The Great Resignation: A study in Why it happened - Avis employé Sales Director Clements Fluids

Clement's Fluids (CF) is a great place to be if a culture and intentional care for you and your family are important. If you are a performer that understands that your work and effort determines your reward, then CF is for you. CF is a company where relationships are the highest priority. It's been my experience that they truly believe that when you put people and their needs first whether they are an employee or a customer that the best in everyone surfaces. The R3 culture where we put God first, our co workers second and our customers third is the right order in the development of each individual and customer. If you're looking for this culture look no further.

Some folks don't appreciate the culture or effort CF invests in their lives and share negatively in retaliation.

There were genuinely good people at the company who cared about employees and wanted them to succeed. I met a lot of hardworking individuals and appreciated the relationships I built there.

That said, this was just my personal experience, but the role involved significantly more travel than was communicated during the interview process. Employees were also expected to travel on their own personal time, which often meant spending weekends flying or driving instead of being home with family. Over time, that became difficult from a work-life balance perspective. I also felt there was a heavy emphasis on internal meetings over customer-facing activity. Having 3–4 recurring internal meetings every week took away a substantial amount of selling time and made it harder to stay in front of customers and generate business. The commission structure was another challenge from a sales motivation standpoint. Bonuses were tied to an entire portfolio of accounts meeting threshold targets simultaneously. In my case, I exceeded quota on certain accounts, but because other assigned accounts did not hit their targets, I received no bonus payout. As someone who is highly commission-driven, it was frustrating to not be rewarded for the business I personally generated. It felt less like an “eat what you kill” sales environment and more like individual performance could be overshadowed by factors outside your control. I also found parts of the company culture disconnecting from the realities of field sales. For example, I found it strange at times to have HR personnel teaching sales strategy despite never having worked in an industry sales role themselves, nor spending time in the field living the day-to-day reality alongside the sales team. Meanwhile, field salespeople were expected to constantly travel, visit rigs, and grind to generate revenue, while management often seemed disconnected from those expectations. There were instances where management would fly into Midland on a private jet, visit a single rig, and fly back home the same day. Having previously worked for a very large corporation, I personally never even saw executives there operate that way, which made the contrast stand out. Another challenge was the company’s go-to-market strategy. The business had historically been very successful selling its core products, but the market has shifted. In many cases, operators can now build or mix comparable products on-site at a lower cost, which made the sales process increasingly difficult. From my perspective, the company seemed resistant to adapting beyond the legacy products and sales approach that had worked in the past. In a shrinking drilling market with more operators moving in-house, I personally struggled to see the long-term growth potential.