Vantaggi
Keyence pays their salespeople very well. There is room for advancement and promotions. You will get to see a lot of very interesting manufacturing facilities and manufacturing processes as you visit customers. If you like the thrill of the hunt, have a competitive nature, and don't get discouraged, then you might like working here. A lot of your job satisfaction will be tied to the kind of managers you have - some will try to build you up, while others see you as just a vehicle to their own success and will try to squeeze you dry. The pay structure tries to be fair to everybody by including base salary, metrics (effort) based bonuses, and sales commission bonuses. This works well because not everyone's product lines or sales territories are equally lucrative, so your pay is a factor of both your effort level and sales success. There are a lot of different product lines to sell and different ones may match your personality better. Selling the less expensive, more basic products generally requires more relationship building with customers. Selling the high-dollar products generally requires more of a focused diligence. You can get hired with no prior experience. The Health Insurance and 401k benefits are very good. The great majority of salespeople are in their 20's or early 30's, which keeps the energy level high. There is a sense of accomplishment when you are able to help a customer solve a problem by using your product. And it can be very fun to play the sales game.
Svantaggi
Your best is never good enough. There is a lot of micromanaging. If you have a large geographic sales territory, you will spend a lot of time on the road including overnight travel. People are promoted to management based on sales success and seniority, not because they have managerial or people skills. The company has an inherent mistrust of its employees, but it has improved. For example, when I first started, you could not be trusted to access useful information like customer contact info unless you were physically in the sales office, which made it difficult to be flexible on the road. Since it is a Japanese company and many managers in the US speak English as a second language, there can be some difficult communication. For example, there is a long-standing Japanese mis-translation of the term OEM. Keyence thinks it means a custom machine builder and their database labels companies that way, but it creates confusion when talking to mass-producing manufacturers (real OEMs). The tech support division is woefully understaffed and does not have a sense of urgency. When you have customers whose equipment needs advanced troubleshooting, repair, or replacement, then you (and the customer) are often hung out to dry. There is a lot of employee turnover, which is not necessarily a bad thing because if you stick around you will get promoted, but there is a reason for the turnover. There is a reason that they pay so well - otherwise even fewer people wouldn't stick around. Your job is to sell the product at the highest price possible and to influence customer specifications to buy Keyence in the future. I will admit that I have feelings of guilt from over-charging small businesses because they had no other choice than to buy the specified product from me. I also feel guilt about taking sales away from worthy American competitors. If you care about your carbon footprint, driving hundreds of miles each week could give you some heartache.