I have an interview on Weds. 5/14/08 with the regional manager for an Alldata sales territory in central TN. I was interested in any experiences / feedback (good or bad) you or friends may have had working for them.

Regional manager claims the territory has 4000 existing accounts.

Anybody?

I have been with ALLDATA for 13 years now. Our department processes all the data that goes into the products and I do technical support for the editorial staff as well as database conversion and indexing for our quarterly release. I don't work much with the sales group so I don't have any contacts within the sales group. Who are you interviewing with? I have never been a salesman so it would be tough for me to evaluate a sale position with ALLDATA as compared to any other sales position. I have talked to a few of sale reps over the years and never had anyone complain they were being mistreated or anything. In 1996 ALLDATA was bought by AutoZone providing the stability of a multi billion dollar parent company.
We essentially created the electronic automotive repair data market, no one else sold repair data in electronic format until after ALLDATA started. We just recently reached the 70,000 customer mark.

Good Luck with your interview.
Jim Dupree

Thanks Jim! I'm interviewing with Bruce McCorkle tomorrow at 9:30 AM.

How about some feedback from users? Is anybody currently using Alldata, especially in central / eastern TN? A friend who owns a large import repair business in Louisville, Ky told me he likes Alldata alot. He did question how many new customers a salesman could sign up, as most all the shop owners he knows already have Alldata or Mitchell.

The Alldata interview went well, but I’m not interested. I thought it was an existing territory with some commission, but it’s really more of a distributorship with straight commission, sort of like a Snap-On tool route. Not nearly enough existing accounts (3500 to 4000 POTENTIAL accounts ) , too much driving, too many $$ for start up costs, etc.

It's actually a Motor-Alldata route. Motor Corp does hardcover books (which is their primary line) and supplies the content to Alldata for their CD and online products. In return, Motor gets to market Alldata products, but at a slim commision. To make things worse, Alldata had their own salesforce. According to the Motor guy I talked to, Alldata has lots of sales force turnover and a habit of letting reps build up a territory and taking accounts direct.