Hewlett Packard Enterprise

I worked for HPE for six months and was very impressed with the training organization and, in particular, the SPARTAN program. During my visits to Plano, Texas for my training, I found many helpful people and quite a few tenured salespeople in other lines of business who seemed to be very happy in their roles.

I was also impressed by the tenure of the people in the sales and sales support organization outside of the group that I belonged to (Financial Services). Most of them seemed to be happy, well-motivated, and spoke about their leadership in a very positive manner. I feel that, like any large company like HPE that is going through transition, the organizations that will survive and thrive are the ones that have strong and effective leadership.

The real CONS that I encountered at HPE were a result of the poor leadership that I encountered while working within my organization.

I was hired on in a very accelerated fashion due to me having other competitive job offers at the time and admittedly I didn't do as much due diligence about the organization as I should have.

After being brought on, I was put in a market vertical where HPE doesn't have any solid products. Furthermore, I was given very poor guidance and direction from upper management on what I should focus upon and what products would be well-suited to bring success to me in my first year.

My biggest complaint would be with the management chain in this organization. Due to the sheer number of new hires, I would have a meeting with the management team every two weeks, and every meeting ended with a verbal threat – just a threat, no guidance or direction.

As a result, I worked diligently to gain traction in my net-new space with the one customer who was a former client of HPE but had been treated poorly over the past five years, and as a result, they refused to do business with us. This customer had at one time in the recent past been a $100m/year customer, and due to poor handling by HPE, the customer had cut away nearly all of their business except for a very minor piece.

I was brought in to help repair the relationship but was given no suggestions or business plan to do so.

At the end of my time in December of 2015, they brought in more new management from a company that specializes in off-shoring of labor rather than in high-value solutions, so I felt that it would be better for me just to leave rather than endure more insults from my management chain.

About four months into my time at HPE, I was told that they had found a manager for the two people within my sales group. That person was brought onboard and continued the tirade of berating our efforts without focusing upon what we needed in order to succeed, like messaging, product support, or technical support.

I finally decided to throw in the towel and search elsewhere. It turns out that the director failed to vet the new sales manager before hiring them.

Take a careful look at the type of managerial legacy you are creating in these markets that you wish to grow.

Are you putting both salespeople and managers in place with the background and skillsets that you wish to emulate?

It is a waste of time and energy for both parties when you decide to hire people who aren't driving higher value and greater solutions to the client base.

If there are customers whom you have angered and dealt bad business to in the past, you should consider trying to empower the new employees to go out and fix those situations, even if they initially cost you some money.

Finally, you should invest (purchase?) some market-leading solutions specific to the markets you are trying to grow, as the remaining six pillars aren't either tremendously innovative or cost-effective.