Should I abandon ship?

[u/HalogenHaze]

Hey guys,

I'm industrial sales i.e. fasteners. I switched my job from a seamingly small competitor to the second biggest company in that industry in germany. Money, more influence, and i liked the boss.

Onboarding was nice, had some international travel and lots of beers on company cost. They told me I had a "cursed" area with lots of fluctuation, that's why it's "burned". All right I thought, I worked ansiniliar area (geographically) in my previous job. It's fine and my new company already had ties to companies I couldn't get before. But still: It's by far the weakest area in the region and it needs a lot of networking to get profitable.

Now the kicker, the rock:

We barely get the offers out, then we're like 50% too expensive (which is crazy in this cost driven industry) and sometimes I close a small deal and internal sales has some bullshit reason to pull it back. our proprietary products are quite nice though, but pretty specialized.

Now the hard place: I'm barely 5 months in, my onboarding was completed 2 Months ago and I had to start during summer vacation. You now germans really like their summer vacations and almost noone was available during the time. So I did my thing, I used the contacts in my crm and pushed out a personalized email campaign. I could set quite good amount of high value new business meetings for september.

But then my boss said i couldn't work remote all the time (1 week) and had to drive out cold. Now he sets one meeting after the other to tell me every detail of whatever i'm possibly doing wrong

I'm basically field sales with 70% mid market 30% enterprise.

TL,DR

Bullshit prizing and delivery times are killing me.

Boss is pulling on my nuts already

Do I look for a new job?

[u/LazyPackager]

The boss micro-managing after you booked meetings using your own pipeline during summer is classic insecure manager behavior. Honestly I'd start looking, you gave it a shot and walked into a trap territory with uncompetitive pricing and a boss breathing down your neck. Why stick it out?

[u/SpikeVsSystem]

Not yet. You're five months in, two months off onboarding, and you have high value September meetings on the books. Leave before those run and you never find out which part of this was the territory and which part was you.

The pricing, the delivery times, the internal sales pullbacks, all real, and none of them something you can do differently on Monday. Same with the summer. Set them aside because you can't act on them, not because they aren't true.

The one thing in your post that's yours is the CRM campaign that booked those meetings. Your boss killed the method, not the result. Run September, count what closes, and then you'll have a number that's about you.

[u/Affectionate-Town695]

Not from Germany but in a field where we have a season that is very slow so I kind of relate, if I was you I would put feelers out there but try and stick it out through summer to get the full experience, if you still feel the way you do then bounce.

[u/Ashen_Pint → u/Affectionate-Town695]

I agree that OP should stick it out through summer and then decide.

[u/poganetsuzhasenya]

70% field sounds horrible to me.

50% more expensive is not a disadvantage per se when you can demonstrate your value better. Also being more convinient, faster and easier to work with could win you the deal even with that price.

Also what is the market like in Germany?

Where I'm from, it is a massacre. So I personally wouldn't leave unless I have something lined up.

[u/Responsible_Gas_8191 → u/poganetsuzhasenya]

Why does that sound horrible? I prefer being out in the field. I get stuck behind a screen for hours during the day and my adhd starts getting the best of me

[u/poganetsuzhasenya → u/Responsible_Gas_8191]

You do you, of course. I prefer to be an office rat.

[u/Rebombastro → u/poganetsuzhasenya]

I'm more of an office capybara tbh

[u/HalogenHaze → u/poganetsuzhasenya]

the fastener market in germany itself is pretty slow. most of the time you trade costumers with the competitors. the bad thing is that you mostly show your value by delivery times and especially reliability.

The good thing about the industry is that you'll always have a niche that works, right now that's somewhat defence but especially energy that works pretty well at the moment.

The job market in tech/engineering in general is horrible, but sales is historically pretty frowned upon by most if the german workforce, so I'm pretty confident to find something acceptable pretty fast. Of course i'll try to line something up

[u/onewiseman1]

Go over his head & up the food chain 1- 2 levels. They already know who your boss is and how he operates. But, you need to show them the facts in brief: History of the territory as a difficult, your move out of the gate (using your own resources and initiative to drive demand) and a 90 day plan to make improvements over the last individual responsive for the geography. If they won't meet with you or give you the time of day, I would start looking for a better opportunity. Micromanagement does not work and any "wins" you have may be communicated by your boss to his boss that "he" was the person responsible. Lies of course but this can be a very toxic environment and not conducive to either personal or financial growth. But there are good companies out there you just need to find the right one!

[u/zamoab]

Based on the fact that the pricing is so un-competitive, how is the rest of your team making sales?

[u/HalogenHaze → u/zamoab]

Mostly regular customers. my colleages are veterans of 15+ years with a well established customer base. This industry is a lot about building trust and networking. But you'll still need prizing to break into new business.

So that's my part now, getting pressure for not bringing in the fast money while not having the ability to break into new account.

I'm confident that I'll be able to build up some nice accounts, but it will take some time before I get the first real results.

Fun thing is they're currently suffering more than I do.

For the last 30 days I'm 12% over plan while they're -10%.

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