Work want to make my role redundant & have offered me two alternatives both lower pay

[breathe3asy]

I've been with the same telco firm for over 7 yrs now and for the last 3 years been working pre sales.
I'm paid a salary and commission seeing about £42k per year.
The role hasn't really evolved or been managed all that well, no clear objectives, targets or reviews have taken place and now they are proposing to make it redundant. They're offering me two options.

Option A
Go full blown sales - £25k salary, commission based etc.
This would probably see me more money in the long run but would take maybe 18 months or more to build clients and start seeing returns to similar money I am on today. Its not something I particularly want to do either.

Option B
Move into the newly formed Product team - £35k, no commission.
Out of the two this would be the better role for me and something I could see myself doing if I apply myself.

So to summarise, my current role is being made redundant and I am being offered the choice between a sales role and a product role, each path having their pro's & cons, but unfortunately both offering me quite a bit less money per month compared to current.

What would you do? Nothing official has happened yet, we're still in chats and the relationship is sweet but I was thinking about asking if redundancy is an option and not from an ungrateful place but for obvious reasons I have to think about the best decision for my financial commitments.

 

[breathe3asy]

Redundancy is a bit of a minefield though isn't it? They've not mentioned anything about it, I am going to ask but I don't want the relationship to turn sour just in case I need to take the £35k for the interim whilst trying to figure out where I am and how I feel about this whole thing.

I spoke to an advice line today but I'm not any clearer on whether the business are obliged to offer redundancy due to offering me two similar roles, and technically one of them is increased salary but without commission. They basically said "well you can ask but the business doesn't have to give you redundancy and if they don't you could go legal" which would be stressful...

 

[breathe3asy]

What is the role in the product team - some kind of product management role? Without more context, £35k seems shockingly low for any type of PM role except maybe the very most junior. That said, might be worth it to get a year or two experience and then move somewhere else for a huge bump.

The title is Product Specialist, in a nutshell it serves as house keeping for workforce management apps that have been developed internally, consolidating products down as the business has acquired quite a few other businesses as of late etc with progression opportunity (so I'm told) to become Product Manager which starts at £48k averaging £55k.

They apparently valued the role within the market and it came out at the higher band of £32k with no company car allowance which they are letting me keep which adds another £3k.

The role is definitely different to what I do today which is assist the sales teams with "technical selling", I join them on meetings and scope requirements etc before pitching our solutions. There's value in this role for the team as a lot of them would testify but I think management are trying to build structure due to rapid growth in the company and my role is sticking out a bit as lone wolf.

 

[breathe3asy]

Something very similar happened to a friend and he joined and got some very good advice and representation, plus independent witness at all meetings. Seeing HR and management squirm was reward in itself, plus the far better terms he left on than originally on the table.

I wouldn't want it to get to this stage I don't think, the stress isn't worth it. I also don't want to be made a mug of though when I could argue the business has let me down these last few years by allowing my role to drift.

 

[breathe3asy]

Would it be worth seeking the help of an employments solicitor if redundancy progresses?

I'd want the outcome to be fair & the more I'm thinking about it the more I'm feeling wronged about the situation. I've not seen much personal growth during my time in pre sales due to not really having a manager & now I'm being faced with potentially having to look elsewhere with little to show for the last few years.

 

[breathe3asy]

So bit of an update I went back and asked what would happen if I said thanks but no thanks to both offers and got told we would then look at redundancy which would be approx. 4k stat redundancy tax free and additional £3,365 subject to tax which is 7 weeks pay taken from my base salary of 25k.

I'm swaying towards redundancy for various reasons but feeling anxious about not having something else decent lined up, still trying to process everything at the mo.

 

[breathe3asy]

Take the product role, do it for < 1 year and send your CV out, aim to work in a software related tech job rather than another telco.

£35K for a product manager with 7 years experience (presumably 4 years as some sort of Engineer or other technical before your 3 years pre-sales) is an absolute joke! That's a 00s era starting salary for a new graduate in software!

