The Gartner Sales Boiler Room in Fort Myers

Executive Summary

• This article covers Gartner’s sales tactics in its Fort Myers office.
• Gartner has copied the Scientology tactic of constantly pushing customers to higher packages when the first packaged sold to them does not work as promised.

Video Introduction: The Gartner Sales Boiler Room in Fort Myers

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

Gartner has actively promoted rather shocking approaches to sales for some time. In other articles, we covered how Gartner is a faux research entity far more about sales than doing research. What few people will discuss is that Gartner uses an upsell model with customers based upon moving the goalposts of expectations that have been perfected by The Church of Scientology. Dealing with Gartner means dealing with this high pressure sales tactic and other forms of manipulation. In this article, you will learn about Gartner’s shady sales practices in detail from first-hand accounts.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: You are reading one of the only independent sources on Gartner. If you look at the information software vendors or consulting firms provide about Gartner, it is exclusively about using Gartner to help them sell software or consulting services. None of these sources care that Gartner is a faux research entity that makes up its findings and has massive financial conflicts. The IT industry is generally petrified of Gartner and only publishes complementary information about them. The article below is very different.

• First, it is published by a research entity, not an unreliable software vendor or consulting firm that has no idea what research is. 
• Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services as a vendor or consulting firm that shares their ranking in some Gartner report. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. 

Gartner’s Sales Tactics

Gartner uses unethical sales tactics. Real research entities do not do the following:

• Unlike Gartner sales, Consumer Reports does not make promises to companies that they can improve their rankings if they use their “advisory services.”
• Academic research does not employ the tactics of Gartner sales.

Who has a series of ever-escalating levels used to upsell a dissatisfied customer employed by Gartner sales?

Well, Scientology is probably the most prominent. Gartner sales face the issue with vendors that the MQ improvement does not improve as much as Gartner salespeople promise. Therefore, at some point, the vendors bring this up. When the Gartner salesperson moves to the upsell, telling them that they will get better access to the analyst if they pay more.

This is taught in the two months of Gartner Fort Myers sales training. I have some of the Gartner sales documentation used by Gartner Fort Myers given to me by dissatisfied people who went through the training. Gartner Fort Myers is where the sales Academy is located and is also the sales location for small and medium businesses or SMB. The idea is that the less experienced Gartner sales individuals are trained on less valuable customers, which are smaller.

So it isn’t easy to see how anyone from Gartner can deny this strategy exists.

The Genesis of This Article on Gartner Sales Tactics

This article was developed because of people that reached out to me from Gartner’s Fort Myers location. Let us review a sampling of some of the interesting comments or reviews of the Fort Myers sales location on GlassDoor.

GlassDoor Reviews Quotation Categories

Quotation on Management Style

“The middle management has little to no experience and cares more about how they look to upper management than your actual success and development. Try to push you out the door if you do not deliver results immediately. Take the easy way out if you are not easy enough to manage.”

Quote on Youth and Inexperience and Turnover at Gartner Fort Myers

“Consider hiring managers from outside of the organization. You hire talent that is far too young to manage their peers within a year. That being said your average tenure for an account executive is 7 months. There is obviously something wrong when clients say “you’re my 5th AE in the last 18 months.”

Recruiters don’t tell you that you can be cut during training after relocating and signing leases. If this is the case, Gartner should provide housing for the 10 weeks of training since they do not offer severance to help pay costs for breaking a lease.

Some of the Managers and VPs have 3-5 years of experience…total, and I mean out of college workforce experience. I get that many corporations would rather train young people who are less expensive and will do it the proven “Gartner” way. But as a young professional I would rather have a manager who can teach me something from real life experience versus just parroting the training departments latest brochure.”

Quote on Sales Robots and Secrecy on Terminations

“This place seems very automation driven, and mysterious about it, and is also very secretive with their employees (i.e job elimination) . Everything seems to be on “a need to know basis”, the Manager’s show no respect for their employees, you are truly a “number” here, the turnover here is exceptionally high, which they try very hard to hide during the recruitment process- if you ask they will not give you a straight answer. The overall package to move to Fort Myers, upend your life, and submit to their very long, stressful, and psychologically taxing interview process, should make someone with a keen eye for company culture, think twice. Until they address some issues resulting in this enormous turnover problem, and bad management, and revolving door atmosphere, they will keep having the same issues. They do not respect their employees. You will be a number here. (The number is even on your tiny, desk/cube thing).”

