Pros
The incentives you can potentially win are very good - almost impossible to hit without a serious amount of luck though Good basic wage for a Sales Exec role They're good at targeting decision makers within an organisation and speaking to c'suite executives There's a strange sense of unity formed amongst the sales consultants on the basis you are all sold the dream in your interviews and the job is absolutely nothing like it was described
Cons
The Management team (I use that term loosely) are comprised of a small group of about 6 middle aged cowboys. They've all been in the business 10+ years and to their credit; posses all the of true values that GDS Group was built on in order to have made a somewhat successful career: Dishonesty: the product is a complete fabrication in most cases- as a sales consultant you are literally trained to lie. You are made to lie about projects, the level of delegates that attend, the terms and conditions, you lie in order to get past a switchboard, and anything else that could potentially lead to a deal. It's seeing the cringeworthy glass door reviews that they've written themselves in order to attempt to dilute the overwhelmingly negative majority that has inspired me to submit my own review. Complete lack of culture: The sales floor is what you'd expect if you took all the negative and outdated methods from Wolf of Wall Street and the Boiler Room and combined the two. Drugs are commonplace, even to the extent where you see senior Management borrowing money from trainees to fund their drug habits. Racist and Sexist undertones can regularly be heard and again, the main culprits are actually the seniors. The training is amongst the poorest standard I've ever experienced - it consists of them just telling you what to say in certain situations and every senior there seems to give contrasting advice. There's no coaching, no monitoring performance, no support structure, no accountability. They train you a method that they say works and then completely abandon it and tell you to do the opposite just days later. There's no consistency whatsoever. Lack of security: the average consultant during my tenure lasted 3-6 months before their contract was either terminated or they couldn't stand being there and left. The only people that have job security are the senior management whom are so well versed at manipulating the system, they just thrive on the work of others, they snake sales and wait like vultures for the next sales consultant to lose their job so they can claim the clients' of those whom have left for themselves. It's ironic that a company who work in digital transformation are so far behind the times with the methods they employ. Paper leads, no computers allowed on during phone time, heavily KPI driven, pitching from a script, the only time you can effectively lead source is at home etc. My advice to anyone considering a career at GDS: if you value integrity, this isn't the right job for you. Or do you want to be in the next training group or what they refer to as 'The expendables'?
