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      Pleo

      Engaged employer

      Pleo reviews

      A Fairy-tale like workplace- too good to be true - Sales Pleo Employee Review

      2.0
      10 Apr 2020
      Sales
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      The company is very mission-driven. You will hear everyone puts "transparency" "diversity" and "openness" on top of everything. The co-founders are the only people that I know of who practise what they preach, something I highly respect them for.

      Cons

      A Fairy-tale like workplace- too good to be true: - They have a superb interview process where the sales manager and directors spent a good portion of time talking about company culture- how they cherish creativity and everyone will be their own CEO of their product. - They put a lot of emphasis on autonomy and freedom which was something I was really looking forward to. Turns out everything was sugar-coated: 1. What you were promised ≠ Advertised - Autonomy was the main reason I joined Pleo. However, the day to day of your role was completely dictated by your manager and the "Playbook". - You spend a few hours a day doing manual chores on your CRM to make sure your leads don't get stolen by your colleagues - The management is very religious towards cold calling. You are not allowed to do anything else other than smile and dial during that period. 2. Unrealistic sales goals and lack of progression opportunities - Not a single sales rep that I know of has ever reached their outbound target, this means £0 commission. - Junior rep's funnel is purely outbound based, while senior reps are flooded with inbound meetings to a point that they have to reschedule most of them. - Senior reps might give 1-2 really small inbounds out of pity from time to time, where we have to fight hard (book the most meetings, make most calls) in order to get them. 3. Demotivating and Detached Management causing emotional breakdowns - Managers try to create an unhealthy/ rivalry relationship with other offices. - They would stress that other markets are doing much better than us because they hustle hard and that they would "do anything to win" - That was a very unfair and demotivating statement as the landscapes are completely different by markets- market maturity, competition, resources, rapport... and our team work very hard to get things done 9am-10pm - During low sales seasons, instead of evaluating their internal processes and strategising, managers put the blame on each rep - They would spend 2 hours each day to review our pipeline, and blame us for "not trying hard enough" - The highly stressful environment results in emotional breakdowns and burnout in the office, you would see people crying at work

      avatar
      Pleo Response
      6y
      Jessie here - you know me but for those who don’t, I’m the Head of People at Pleo. I’m normally fiercely proud of our interview process and standards that we set there, but in this case, they really seem to have set you up for disappointment. As you say, we’re all about transparency and we try to show what the job is like when we interview people. To unpack that a bit more, in our group interview days we put a big emphasis on what’s required in the role and speak a lot about the nature of an outbound sales role. We go through this in our slides and we have new UK team members join in on the day to share their experiences too. We try to balance our startup mindset with the reality that this is still an outbound sales role. With my past outbound sales experience, I can empathise: sales isn’t for everyone and it takes a lot of chutzpah to pick up the phone and to get those leads in - especially during the time of COVID-19. We have actually just restructured our target schemes during this time to be realistic about what is possible to hit and keep the motivation up. All in all, I’m sorry that this role wasn’t a good fit and you have left with a bad taste in your mouth. I hope you find a better match out there - you know my email if you’d like to talk. We take feedback seriously and hold ourselves accountable for the values that we truly believe in. Thanks a lot for writing this review - I promise you that it’s not taken for granted.

      Explore other reviews about Pleo

      4.0
      4 Oct 2023
      Software engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Pleo practically has an excellent team culture and is a good place to add your skills and your skills.

      Cons

      Most times, team bonding might not favor everyone in some regional part of the world.

      avatar
      Pleo Response
      2y
      Thanks for leaving a review! In our more distributed teams, we know it can be more challenging to bring everyone together, but we will continue to explore ways we can get better at this.
      2.0
      21 Apr 2020
      Sales
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Quarterly team camps and nice social activities.