Quotation on Low Pay

“Far more cons to working at Gartner than Pros. 2.5 years ago, Gartner used to have a great culture (professional) and you could turn to almost anyone for advice. Within the past year or so, there is nothing but frat boys and very young people right out of college. I wouldn’t turn to 95% of people here now for advice as they have no clue what they are doing. Pay is below average. Making $65K per year for hitting your quote is insane.

Do not come to work here for SMB. Do not drink the Gartner Koolaid when they tell you how prestigious it is to work here. If you enjoy being micromanaged, gambling on your territory and who you report to and making very little money then this place is for you.”

Gartner is So Prestigious

“No advice will fix the circus that is going on. Too much fluff and hype of how Gartner is the best company in the world with “limitless opportunities” as long as you have a “no limits mindset”. Quit blaming reps for not making sales all because of not “checking a box” in the value selling framework.

Start telling new hires that they may move their entire life across the country they may not make it out of the academy.”

Quotation on The Reality

“Gartner looks amazing on a resume. Great place to quit for a better role.

Oh my my my where to even begin. First of all, the short positive reviews on here are written by recruiters (and they turn over almost as fast as sales reps). Your territory will be a few letters of a state split among 5-6 people so you’ll all be calling into the same 200 people all year.

Expect around 80-85% first year turnover among reps. Management is whoever played the politics/Gartner Hunger Games well enough for 2 years to advance. You will manage accounts that you did not sell, who were sold under false pretenses (HT only), which will not auto-renew and you will be penazlied for it. Bring up any negativity and expect to be coached out for a negative mindset.”

Quotation on HyperGrowth

“Gartner SMB’s motto is “growth engine” and they truly mean that. Tenured AE’s are phased out by 3 more fresh out of college faces who are slightly less capable but equally profitable in an inside sales role. They claim to be hiring 600 more individuals in the coming year, do not look at this as a good thing as territories become more scarce and individuals devalued. Managers are often middle of the road AE’s who lucked into quality books of business or were too bought into the kool-Aid to realize there are better opportunities. This leads to a perpetual cycle of talented individuals leaving due to poor management and less talented individuals getting promoted. If you are an aspiring end-user AE my advice to you is fight for a vertical (finance or healthcare).

A major issue with Gartner and the employee churn is random books of business, landing yourself on a vertical greatly increases your chance of success. Recruiters will also falsely portray the opportunity to achieve a field role within the first two years (absolute minimum 27 months if politic’d to perfection) as well as the percentage of employees who actually achieve OTE. A few smaller issues are the quarterly meetings that are actually just 4 hour pep rallies. The traffic will greatly increase in the winter months due to snow birds. You will have to stay late at the end of each quarter and vacation time for the Christmas and New Year holiday weeks is non existent.

Hiring employees that are very young and straight out of college often results in a very immature “high school” environment. Often a wolf-of-wall street feeling when going after big incentives – resulting in a lot of “bad business” sold to C-level executives that could have been great network sources for young professionals. The management level is not reputable or credible enough to hold their role.”

Quote on Call Center Jobs at Gartner Fort Myers

“This is a call center position ! You will sit on your cube face down and call call and call. People think they are so fancy because they work there but let’s be honest !You are a call center rep! This was the most boring job I ever had… Management absolutely terrible worse I ever had! A bunch of inexperienced girls thinking they are the best thing out there.”

Quote on The Intellectual Orientation of Gartner Fort Myers

There is one kind of person that fits in well for Gartner: Male, White, Jock/Bro, Unintelligent usually. Conversations at work consist of topics high school bros talk about. Very few females or people of other races.

Quotation on Short-Term Orientation

“To the VP’s: Stop allowing our channel to hire so many new people, Don’t pressure young AE’s to burn relationships just to get a few more deals in before the end of the quarter, Meet with your AE’s more, Try to hire outside of Florida and outside of the “typical” Gartner robot, inspire more creativity and less of your process.

This role can be very transactional, so if you’re looking for a relationship management role, this isn’t for you. Fast paced!”

