salesEnthusiast26 profile picture
salesEnthusiast26 profile picture

salesEnthusiast26

Account Executive

Personal Narrative
Good Citizen
Contributor
+1

Am I in the wrong?

So I do sales for a trucking company. Customers send in requests for transportation needs in the form of an email to our operations team which then gets moved along to the correct department for quoting. Over the past few months now, I have seen that the operations team is taking longer than usual to get quotes sent back to the customer and sometimes doesn't get sent at all. It is not my responsibility to monitor these quotes as I am on the road making calls all day, but I always try my best to stay on top of it. I have brought this problem up in our sales meeting, which the president sits in on as he is a sales guy himself and does maintain some accounts for the company. My suggestion to him was that maybe we need more help in the office being that we are a smaller company and are turning out some decent numbers and are rapidly growing our sales team. I brought it up again in another meeting that it had happened again where a quote was completely missed and the customer had to reach out again to ask where it was. Our president spoke to the operations manager about this simply saying we need to be better. This helped a little bit but then I hit a breaking point. We had taken several hours to get a quote back when it should only take 30-40 minutes MAX and the customer responded saying we would have gotten the sale if we had responded quicker. In frustration I sent this to the president and then he let the operations team really have it. In their defense, a few people were out and one employee was tasked with handling all the quotes for one department. That employee did see the request but misread it and prioritized it to be finished later. I then began receiving emails from our VP and Ops manger pretty much coming at me for going behind their back to the president saying I should have spoke to them first. First thing I did once I saw this was call the employee who this had fallen on and apologize telling him that I wasn't trying to single him out and let him know this was an ongoing problem and relayed the same message to VP and Ops manger. Throughout this ongoing issue, my message has stayed the same in that we just need more hands on the job.


My question to the sales community is am I wrong for going straight to the president with this issue? In the end the president is on my side with this which is all that matters, but I am a team player and don't want anyone in the company to have a problem with me especially those that are higher up.

🚢 Logistics
22

28 comments

Sort by:
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
9
☕️
I wouldn’t fault you. Go to the people who won’t sweep shit under the rug.

That said, if I were the president I would be thinking of ways to automate all of a majority of the quoting process. Simple requests get into an automation queue while complex requests or certain/key accounts get 100% human attention.
salesEnthusiast26
Personal Narrative
3
Account Executive
I had looked into that briefly myself. I think we could definitely benefit from some type of software to at the very least keep things more organized. I was looking for something that would maybe show quotes that are pending and for how long.
HVACexpert
Politicker
3
sales engineer
Yeah it’s weird that the quotes have to be funneled and sent back to and through the ops team? Why not send directly? PBCs idea of automation will help as well.

Maybe an online tool your customer can get pricing on their own so they don’t have to wait?
salesEnthusiast26
Personal Narrative
2
Account Executive
We do have an online portal where customers can submit quotes and generate rates for this specific department, but it’s outdated in design and at times hard to navigate so I usually avoid selling this unless they ask about it. A whole other issue that has been discussed as the industry is moving toward that kind of platform.
Filth
Politicker
4
Live Filthy or Die Clean
@salesEnthusiast26 Are you guys just FTL or all (FTL/LTL/volume)? I sell/account manage for a TMS but know the logistics tech industry pretty well if you ever want some 2 cents for where you might want to look/take your first steps. I won't even push on it to be my solution lol. Let me know and good luck brother.
JDialz
Politicker
1
Chief Operating Officer
Sounds more like LTL if customers are getting routed to a centralized ops desk.
punishedlad
Tycoon
7
🧙‍♂️
No, you 100% did the right thing. Sorry you're dealing with this. Losing out on a deal because of another department is maddening.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
6
🦊
Oh it's one of the worst feelings. The disappointment alone kills.
Diablo
Politicker
4
Sr. AE
Nothing wrong, in fact only good communication can streamline things. Being a small company, I think you reached out the right person in authority.

approx how many quotes are being processed everyday? Curious if they are in large number, does it in fact makes sense to hire someone to avoid the opportunity cost ?
salesEnthusiast26
Personal Narrative
3
Account Executive
That was actually our VPs exact response, that he wasn't sure if it would make sense financially to pay someone salary compared to the potential sales lost. To answer your question though, I'm not really sure my guess would be a couple hundred quotes daily for that specific department. My argument was that not only are we growing the sales team, but our main goal every day is to gain new customers so volume of quotes are only going to increase inevitably given that we do our job.
Diablo
Politicker
2
Sr. AE
Wow couple hundreds. Then apart from resources I would also get automation and CRM in places that will save time, energy, money and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Apart from new customers, with timely response you will get more repeat business and less churn. So you are right, the trend is always going to go upwards.
Kosta_Konfucius
Politicker
4
Sales Rep
I think you handled it perfectly, brought it up once and nothing happened. Then 2nd time, you showed in a quantitative way why it needs to be fixed. And you called the operations employee personally and talk to them and make sure feelings were not hurt
coletrain
Politicker
3
Account Executive
You went about this correctly, freight sales comes down to speed.

