I work as a senior sales rep for a payment solution company in the UK
The company has about 100k customers and offices in almost every European country. It’s sort of a complex fintech solution but our targets are entirely based on selling card machines, that cost between £29-£250
this makes the sales process super transactional and basic, with large targets between 60-120 units each month
I’ve been doing this for almost 4 years now, and have managed to also onboard bigger clients incl a franchise. In2020 I was promoted to a sales manager but one year later demoted
I asked for this promotion as back then I took on all management duties as the manager we had at the time got fired.
After several months of nothing happening I had to speak up and pushed to be made a sales manager.
The company got HR to interview me for the position ( totally unnecessary as I was already doing everything a manager does there )
When I was a sales manager, the UK division was literally just me and another sales rep. And we have at least 8k clients in the UK processing millions by using the product. This was during covid and the seniors who are based in Bulgaria, had unrealistic expectations so they wanted to see much larger number of sales despite the organisational chaos I was in.. they kept on comparing us with other countries that had much bigger teams of 10+ people.
While I was being praised from seniors on keeping the UK afloat, there was never a clear plan for my growth neither did they ever work with me on projects to make the UK department grow.
In 2021 they hired a country manager, who was doing a rubbish job.
He worked for about a year and then got fired too. However seniors told him that they want to demote me from a Sales manager to a sales rep, as there were not enough sales reps for it to make sense plus they wanted more people selling all the time.
I didn’t sign the role change letter at the time cause short after that country manager was let go of. Another junior temp sales rep did quit on the same day.
On that day,I knew that the sales rep will quit. So I had prepared a fake job offer, I showed it to a senior saying that I’m thinking of accepting it as I need the money and he offered to meet me in the middle
I just wanted more money and the timing felt right, so i accepted it and stayed.
Right after firing the old country manager, they introduced us to the current one who is super proactive, very much a micro manager, everything is urgent and he will chase for sales at least three times a day.
if your current number is low he would plant a lot of short term urgency/ fear in you, ask you for multiple reports and plans you have on making it up. Sending him many reports and pipeline updates doesn’t help as it takes a lot of time from sales..
If you do really well, he’ll say well done but in a couple of hours he will be nagging, messaging and making you deliver more and more. This whole thing does feel quite toxic and I can see how stressed everyone looks 90% of the time
A month after he was hired, he brought me the revised contract with my new salary but with the demoted job title, a sales rep. He said that I have been pretty much doing sales and they did not need a manager at this point. I asked to at least have my title as senior sales rep as I have been working for so long. They agreed
A couple of months later they hired a regional manager who was only working on partnerships but suddenly two months ago I was told that he will be my direct manager.
Me and him get along quite well, but I did feel super disappointed and discouraged in my skills as he started way after me, yet the seniors from head office were keeping him way more involved than me.
Now I have been one of the top performers for several months, everyone knows that I’m the most well seasoned one there with most product and company knowledge.
With my sales over the last 3 months I’ve even been earning more than my manager. (I know how much everyone makes due to an accounting error)
In May this year I asked for another raise due to the inflation in the Uk, which they agreed so that was nice
However I do not grow there, I work in some sort of a toxic environment. There are 0 perks we only work in the office and I haven’t been feeling good in this job for several years now.
Biggest problem is, I can’t get another job offer.. I have had probably over 100 interviews over the last 2 years and I haven’t received a single job offer. I don't think it's the job market as this has been ongoing for a while and people around me land jobs..
Im seeing a therapist because of it as I’m strongly confident that Im internally blocking it. My Cv is excellent, I get asked to interview 98% of the time. The first calls with recruiters also easily go past to next stage
Some feedback Ive had from these interviews in the past are the mismatch in the transactional sales type and the average size of my deals which is about £100-150k annual transactional volume per deal.
my targets though are between 60-100 Deals each month. I’m really good at what I do but I don’t know what’s happening?
I even thought of quitting without a job offer, as this type of situation may help me manifest a new opportunity. I feel that the persona I created in this current job environment doesn’t believe in himself due to all the things I experienced there.
Even spoke with my therapist about it, still not sure if it’s a good idea.. I’m single and I’m 31
Thanks so much if you read all of that
What advice would you give me?
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