Quotation on Pricing Deception

“Put a strong stop on the deceptive pricing incentives and false time bound incentives. It erodes the brand, decreases the trustworthiness of the org, and demoralizes sales teams that value integrity. Focus on long term contribution to the global organization as a channel and award longevity and employee loyalty by compensating bonuses that show long-term value toward the employee (aka stock bonuses and allocations, …”

Quotation on Greed

“This company is growing too big, too fast because top brass only cares about making money, not making employees or clients happy. If you’re not on board with the rate and size that this company aspires to grow, then you have a “fixed mindset” not the “Gartner growth mindset”. There are so many programs and processes that require so much manual intervention that efficiency and quality of work suffer.

During the recruiting process, Gartner practically promises that you will be making $250 to $300K a year and Gartner will make everything possible to ensure your success. What they don’t tell you is that after completing their Academy Training program you can be fired if you’re consider a bad fit. Termination will occur even after the new employee has quit there previous job, relocated at a great expense. The first question a recent fired Academy graduate asked a manager was “why was I not told during the interview process that I could be fired out of the Academy” the response from the manager was that if they disclosed this fact, they would not be able to recruit as many applicants.”

Quote on Gartner as a Cult (With Gartner Fort Myers Leading  the Way)

“They are obsessed with role playing to the point where Gartner feels like a cult.

Life at Gartner can become somewhat “Culty.” Employees who do not drink the kool aid will get phased out of the company.”

Quotation on Inexperience

“There is an odd contradiction between professionalism and the Gartner Culture — We sell ourselves as Strategic Business partners to our clients, but he majority of Account Reps are 23 year old former fraternity brothers running around shooting nerf guns at each other.

Gartner SMB division requires you to move to Fort Myers, Florida. The recruiters tell you that you’ll come down to Florida, put in your 2 years and then get placed nationwide in one of Gartner’s offices. That advancement path is very possible, and many employees do get placed nationwide, but the SMB Management will fight to keep you in Florida (aka making money for their division). It is much easier to get promoted within the Florida office rather than get placed at another Gartner Office in a bigger city.

Great chance for cell phone and copier salespeople to play IT consultants – no experience in anything related to software or IT hardware necessary at all to meet minimum job reqmts. Gartner will give you a sales “talk track” and “script” to repeat, over and over. Ask at 90/120/180 days – you won’t have to be creative or authentic

“Sales” for 95% of the salespeople at Gartner is mostly collecting renewals from existing clients. Cancel rewrite of existing contracts is a great way to re-book existing customers as new orders, and make it seem that you have growth – PREV, NCVI — all just the same numbers. Thankfully, no competitors exist in Research & Advisory services – Forrester, CEB, etc, don’t count.

Previous sales experience in IT is not welcomed — as you will bring ideas and knowledge that will only make management uncomfortable. Average length of tenure in individual sales contributors is 0 – 3 years max.

The culture is falling apart in SMB. Its basically a frat house. Everyone is straight out of college. New Account Managers are hired en mass and pushed through huge training classes to keep up with the turnover.

The market for SMB is not growing as fast as they tell you. The value prop is VERY weak for tech vendors.”

Essentially, paying off Gartner can make sense for the more significant vendors, but the value proposition declines as the vendors become smaller. So the value depends upon the size of the vendor.

Quotation on Gartner Fort Myers as a Boiler Room

“SMB Sales is a Boiler Room with Dishonest Leadership

Gartner is not above practicing dishonest sales tactics in order to manipulate clients into doing whatever Gartner wants.”

Gartner & Scientology; Similarities in Sales Strategy

This article could just as quickly have been titled “how not to get ripped off by Gartner.” Still, due to the similarities in sales approach between Gartner and the Church of Scientology, I thought the present title was the most accurate. However, I will acknowledge it is a bit aggressive.

If one thinks of these two entities, one would think there is nothing in common between the two on the surface. I wrote a book on Gartner and have spent a decent amount of time studying how Scientology works. This is part of a longstanding interest in the techniques used for mind control or persuasion (depending on your perspective). This study leads to reviewing wartime propaganda posters for other topics.