4 years Engineer/Analyst/techie/whatever -> 3 years presales -> 1 year Product Owner/Manager on a CV shows good progression and would be great for you to use to switch jobs but... don't rush to switch, take your time and find the right role.

Don't take the redundancy, the new job title/new experience in that role is valuable, what you do want to do is take your time and start interviewing after a few months and importantly don't tell the recruiter or potential employer your current salary. You are massively underpaid if you were to switch to a tech/software company.

Be prepared to turn down a couple of roles, you might not be as polished for the first couple of interviews use them as practice, get a feel for the sort of amounts you could push for (this can also vary considerably depending on the firm).



So nothing then ... that's a bad option to take, it's basically a rounding error in your next salary negotiation and you'll be in a weaker position applying for new roles having been made redundant than if your CV shows you've recently been "promoted" to a product role.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts so far.

@dowie thanks for your comment. The new proposed role is to become product specialist with the opportunity to tool up & progress to product manager, it would mean working closely with the product manager and assisting on what needs to be done which is like I say, a lot, the business has acquired many others each of which all have their own product portfolios.
We are more than a telco these days more like a tech company but like you say after 1 yrs experience junior Product could still have a similar effect on my CV & be interpreted as progression.
It would be tough to get stuck in and be motivated knowing my pay has been cut circa 10k a year, especially since I know the kind of money the sales guys pull in but I guess I would have to remind myself frequently of the value the role is contributing. Like I say other than some interpersonal skills, there has been very little personal growth in me working as pre sales so a change up could be a good thing.

 

[breathe3asy]

What have you been doing technical pre sales for? Are we talking Cisco/avaya etc? You could easily get a good technology sales job with decent experience paying at least double what you’re on

Hosted VoIP such as:

• Horizon by Gamma
• Teams Voice/Direct Routing
• LG Cloud
• PhoneLine+ (PSTN replacement)

The reason I fit well for presales is because of my experience as a techy supporting said products during my first few years at the business. The skillset I have acquired lends itself to presales and painting that sales journey for our prospects and qualifying their requirements. We have some sales people that don't do a lot more than manage the relationship with the client.

I'm thinking about having a chat with the powers that be to look them in the eyes and find out the reasoning behind the bullet for presales, other than the obvious lack of engagement from them with the role. I also take some responsibility for allowing myself to drift.

 

[breathe3asy]

I hate to be that person, but the company haven't offered you a lower paid role if you have given the correct figure above
You say your base salary is £25K, which suggests you are making around £17K commission every year if you are earning £42K as per your original post

They have offered you either £25K plus commission (which seems to be what you are on now) in one job, or £35K for the other job, both of which are matching or bettering your current contract in terms of base salary

Current role - £25K plus commission (based on the post above)
Offer A - £25K plus commission
Offer B - £35K

No worries at all, you've understood correctly, apart from I failed to mention in my OP that I get 3k car allowance per year which takes me to around 45k a year currently - £25k base and average of £20k commission.

Both roles are lower pay per month compared to what I'm taking home today as like I say in OP the sales role would take around 18 months building clients before I break even, and the Product role is 10k less per year and that's the ceiling.

Are you saying from a legal standpoint they are offering me suitable alternatives matching or increased vs. my contractual pay? I would like to think after 7+ years service they don't treat me like a contract but either way I'm backed into a corner, so now that I've understood what is happening a little more I can hopefully level with them in person.

 

[breathe3asy]

I am certainly not qualified to give legal advice, this is just my understanding of the information you have provided

The only reason both roles are lower pay per month than what you currently take home is because of your commission, which they could say is not part of the equation because it is effectively a bonus because of how well you do the job - if you weren't as good at the job you could be taking home just the £25K per year and they have offered you another role at that same figure

You do say that you could potentially get back to that £45K figure with the first job, but it would take time to build the relationships and increase your commission, which is what you appear to have done in your current position to get to the figure you are at now

Unfortunately, whenever commission is involved, you can't really take it as guaranteed income, as a bad year could see all of that wiped out in a worst case scenario, but I understand where you are coming from in terms of what you currently take home and what you have been offered

Have you based your lifestyle/spending on the £45K, or could you live on the £25K or £35K if you took one of those roles?

