Altria is a disconnected, tone-deaf employer and nobody should work here. - Sales Manager Altria Employee Review

Altria is an awful place to work. Let me preface this by saying a lot of the folks I met were nice enough, but I genuinely had a hard time respecting the career and industry after just a few months.. First off, Altria as a whole is not an honest company. They’ll tell you there’s plenty of “autonomy” in the role, but there’s literally none. Most of the people I worked with were micromanagers that demand everything be done their way or you’ll be spoken to. They act like these roles are so highly sought after, but they aren’t at all. The industry is in a steady decline, and they’ll hire just about anyone with field sales experience. Don’t be fooled by the benefits. The car is a great benefit, but the rest are worthless when you realize the trade-off is spending your entire life in convenience stores. There are no transferable skills that you’ll learn during your time at Altria. You follow orders, then demand store owners/managers to follow them as well.. or you are instructed to change their pricing, hurt their business, force new products upon them, and rearrange their entire tobacco display. The independent store owners don’t like anybody that works for Altria. Altria only cares about people who blindly drink the kool-aid or people who have previously wasted their time with an internship at Altria. If you don’t fall into either of those buckets, good for you! But you don’t stand a chance at being promoted. The disconnect between upper management and the field sales force is a glaring issue. They force “innovative” products that don’t sell on small, independent businesses. The owners don’t actually like any sales managers because it’s not a real relationship. Altria tells you what to do, you do it without consulting the owner or valuing their opinion, and if you don’t you’ll be told you’re doing a poor job. This place is a complete joke. Worse than any company you could ever imagine. If you’re actually interested in a real sales career, get into medical device sales, tech sales, basically anything but this. This role will not teach you how to sell anything at all, and the job title is just as deceptive as the company.