Studying rather extreme forms of mind control is proper training to understand lesser forms of mind control. All power structures engage in some mind control to influence them to participate in the behaviors that they deem preferable. And from the military to private businesses, almost no one admits to doing it.

A Series of Echelons to Attain

Both Gartner and Scientology have a defined set of echelons that one must go through. With Scientology, these are well-known levels and are called Operating Thetan levels. The concepts behind these levels are pretty whacky. But the essential features of these levels are:

• How structured they are.
• They create the incentive to move up through the levels, much like attaining different levels in the martial arts.

Scientology puts something the prospect desires and values ahead of them and then charges for this. These levels are achieved by paying for various courses and auditing (this is where a person connects a device to you and engages in the form of psychoanalysis). With Gartner, some levels offer more access to analysts. Gartner positions its analysts as all-knowing, increasing their value, but access to them will always cost. What Gartner does not emphasize is that the analysts learn as much from the vendors and that Gartner then resells this information to buyers. Either way, Gartner is always getting paid.

Satisfaction “So Close” to Being Attained

In each case, as one moves upward in the hierarchy, the costs increase. In both cases, the benefits that are predicted are promoted by the salesperson. In most cases (in the case of Scientology, many of the promises are impossible to realize, so in Scientology, it is in all cases) are not matched by the outcomes observed by the customer. The customer in the case of Scientology being the convert and, in Gartner, the software vendor. I have never met a Scientologist that I know of. But I have met Gartner salespeople, and Gartner hires very persuasive individuals. I assume Scientology has some quota system and bonus system, which also attracts the most persuasive people to work in sales for them.

A Common Reliance on Secrecy

Both Scientology and Gartner rely upon secrecy. Those Scientologists at the lower echelons cannot be told what awaits them in the later training. You must pay quite a lot of money for that. Similarly, Gartner commonly stated that only about “15% of the research is actually in the Gartner publications.” Those that want to see more need to pay for higher levels to access these genuine insights.

There are several reasons for not including the insights in the publications. One is that Gartner has a lot of entities to please.

Each software vendor wants to score well in the Magic Quadrant and published materials. Gartner cannot please them all. But by keeping much of the information private, they can tell one thing to one group of buyers and vendors and something else to another group. Just as with Scientology, none of this is what the research shows, but about profit maximization.

An entity that can tell different stories to different groups can charge more from these groups than if everything was laid out on the table. This is in opposition to the academic method, where one publishes the full method. Although many academic papers circumvent transparency by using overly complicated mathematics to be accurate, very few people can understand. This is most likely the reason for the preponderance of mathematics in academic papers, as it hides the actual core of the research from the vast majority of those who could critique it if it were laid bare.

The Declaration of Hidden or Revealed Truth

Like Gartner, Scientology does not publish the highest order of information to sell as the revealed truth. We only have the details of this information from those who converted from the Church and published them. When reading these documents, another reason why Scientology keeps it secret emerges. Most of the highest order information is insane. Scientology was founded by a former science fiction writer with mental health problems, and these highest order documents are simply another science fiction story.

Both Gartner and Scientology do a very effective job of creating value through scarcity. This stake raising is continual in the relationship between Gartner and the software vendors. At one point, Scientology topped out at Operating Thetan 8. Of course, the Scientologists that paid to get at this level did not see the benefits. All of a sudden new books by the founder L Ron Hubbard were “discovered” (after his death) by the Church. Immediately, those that have previously been at the top level (called crossing the bridge to clear) had to re-enroll and pay a tremendous amount of money to do so.

Keeping information secret has a long-established history in religions. In modern times everyone has access to a Bible. However, during the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church killed people that it found that trafficked in Bibles that were translated into the common language of the region.

Continually Increasing the Stakes

Both Gartner and Scientology respond to a lack of progress towards goals by requesting more investment in the software or vendor. Each is promising a different thing, of course. So for Scientology, ridiculous claims are made. In addition to “total freedom,” Scientologists are told that when they reach the upper levels of Scientology (so-called Operating Thetan level 8 or 9), they will be able to be “clear.” When they reach this state, they can do things like:

• Be in total control of their emotional states.
• Move objects with their mind.
• Engaging in interstellar travel (with their consciousness, not their body).

