10 Best Cities to Find a Sales Job And Other Post-Groupon IPO Thoughts? ~ MAKE MONEY BLOG$

11/7/11

10 Best Cities to Find a Sales Job And Other Post-Groupon IPO Thoughts?

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Groupon showed them all, didn’t it? After the laughing stock it temporarily became after filing its first S-1, the daily deal site mopped the floor with its critics on Friday, raising $700 million with its 35-million share offer. It was the largest tech IPO since Google raised $1.7 billion in 2004, placing Groupon, say its most enthusiastic supporters, in the same league as Amazon and Apple.

There has been much speculation on what this means for the daily deal industry (short answer: it is fantastic news especially after the fire sale price at which BuyWithMe traded), what it means for investors (great for institutional investors who flipped their shares when the price spiked at $31, maybe not so much for retail investors that think it will stay in this range) and the tech investment space in general (good, but LinkedIn would pick Friday to fall more than 10%).

Sales Jobs in the Pipeline?

Less has been said, though, on what the IPO could mean for sales jobs, especially sales jobs in what is predicted to be a $2 billion industry this year, according to BIA/Kelsey — from $873 million in 2010. In 2015, it predicts the daily industry will be sized at $4.2 billion for a 36.7% CAGR.

As an individual employer Groupon has been busy: according to an SEC filing, it had 4,853 sales employees at the end of September, with 1,004 of these reps in North America and the rest based globally.

A year ago, its sales staff was 1,572, according to the Chicago Tribune. In June 2009 it was 37.

A Tough Employer

Groupon seems like a fun place to work, at least based on these photos shared with Daily Deal Media the day of its IPO.

But, it must be observed, the company also appears to be quite the taskmaster, especially for its sales staff.

Last month it began a review process to eliminate the 10% of its bottom performers. In September, a class action suit was filed against the company to recoup overtime that Groupon allegedly failed to pay. Groupon has been the aggressor in court too: it is suing two of its former sales managers that have moved to Google for allegedly stealing trade secrets.

source: forbes.com

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