead. Your system is wrong. It has been wrong. It is the reason you are losing so many good people. It is the reason this district is consistently in the bottom. You can't blame mangers and sales people when the turn over rate is so high that most of them are new. Maybe you should ask your employees if your goals make sense. Almost no one could truthfully tell you that they do (maybe only the newest store who gets goaled far lower than reality & their sales would dictate). Lower the goals for Minneapolis. If you take those 4 months out of the trend (MN Fair and F&F events), and for the other 8 months Minneapolis is in the bottom of all districts almost every month; your goals are wrong. You have turned over managers. You have turned over almost half of your sales reps if not more in less than a year. You have new beds and new marketing. You even have a new District Manager. If the district is still performing in the bottom; it is your fault.

Cons

Entire company is unstable. Upper management is completely out of touch. The goals increase by 50% when the sales are only increasing by 5-10%. They build new stores closer and closer together but they don't lower goals for anyone in the area of the new stores. They just expect the new store to get its own customers and generate an additional minimum of 2.5 million. In reality, the customer base is just being split into smaller and smaller pieces and everyone suffers. Goals are set to where you almost make it, but not quite (so the company gets the revenue, but hounding get your bonus). Company is always taking money away from sales people saying they 'made a mistake' on the discounts. You will lose your commission if a customer cancels their order or returns their bed. Cancels are often caused by other departments like home delivery and customer service. The home delivery department is awful, they will mess up a good sale and a good customer relationship by lying to your customer and throwing you under the bus. Customer service is rude to your customers and rarely does their job in trying to prevent your customers from cancelling their order. Company just invested tons of money into a new computer system and its crap. First of all it was supposed to 'prevent mistakes on discounts from being possible'... Not true. It lets mistakes through and if you don't read the promo carefully or you kiss a detail, they're ready and waiting to take away your commission. Two hours worth of work to close a sale and they'll just take the commission away. Beds get sent to delivery with missing parts and delivery doesn't know about it until they are in the customers house with everything torn apart. When the system first rolled out, customers were waiting 2-3 months for their bed while the company had the money. They could not even get through to customer service because the phone lines were 'too busy' to connect calls. Same thing was happening with home delivery. During this time the system kept crashing. Multiple times a day the entire computer system would crash company wide. To this day the computer system is incredibly frustrating. You click on something 8 times and it finally works on the last time. You have to log all the way and back in sometimes as much as 3-4 times trying to ring one sale. It takes forever, and it's very frustrating to the customer. Who would want to work for upper management who thought this computer program was a good purchase?

Cons

Constant change in commission structure. In the past it's kept pay consistent but recent changes completely screw over top performers. Hourly increase from $12 to $15 but commission decreased from %3.5 to %2.5. When you personally responsible for 100k every month this is a slap in the face. Store bonus has become a joke. Especially when they increase your goals %168 over last year consistently. They expect constant growth in performance meanwhile expect you to be content with making less and less. Sleep Number 'cares' about work life balance. Expect to work every holiday and weekend. They have a delusional idea on which holidays will be busy and expect the whole sales team to be at work on those dead days (4th of July, Christmas eve etc..) This company is so 'woke' it makes you want to puke. They will shove liberal social justice bs down your throat. Be a company not a political activist group. Upper management does not care about you and see you and every customer interaction as numbers and metrics. They are so far removed from the sales process it's crazy. Case and point with our ridiculous cold insider call lists. The same people are expected to be contacted every quarter as if we don't spam them already with marketing. Your district manager is a puppet of the VP and clearly can't act on their own accord. This company wants 'yes men' they don't want you to think for yourself. 0 growth opportunity unless your willing to move.

Cons

-it’s middle management. You’re fed to believe you can improve the lives of those who you’re in charge of but at the end of the day you have little say in day-to-day change resulting in a large gap between employees believing you, burn out, and high turnover. - when broached with topics related to HR and such was left high and dry without any support for upper management. This was openly communicated by the DM that they believe most issues will naturally go away and won’t step in. It turns issues into a popularity contest. You then are gaslighted into them saying they took care of the issue and to drop it despite it not being taken care.

Cons

Work life balance is something they tell you you'll have to get you to sign on. Know what you're getting into. If you value your family, I recommend you keep looking. This job is best for people who want to live at work and live their life around its demands. The computer system is ridiculous. The reason upper management is tired of hearing about it is because it's gotten as good as it will. It was a poor choice for systems, there are others that are much better, faster, more reliable and don't several irritate customers with the red 'spinning circle of death' while their rep tries desperately to keep the atmosphere positive. If you are looking into a retail position, keep in mind you will be pitted against the call center sales team and they get to work your leads before you do. I've been told this isn't true, but I've lost track of how many I have received that are already worked and /or sold. Strangely no one wants to talk about those ;). They are also notorious for stealing in progress orders, these are not protected outside your store. I believe they have a more in depth ability to search for open orders that stores do not. Another important note is if there is a cancellation outside your control, you will pay for it with your commission. If the order is cancelled or discounted severely to save it, comes out of your commission. Be aware if products that are not allowed to be returned are returned anyway by customer service (something out of your control) you again will be the one paying for it. If you're still with me and totally fine with all of this, then it may be the job for you. Be prepared for half or non answers to direct questions. If you like knowing what you should be doing and confident in the right answers and doing a good job, this is not the place for you as one minute it's one thing, then next your hind quarters are in a vice for doing what you thought you should and things that were praised a month or even a week ago.