Before you reach that level, there are other intermediate capabilities they will attain. Of course, Scientologists don’t achieve these; they sometimes push back on the Church. They are told that they need to spend more money and take more courses. That is any shortcoming in attaining goals is externalized to the participant. This is precisely how Gartner’s sales strategy works.

• At Gartner, software vendors who don’t develop the leads they promised are told to “get in front of” analysts.
• “Getting in Front of” means purchasing their services.
• These are the so-called “advisory services.”
• This is where Gartner analysts are asked to evaluate the vendor.
• That is, the vendors coaxed into purchasing services from Gartner that they don’t want.
• This often takes the form of marketing advice.

To sell these services, the Gartner account reps will continually propose a potential breakthrough in the future as with Scientology account reps. While the sales promises have not come true “yet,” the customer/Scientologist is told that a breakthrough is just around the corner. Neither Gartner nor Scientology account reps would want to see the customer/Scientologist “throw it all away” before they have obtained their breakthrough.

Gartner account reps know they have to use this line to keep vendors re-upping. This is used on vendors that have not seen any benefits from their Gartner spend. To be an effective Gartner account rep, you must be persuasive enough to continue to obtain subscriptions from vendors that see a marginal value from Gartner.

Gartner uses high-pressure sales tactics out of its Fort Myers facility. The tactics are so extreme that it causes one to wonder how much legitimate research Gartner performs. Gartner is far more focused on maximizing its revenues instead of emphasizing research quality.

Gartner Proposes Vendors Purchase Technology Advisory Services of Their Own Free Will

Gartner proposes that the software vendors freely purchase these services and are unrelated to the vendors’ positioning in their Magic Quadrant. When Gartner salespeople talk to software vendors, they contradict this statement by saying that “getting in front of” the analysts will help the vendor’s cause. However, they may be a bit opaque about the direct relationship between hiring the analyst and improving the Magic Quadrant outcomes. But the term getting in front of is clear from one perspective. That is, it will always cost money.

Gartner analysts tend to be deluded. They think that the software vendors would want their advice if Gartner did not control their access to sales leads. What the vendors wish to is sales leads and assistance in closing deals. I have interviewed many software vendors, and this is the crux of why they purchase services from Gartner and why they engage Gartner in the first place.

The Pay to Play Model

Neither Gartner, not Scientology, is based on all that much research. Those who would dismiss Scientology altogether as it is a cult (or a multi-level marketing scheme). Many ex-Scientologists claim benefits, particularly from the lower levels. Necessarily, Scientology’s found, L Ron Hubbard, copied his ideas from standard psychology books, but renaming claimed all the ideas as if they were his. As one progresses through the echelons on the OT levels, it gets weirder and weirder, but much of Scientology has some foundation.

In this way, it is like Gartner. Gartner has some foundation, but Gartner hides the method (or methodology) from people. And very few people take any time to check on this. Instead, they tend to take Gartner’s Magic Quadrants at face value. I don’t have the space to get into all the ways Gartners results are opaque and manufactured, but I have outlined them specifically in the book Gartner and the Magic Quadrant: A Guide for Buyers, Vendors, and Investors. Gartner prefers to keep its method opaque to have maximum latitude in moving vendors and applications around in the rankings based upon the “financial contribution” of the software vendors.

Investigating Gartner

When I investigated Gartner for the book, I compared Gartner’s research versus academic research, Consumer Reports, and the Rand Institute. Here is what I found:

Gartner publishes a “Supply Chain Top 25,” which most people would assume is the twenty-five companies that have the highest-performing supply chains (that is, the highest performance from the metrics commonly associated with supply chain management—things like forecast accuracy, inventory turnover, service level, and other similar measures). However, upon reading Gartner’s methodology for creating the Supply Chain Top 25, only one of these criteria is used.

The criteria are instead:

1. Return on Assets (ROA)—Net income / total assets
2. Inventory Turns—Cost of goods sold / inventory.
3. Revenue Growth—Change in revenue from the prior year.
4. Gartner’s Internal Voting
5. Gartner’s Client’s Voting

Two of the criteria that determine the Supply Chain Top 25 do not have anything to do with the supply chain but have to do with financial performance! It is essential to consider that Gartner’s target market is not researchers but rather decision-makers who are buyers, vendors, and investors. Many (but not all) of the people in these groups will be more interested in only seeing the results. In fact, many question how many of the people who read and rely upon Gartner’s reports read the entire report, much less understand the research methodology.

