This is mostly me venting, but here goes in case it's of any use to anyone either in managment, in sales, or helps when you are interviewing your next job interviewer.
Key point: I have 2 product lines, let's call them A and B. For product A there are no defined sales territories, it's a free-for-all. For product B there are clearly defined geographical sales territories.
I have a specific colleague that has pulled the rug out from under me twice on deals totally around $1.3M for product A, where I did the following groundwork:
Identify the company, multithread to contact several people, meet with them, do all the discovery and help to turn the lightbulb on in their heads that tells them they need/want our solution. Then I prepare a quote. That project doesn't go ahead, but it was obvious we would be talking again the next time a possible need arose. Then this guy swoops in, at most he adds one contact to the CRM within the account, draws up a proposal (5 minutes work), gets the order and lands a nice fat commission cheque.
He's now trying to do it a third time, this time without adding any extra contacts to the CRM.
I didn't protest the first two times it happened, but when I found out he is trying to angle in on this third deal I brought all three cases up with management, afterall it's their job to sort this shit out. All the notes are in the CRM with timestamps so it's easy to see who did the ground work & when, compared to who just drew up a proposal in 5 minutes and wants to snag the commission.
As a result of bringing these 3 cases up with the sales director and explaining how events have unfolded, he tells the regional VP this latest deal belongs to me and the other sales person should refer the buyer back to me.
I suspect the regional VP "dances around" the difficult conversations and was not clear in communicating the sales directors decision to my sales colleague, because a few months later my colleague is still issuing quotes to the prospective buyer. Best case scenario is that the VP needs to grow a pair and do his job better, worst case scenario is that my colleague is ignoring direct orders to leave the deal in my hands. I don't know which of these is worse.
In a separate meeting with the sales director and the company M.D. I mentioned a new account (for product B) in my colleagues territory that would practically land in my lap, but I said I would pass it along to him because it's in his geographical territory. Management say "why should you pass it along to him if he didn't do any work to sign up the account? It should be yours" - This was a red flag for me. As far as I'm concerned, letting me have this new account (for product B where it is clearly in my colleagues geographical territory) would be moving the goal posts and changing the rules in the middle of the game without consulting all of the parties involved. I am an ethical person and would feel uneasy accepting it. I'm also pretty sure it would piss at least one of my colleagues off and damage overall team spirit.
Management can choose to encourage a team atmosphere, or they can pitch co-workers against each other. I personally think teams have enough competition from outside the company without having things go "cut-throat" inside the company as well.
I went to bed rather angry last night, hardly slept and woke up around 5am thismorning, all the time milling over the options available to me.
I've managed to calm down and am contemplating my options.
My first course of action will be to ask mangament to specify what kind of atmosphere they want amongst the sales team and how they intend to create it.
If it's going to be no holes barred, every man for himself then I think I'll start looking for a new position elsewhere probably whilst ceasing to respect the georaphical territory of the aforementioned colleague. I'm not talking about actively going after his accounts, but definitely not passing along new ones.
Or do you think I am missing something here?
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