      Cons

      Where do I begin? As others have mentioned in their reviews, you’re sold an absolute dream with Pleo - that’s the best way to put it. They really sell you on autonomy and transparency and how they adhere to the ‘company values’ day in day out, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. There is no transparency, and nothing is communicated with you. It feels so ‘cliquey’, and you quite quickly know if you’re not one of the favourites. During my time, I’ve never felt so under valued and treated so horribly, despite being one of the hardest workers on paper, but apparently that counted for nothing. It was so demotivating, despite what you did you weren’t recognised. Somebody actually got congratulated for making 22 calls in a day during a company meeting - how embarrassing. A prime example was a colleague who hadn’t hit target for 4 months yet still got promoted. Additionally, new starters who had received extremely poor / or no training were put on performance plans in the first 3 months and got fired of their tenure for not hitting targets. All they talk about during the interview process is culture, and I saw the culture absolutely dive bomb into a toxic mess whilst the company tried to rapidly scale, particularly obvious from the VP level management. The processes and CRM were an absolute shambles, yet the management still expect you to hit your targets despite there being such inadequate framework to do so. My 1 to 1s with my manager were abysmal, clearly my manager had no idea how I was doing and wasn’t bothered. I had to effectively structure and fill the 1 to 1s as the manager never prepped for them. HR are unprofessional and in absolute dreamland. They didn’t even bother doing an exit interview with me, despite saying they would. This is a prime example of how they don’t even care and want to try and improve things. Additionally, without naming names, some of the employees, particularly longer standing ones were so so rude, no matter how much effort you made to try and get to know them. It is also hard to trust anyone at the company, considering the people who seem the ‘nicest’ were the ones to turn first and effectively ‘snitch’ on you. Ultimately, they dazzle you with the perks of going to Copenhagen to visit HQ, and these quarterly ‘team camps’, but ultimately the shambolic day to day operations and treatment of staff massively outweigh the perks mentioned above. I’m not the only current / former employee who feels like this, and I understand a lot of people have also left for similar reasons. I would avoid at all cost, there are so many lovely start up companies to work for in London, where you actually get to learn and contribute to the bigger picture.

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      Pleo Response
      4y
      Hey - thanks for taking the time to write us a review and to share your experience with us. First of all, I'm so sorry that you had this experience while at Pleo. Having favorites and creating an environment where you feel like you're not valued is exactly the opposite of what we aim to do. Please let me address a few of your points: 1. Radical transparency is the way we roll at Pleo. If we see someone not living up to this, or you believe you're missing part of the puzzle, it's up to us to give these folks actionable feedback on their communication style. Employees should know (as much as is appropriate) what's going on - especially when it comes to their roles and department. 2. Pleo is growing - and quickly. We're in a very exciting stage right now - teams are growing each month. We have huge goals that we're hoping to smash. With goals like ours, there's bound to be a ton of change. While it's expected for a company like ours, we understand that change isn't always comfortable. There has been more structure added to the company but we hope that once the growing pains have subsided the end result is more than worth the temporary "chaos." 3. Our culture is crucial to who we are - the type of people who work at Pleo make it an incredible place to work. We try to prioritise this in our hiring process. Once someone is hired and welcomed onboard, it's up to all of us to welcome them to the team. This means discussing the "Pleo way" with them over coffee, inviting them to a Pleo dinner, explaining the team structure to them, explaining what's worked and what hasn't worked for you. It's up to all of us to preserve the Pleo culture. With more and more people joining each month, this can be difficult to maintain but we believe that collectively, we can preserve the Pleo culture as we scale. 4. I'm sorry to hear that you didn't have the best experience with your direct manager. Sometimes, people are put into roles because we see their potential to grow into that role. They're a work in progress, but we believe that with some time, hard work, and coaching, they can crush it. I'm sorry to hear that this was not the case here and urge anyone in a similar situation to reach out to the People Ops team ASAP. Overall, we hope that your experience is not shared by many at Pleo. The People Ops team would personally love to hear from you via email or Slack to discuss how we can better your experience and how we can do a better job. Please don't hesitate to reach out directly so that we can sort this out. Thanks again for submitting your feedback and we hope to hear from you soon!
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