This gets back to the central theme throughout this book—that Gartner’s research is not particularly useful without the context provided by Gartner analysts. However, because the privately provided information is not part of the public record, it is also not auditable. Gartner’s most profitable move is not to base their outcomes on actual research but instead to have the vendors bid to be in the Magic Quadrant, but then to claim that it relies on research.

The Hard Close Part of the Sales Process

Gartner provides far less than it promises for most of the year. However, that changes when the software vendor comes close to renewing their “subscription” with Gartner. At that point, the account executive will bring extra sugar to ask what can be done to ensure the customer re-ups.

Revealed Truth

Once you move away from a reliable method being used in the source, you move to something called “revealed truth.” Revealed truth is the basis for all religions and is a logical fallacy. I found this interesting quotation while looking into the topic.

“Of course, the very notion of revealed truth is in fact a logical fallacy. See, truth revealed by a supposedly supernatural entity is a particular case of argument from authority. In elementary logic, arguments from authority are a classical example of fallacy, because there is no independent reason or evidence supporting the statement alleged to be true, other than somebody telling you that it is true.Of course, the very notion of revealed truth is in fact a logical fallacy. See, truth revealed by a supposedly supernatural entity is a particular case of argument from authority. In elementary logic, arguments from authority are a classical example of fallacy, because there is no independent reason or evidence supporting the statement alleged to be true, other than somebody telling you that it is true.” – https://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2006/02/revealed-truth-logical-fallacy.html 

Conclusion

From these reviews and conversations with ex-Gartner resources, which have been through Gartner sales training in Gartner Fort Myers, the picture painted is of a boiler room operation. Gartner sales employ underhanded tactics to complete sales. It is also engaging in labor exploitation of its young and impressionable workforce in Gartner Fort Myers, but it is essentially training them to be unethical. Gartner Fort Myers is a finishing school for deceptive sales tactics that Gartner Fort Myers trains into salespeople before moving on to other parts of Gartner.

• Gartner has moved into the harvesting phase of its lifecycle. This is where the money comes in front of everything, and the organization becomes entirely sales dominated.
• This is the phase that IBM has been in for some time and that SAP recently (in the past five years) entered into.
• It is a phase that can only be entered into if the entity has significant monopoly power. Gartner does have this monopoly power, and they are abusing it.

Scientology and Gartner have nothing to do with one another. Upon review, it does appear as if Scientology and Gartner share some of the same sales techniques. It is just that there are some ways to persuade people to give you money, and so organizations will tend to go back to methods that work.

The idea for this started when I was speaking to a vendor. They explained how their Gartner account rep would always respond to the vendor’s complaint about a lack of value from their Gartner expenditure by proposing that the software vendor invests more. Therefore, the Gartner account rep is substantially continually upselling the software vendor to more advanced services. This immediately reminded me of the material I read about how Scientology sells.

When I speak with vendors, there is a general disrespect for Gartner. They see Gartner as really nothing more than pay to play entity. Many vendors buy services from Gartner because they feel like they cannot afford not to. That is, there is a toll booth quality to Gartner. Therefore a substantial sum of Gartner’s revenues is obtained against the will of the software vendors.

Gartner takes advantage of many software vendors with promises that do not come true. The only real way to do something about this is to publish information about how they do it. If you have a Gartner story you would like to share, contact me to discuss it. All sources are kept confidential.

The Problem: Thinking that Gartner is Focused on What is True

Gartner is hired by companies who fundamentally don’t understand how Gartner functions. Gartner has virtually no first-hand experience in the technologies they evaluate and get most of their information from executives at buyers or executives at vendors and consulting firms. Gartner is also not a research entity. They compare very poorly to real research entities once you dig into the details, as we did in the article How Gartner’s Research Compares to Real Research Entities. Gartner serves to direct IT spending to the most expensive solutions as these are the companies that can afford to pay Gartner the most money. Gartner has enormously aggressive internal sales goals that place accuracy far below revenue growth in importance.