Logic would tend to dictate you take the higher paid role to minimise the instant loss of earnings, but I would be keen to know if there would be scope for progression with increased pay

This is the thing, my commission is calculated from group performance, not my own. If the sales team perform well, I get commission, calculated via weighted excel formulas (lol) that have averaged me around 20k additional per year.

So the directive was help the sales guys sell, however this was never reviewed or measured as growth has been good which eventually led me to drift and I should have spoken up but here we are.
It doesn't matter if I sit 1 meeting a month or 30, I have nobody to answer to and to date nobody has explicitly pulled me up on performance and now I'm being faced with 2 avenues, sales or product, salary & individual performance based commission from scratch, or just salary.

In fact this time last year I sat down for my end of year review with my Sales Director which was a coffee that lasted 15 mins, we looked at my pay and he was like, you should probably get a payrise, send me an email to that effect and when I did he came back and said he'd rather reward on value basis and to send him some targets at which point I lost interest due to lack of engagement, I didn't have the same insight as to where the business was going to be able to position my targets as well as he may have. Looking back I'm I'm actually disappointed in myself for subconsciously being unhappy about the above but not doing anything about it because my paycheck has been ok

 

[breathe3asy]

Been quite a stressful few weeks trying to figure out wtf is going on.

The person dealing with it is being a bit of a dead end, not really giving me the impression they care or listening, or its possible they simply don't have the power to do anything.
So I've gone over them and Whatsapp the person who can which is the Sales Director who ironically has been my direct report for the last few years. As much as I appreciate the trust in me it would have been nice for a bit of guidance and engagement in the business so we're going to have a chat next week about remedial actions.

Since I've been speaking about my situation to others in the team its brought to light how much presales is needed and potentially saved me a bit here. The trouble being, because I'm not measured or KPI'd nobody has any idea of the impact its making. So I'm basically going to bullet point what I want to happen, my targets, commission structure, who I'm going to report into, personal growth plan etc and basically looking for the thumbs up. It will give me the opportunity to earn more as well which wasn't really possible before.

One thing I have realised is that there's a ceiling in how much the operational side of the business can offer (Product), its a lot more structured, yes its more stable and the experience and growth in that area would be valuable, but the sales side of the business is more agile in making sure I'm not out of pocket hopefully. My goal is to try and incorporate both but I'm conscious I'm speaking with the Sales Director and he only really cares about numbers go up so I may have to pitch growth in sales through product...not sure...still thinking.

 

[breathe3asy]

Thank you gents @dowie love your advice.

I actually have an update that I will share with you later on today as just running out the door to get some things done whilst the sun is up.

 

[breathe3asy]

Ok so I met with my previous report (Sales director) and we had a candid off the record chat which I appreciated.

We came to an agreement that my role had disengaged for various reasons and I said what I wanted to, in that I should have raised the commission model within the first 6-12 months as my impact wasn't being measured and I had no way of directly affecting my take home, but because I was being paid alright at the time I left it etc.

Turns out prior to the meeting he was made aware I wasn't happy with the offers I was being given and so prompted him to start speaking with some of the team on how I do, and fortunately they all backed me pretty hard. Fortunately that made him come up with a "re-launch" of my role not too dissimilar to what I do currently but much more hands on, with targets relating to meetings sat, conversions made and GP on the board. Its given me the ability to earn more which is great so I'm actually pretty happy with how they've looked after me in the end. To finish I made it clear that I do need some personal growth though, and that it can't be all take take take and no give as I'd be helping the sales guys do their jobs better, so I'm going to look into how I can do that so if ever I find myself in a similar situation at least I will have something to show for it. I'm thinking about expensing some sort of external presales course or product sessions in-house etc.

I'm grateful this has all happened in the end as its caused me to review things for the better.