Pros
He does prepare you well for the part of the market TB plays in. IT resellers like TB fight over the leftovers from the companies who either buy direct from manufacturers, or who are large enough to buy from the larger, full-service resellers. Small companies who are UK based and want to use resellers are TB's market segment. It's a very tough space because the only thing you have to sell is you as an account manager. The companies all have the exact same offering. He does a good job telling you this and preparing you for this market, and makes no bones about where they can and cannot compete.
Kontras
That pro is also a major con. It's a brutal market segment to begin with. IT Directors and IT Managers are the most pestered people in any company. They literally get sales calls every 5-10 mins every day. I have been in meetings with them and notice that most of them turn the volume off on their desk phone; even when I was there it was rings every few minutes from a blocked number. If you go to work for TB, you are one of those callers. That is how you need to look at this role. Its morning noon and night calling people who get called relentlessly, and trying to convince them that you have something to offer which the literally dozens of other callers can't offer. What makes this worse is that TB has a reputation as being among the most pestering of these callers, with a new account manager or business development guy calling every few weeks after the last one got fired. As the database is so basic and so poorly managed, nobody leaves notes so sometimes you have the different people calling the same contact on the same day. That is the job. The only way to get any chance of surviving it to catch one of these contacts on the very day they are annoyed with the incumbent supplier, and they might give you a chance. Even then, you only get paid on the profit and you have to sell at practically no margin to win the business. The ones who survive either had accounts when they were hired that they brought from another house, or, got lucky with just making a good connection with one of the contacts. There is no other way - TB doesn't win business with any real value proposition. They don't have one. When they do get lucky and catch someone at the right time in the right mood for a change, it doesn't get better. He will pull the whole company into executing an order for a new customer to get it right. Here is the issue; the industry average to hold an account before you lose it is 18-24 months (due to turnover, botched order, M&A activity, or corporate review of IT policy). TB rarely hold a new account for more than 2-3 months. Once the initial order is in and done, the owner cannot help himself and wants you down there pushing for them to buy every line of business from you, wants an intro to the CTO/CIO, wants you bringing them out for dinner, wants referrals. I was told sincerely by a contact that they would have liked to buy from a local guy like me, but, they were already tired of the instant and constant upsell. I was saying we were overdoing it, but he wouldn't listen. He wanted it all, NOW! In order to maintain this level of non-stop outbound calling, the owner leans his full weight into it minute by minute. They've blown through more Sales Directors than most people have had hot dinners, no matter who is there at any given time as the SD, the owner leads the charge and cannot step back. He drives it in a very unpleasant, demeaning and personally denigrating way with absolutely zero regard for your dignity or the effects it's having on you or those around you. You are there to drive the TB name out into the market and win him accounts. A mere glance at the commission structure tells you enough to know that it benefits him more than you. He knows it's unlikely any new business punter will be there more than 3 months, so all your graft will reward him when he inevitably fires you or you leave when you've had enough. Once you're out, anything you've done goes to him. He can lighten up when he finds someone he thinks has potential. These are usually people he thinks are mirror images of him, and tend to have a very distinct set of characteristics. He wants to see those people succeed, and will warm up to them here and there. Those people get passed accounts from one of the victims of the firing, but having watched him over a longish period of time, he just can't help himself. No matter what, he will grind them down into a falling out, and then they leave or he fires them. He consoles himself that they just couldnt cut it, or were weak, or they lost their drive. He never takes responsibility for the decision. The longtermers there are in two rough categories - one are people he has to keep to manage the few accounts they've managed to build over time. They have to stay, so he pays them and uses them to front the accounts. These people are beyond miserable. The second are people who brought accounts in and are servicing them, but know that it's very hard to move resellers and take your accounts with. Those people are always in discussions externally trying to craft a way to leave, but can't. Everyone else is new and has roughly a 0.5% chance of lasting more than a month.