Being in sales for over a decade, I can say Dell's sales model is a rarity. I have never seen anything like it. You are basically tied to a phone and have little control over who calls you, and the leads are atrocious. If you were not aware of how many customers (former & current) hate Dell, you will find out quickly going through the "leads" provided. The good thing about incoming calls is that someone USUALLY wants to buy something. Out of 50-60 leads per day outbounded, you might get a sale out of 5 max.
The tools you need to use to complete a sale are an embarrassment for a HW/SW company. You literally need ~5 systems daisy-chained to complete a transaction. The only dependable ordering system is DOS based. The others go down frequently and when they are needed the most. Of course you get ZERO quota relief if tools are down....which is absurd. If they ever figured rolled out a normal ordering system, they could do away with ~40% of the sales staff. Sales reps are needed to manipulate all of these systems to place an order. Ridiculous and a waste of resources.
Management, both upper and middle management are incompetent. At upper levels the direction of the company is unclear and ever changing. This leads to a hesitant install base and even more hesitant decision makers you are selling to. Why on earth would you take a company private to continue the same doomed business model that killed Dell long ago? Too many acquisitions and no leadership. Middle management could be eliminated by 50% and their still would be too many. Most are number watchers and micro managers. If you are looking for inspiration from any of them, good luck! In my 3 years at Dell, I had 1 manager that inspired me. The rest were micro managers and brought a negative vibes to the teams. With calls/sales really out of your control, picking apart arbitrary call numbers is defeating at best.
You could have an average quarter or a blowout quarter and you would feel that you contributed little in either case. Quotas are fairly high and only go UP when you hit them. Save yourself some time and do not kill yourself working 10 hour days - again, it is a numbers game and working longer/harder does not equate into more money.
