I'd like to begin this by pointing out that management will minimise the impact of this review by saying that I wrote this review in the heat of the moment. That I've only considered a few days. However, what is your reasoning when I and so many other colleagues have been feeling this way for over 8 months?
There were days when I felt like quitting was the better option than having to spend another day at work. I've never felt this way in my life before. I've always enjoyed working and working hard but our workplace was so disjointed and so toxic that the only good thing is the money that hits our bank accounts at the end of the month.
With that constant and reliable loop, we go into enduring another month for the money.
I was miserable.
Money is like sweet nectar at Sage. Once you're on it, it's difficult for you to come off it.
I legit feared coming into work everyday. I hated how demotivating it made me feel. I would dread going to sleep at night. This was how bad it was.
With money comes alot of negatives. The role has been advised as being a practice success manager - to help and understand your accountants that you manage and help flourish their practices in any way possible.
You have all the resources given to you, all the training you need to be able to make a difference to the accounts you manage.
Until you actually do the job. You realise that your main task is to dial all day. Over 30 dials with 2 hours talk time is the expectation but how do you do that when the accounts you manage don't want to talk to you. They don't want you hounding them and interrupting them all day long. Your essentially cold calling and the accountants you deal with have mostly had terrible experiences with the company before.
You are told in your interview you will be supported by your managers and they will provide you with coaching to better improve your skills and abilities but when you book a session with your manager they will do everything in their will power to avoid the meeting and not provide you with training. Yet, they will show on their calanders and on their one to ones with upper management that they've done everything asked of them.
One day, we were given a masterclass on selling by management. The 1 hour 30 min session went like this:
5 mins - don't sell one licence, sell them 5 or 10 licences. You just need to ask the right questions.... okay, how do you expect an accountant to pay £111 for 10 licences when they can pay £11 for the licence they actually need? On top of that, it's all self service so you have to expect the accountant to do it themselves rather than you throwing a bunch of licences on.
The rest of the 1 hour 25 mins went into grilling each individual person about their sales targets and why nobody is hitting them. Instead of providing practical advice from people who used to do it at a high level and sharing best practices the whole division was abused for not coming anywhere close to hitting their targets.
This is a stressful job with management constantly saying one thing and doing something else. They want you to create relationships with your accountants and do wjats best for them but will drop them all in a second if they fall behind on sales targets.
Then it goes from doing whats right to let's try to rinse them for every penny. Over the course of my time I've seen so many unethical practices occur due to this godly amount of stress where people have pulled shady practices and been rewarded for it before Sage took any action against them.
The culture isn't any better. Everything is about money. Everyone wants money like you've never seen paper before. They will be nice to your face one day and then stab you in the back on another to a. Protect themselves b. To further themselves.
If you're going to join Sage for the money then be prepared to lose your sanity along with it.
