Such a shame - Sales Development Representative (SDR) Navan Employee Review

Where do I start? When you join TripActions they sell you a dream, yes the product is incredible, yes the onboarding is great, yes the tech they provide is the best out there...then the good experience stops. TripActions markets itself as a SAAS company when in fact it is a TMC, and with this they constantly hire people with no travel knowledge whatsoever. This at heart is the main underlying issue. At times it very much feels like the blind leading the blind. In the US they have a tried and tested formula which has been extremely successful, however, the European market is a completely different beast. The intricacies of the European market were never understood, not only on a product level but on a sales level too. Sales targets are aggressive to say the least, and time after time people would be berated for not hitting these. To say that TripActions knocks peoples confidence is an understatement. I have seen people fall to pieces due to what at times is an intimidatory and unforgiving environment. During Covid, reps were told to go out and make the most of an amazing opportunity, when no one is travelling then surely people want to review their travel programme. Make more dials, send more emails, use this as a lever to sell, when in reality no one wants to pay several £k up front for a tool they cannot use, funny that! No reduction in targets, and more importantly no empathy shown by senior management, just hit that number. This gets me onto one of the worst part and that is the senior management that has been brought in, the US CRO and the new leader in EMEA that manage by lambasting and installing fear into people. I for one thought that the boiler room environments from decades ago were a thing of the past, apparently not - who doesn't love getting sworn and shouted at on a morning standup. It's a miracle that HR hasn't been brought in. This as you can imagine breeds a non existent culture, where no one wants to socialise after work as you are exhausted and already thinking about how they are days away from performance management plans or losing their job. Finally there is the handling of the COVID redundancies, 300 people made redundant a few days after the CEO telling the whole company there is enough money to see this through. Plus the 100 in this that were let go in a group zoom call, shame on you.