Your office clearly needs help, you pointed out lost revenue.

When the hammer came down too hard, you worked to close the loop and make sure that person felt valued.
3
Head of Growth
Put the Ops team on quota. Problem solved.
Sunbunny31
Politicker
3
Sr Sales Executive 🐰
Definitely did the right thing. You're highlighting a problem that is only going to get worse if it's not addressed.

Blowback on this kind of thing sucks, though, which is why most people don't bother. Good for you for having cojones.
HVACexpert
Politicker
2
sales engineer
You did great and handled it best way possible, don’t lose sleep over it.
Pachacuti
Politicker
2
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
IMO you're good on it.
Maximas
Tycoon
2
Senior Sales Executive
So,now they should already know that repetitive case, so if it ever happens again,it shouldn't be a problem to go beyond them all.
However what I do recommend in future relevant cases that need escalation is to check firstly the escalation matrix ,if you have to get to them at first then it's fine do it,if not or a single notice is required for the same problem which they already became aware of,then get to the highest boss directly NP!
CadenceCombat
Tycoon
1
Account Executive
Seems like a valid concern to be vocal about…
FoodForSales
Politicker
1
AE
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Justatitle
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
You are not at fault at all. If you don't sell can you run to Ops and whine. Tell them to grow the fuck up.
salesblazer7
Fire Starter
1
Senior Account Executive
Transactional sales are all about touch velocity. Given the frequency of occurrence I’m sure it’d be easy to quantify how much business the company has missed out on as a result of basic incompetence. Having a number will more easily illustrate your point of the resource bottleneck and provoke investment in a better infrastructure. Obstacles and inconveniences are inevitable in life, we’ve got jobs to execute, not to justify inaction
AnchorPoint
Politicker
1
Business Coach
Try to stay within proper channels, however, at the end of the day, the point is to get things done and move things forward.
1
Physical Therapist Technician
No. If your supervisor, trainer, or even partners for that matter are not helping or creating solutions then yes take it to the president. I will say business will always die if the company does not take on the role of growth in all areas. That includes hiring new/more people on to the team to help the growth of sales and the business!
1
Division Sales Manager
It sounds like you've ruffled some feathers. I do that sometimes as well as I'm ready, fire, aim. The reality is that you've gone to those managers previously, and it's still not resolved.

For politics' sake, I'd probably go back to them and apologize and ask what we could do together to resolve this. How would they prefer to receive that information? You feel like you've addressed it before, and the issue remains. Perhaps it's been a while between occurrences, and the VP and Ops Mgrs feel it'd been addressed and was no longer an issue? Maybe this last occurrence and your response took them by surprise.

You know your company and what's acceptable in the environment. In my past, not following the chain of command was a no-no. Maybe yours is not as structured.

If I were you, in my weekly reporting, I'd keep the results of not having this part of the business running smoothly in front of them. ANY opportunity you have of giving them positive feedback for it going smoothly, I'd jump all over that as well. :)
JDialz
Politicker
0
Chief Operating Officer
So are you a broker, or strictly sales for an asset-based carrier?
salesEnthusiast26
Personal Narrative
0
Account Executive
Broker
JDialz
Politicker
0
Chief Operating Officer
Okay that is helpful. Thanks for the response! If you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your company headcount? We took over a 3PL and completely retooled the org chart. I think you would probably appreciate having WAY more control by personally quoting your customers.

Related posts

12

Am I wrong??

Question
🔎
📞
🥎
16
14

Am I Wrong

Advice
🔎
👑
17
Bravado is a community of trusted sales professionals endorsed by their customers.
Apple Store logo
Products
The War Room Jobs Salary Guide Tech Sales U
Company
About Us How It Works Blog Bug Bounty
Contact
Press Careers
© 2024 Bravado Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy Legal and Privacy Center Sales Jobs
If you are hired as a contract sales rep by a Bravado customer, we may ask you to prove access to the employee email account provided to you by that customer. This data will be shared with customers to track your sales productivity; customers can use this data to confirm you meet the minimum activity requirements to pay out your ramp stipend and commission.