What's the company culture at Yellow Book?

Every business has it's own style. What is the office environment and culture like at Yellow Book?

Are people dressed in business casual, jeans and t-shirts, or full-on suits? Do folks get together for Friday happy hours and friendly get-togethers?

What is a typical day in the life of an employee at Yellow Book?

My experience from working at Yellow Book is that you are a Nomad at Yellow Book! You operate on your own and mostly out of your car. I worked in my office for 6 months and have no idea what the last names were of my co-workers. It's very cut-throat and you have to protect your new contacts because they will get stolen by other reps. Even though management states that you are your own "independent contractor" that is not true. They constantly keep track of your whereabouts at least 5-6 times a day, have daily morning and afternoon sales meetings, and will call you in on weekends to work...you have no choice...even if you are one of their Top Sales Reps! If you don't show, you'll be written up!

I work for yellowbook and I am an AE. I am not micromanaged. I have to be in the office one morning a week for our sales meeting and once in a while for other things like submitting paperwork. I have complete autonomy because I do my job and do it well. I recently went to Cancun on the presidents club all expense paid trip.

men in full suits, business casual for women. full on take out meals during the once a week meetings and generally a fun office environment

It used to be fun... now it's awful. When I started in fall 2007, the money was flowing, we were closing a big book and we had breakfast on Mon & Thurs morning meetings, we had surprise outings, we had a lavish holiday party, all sorts of contests with prizes big & small.

Then something happened in the late winter or early spring of 2008. Whatever was said to upper management wasn't communicated to the sales people and perhaps not even to the front line managers. But the head of our office certainly had a mood change and I could see a definite difference in the frequency & duration of eye contact, less "friendly encouragement" was given to people as they passed through the hallways, humorous banter disappeared, and the decorations that went up for one contest just sat there month after month. The heart was cut out at the top, only nobody seemed to really notice...

Then, as summer came to a close and I was approaching the one year mark, I took out the phone list from when I was hired and realized that well over half of those people were gone. Many people were being called on the carpet even though they were ranked well on all the reports, yet a so-called top rep who had gone 9 months with only 2 or 3 new sales was not among those targeted. Suddenly, it became a mix of both actual numbers and favoritism, and now so many have either been terminated or will be, or have quit.

It's easy to say that if reps were terminated, it's because they failed to hit their numbers, but that's only part of the story. In my office, only about 3 people hit their numbers, so if only 10% of a business can do what is asked, maybe it's not the reps - Yellowbook WANTS the reps to fail so they can churn, churn, churn the personnel.

The best thing about my year at YB is that I got job offers from my customers (or even from businesses that did not buy from me) about every 3-4 weeks. The training was great, and it's mine to keep forever.

Host said: Every business has it's own style. What is the office environment and culture like at Yellow Book?

Are people dressed in business casual, jeans and t-shirts, or full-on suits? Do folks get together for Friday happy hours and friendly get-togethers?

What is a typical day in the life of an employee at Yellow Book?

a typical day in the life of a yellowbook employee stinks!!!

no matter how hard you work or how many accounts you bring in it is NEVER enough.

I was one of the 1000+ employees that were let go on 11/14. No warning, no severence, no answer as to how it was decided which positions were "eliminated". No rhyme or reason to the way it was decided as to who gets to go and who gets to stay. In some of the new jersey offices the top performers were let go. Go figure. The reps in my office got together and we looked over the reports, apparently the cuts were arbitrary. People with fewer new sales, lower renewal rates and NO webreach sales kept their jobs. The newest employees were kept and long term workers were shown the door.

The remaining sales reps in my office have been told that if they call in for two consecutive days that they have not gotten either a renewal or new sale, their job performance will be "looked at".

Nobody in the office was anywhere near having 24 sales by december 31st, so are they going to cut everybody's salary to $15K and just wait for them to quit?

In Response to Yellobrix in Alabama........

Very well written, and very honest on how things go at Yellow Turd. Many of the very best people at YT were let go because of favoritism, and crappy management.

In response to Yellobrix in AL.....

Eloquent words...coated in truth and wisdom.

The mamangers and executives are grossly overpaid. While all businesses are down, and people are reluctant to spend as much on ads (go figure).

In response to some of the postings.. yellowbook has indeed let go of half of the sales staff...DSM's are now out selling... what is puzzling is that they are probably spending another 30 million on new commercials that do not even address their core product(print) and will have no talented sales reps left to sell the leads that are generated by the commercials..How bout cut back a few NFL ads, and save peoples jobs?? Funny thing, locally Yellowbook still has job openings for my exact position for which I was let go on their website...oh well

Host said: Every business has it's own style. What is the office environment and culture like at Yellow Book?

Are people dressed in business casual, jeans and t-shirts, or full-on suits? Do folks get together for Friday happy hours and friendly get-togethers?

What is a typical day in the life of an employee at Yellow Book?

I think it depends on your RSM and DSM. Our office is pretty laid back, and I often host after work events at my house. I know all of my co-workers, we go out on blitz days together help on another close and I don't sense any real cut throat stuff. I feel bad for those who responded that they are so unhappy in their offices. Maybe someone who stayed for less than a year isn't a good person to listen too.

My office use to take us on all sort of outings, but unlike those company's asking for federal help, Yellow Book paid out of pocket for our outtings and now that the well isn't running as wet . . . We no longer do happy hours and stuff like baseball games. Just know the company truly values the good employees and the negative ones they hopefully find employment somewhere else. I am a happy YB employee.

I started with the company over two years ago. At that point they had alot of great sales contests, bonuses and lots of incentives to sell. Now all of that is gone. The company has great products to sell and I enjoy working with my fellow sales people. But if the company is not willing to pay a decent salary and good payouts on new sales and increase they will lose their top salespeople.

I hear you, the good ole days are gone . . . But at least we have jobs! I am grateful for employment so I pick my battles wisely. We just got a better comp plan about three weeks ago. I won't say what but we are rolling in the dough with renewal, increase and new sales now! I made $800 on a new sale last week and all he purchased was a menu.

Don't Bash Yellow Book in Potomac, Ontario said: I hear you, the good ole days are gone . . . But at least we have jobs! I am grateful for employment so I pick my battles wisely. We just got a better comp plan about three weeks ago. I won't say what but we are rolling in the dough with renewal, increase and new sales now! I made $800 on a new sale last week and all he purchased was a menu.

We just got our new comp plan. It did not work out so great for me. I was just recently promoted and I expected my salary to increase but it got cut. They also cut our new sales payout and increase payouts. They did raise the renewal but that does give much incentive to sell new or go for big increases.

Yeah, that would suck. Don't you think things could be worse and I know it's not fair of me to say that but at least we have jobs when so many people are suffering.

The environment is different from office to office from what I hear. I work 3 books and I travel 6 months out of the year. The first few months were very laid back and then my managers started requested call logs and we have meeting every morning and have to report back in by 4:30 every day. I have also noticed the change in the "humor" in the office. Managers are having more closed door meetings and they don't have as much fun as they did when I first started. I, too, found out most of the people in my training class have left or been laid off before completing a year. My office has had 2 people leave and with the hiring freeze I think my job is safe for now, but I'm beginning to wonder. I didn't make my first book but I did make this book..however, I made it because I signed a big account. I still missed the number of new sales. So, long story short...I'm scared I will be next in the big lay-offs.