Sadboysales

Account Executive

Help with a micromanaging marketing director

Setting: Our sales manager has taken a vacation for two weeks and our marketing director is stepping in and running our sales pipeline meetings.

Our marketing director has been at our company for over a year, which is now a series A startup. They've worked 5 years in marketing, none is sales and has offering questionable advice and extremely critical on how we run our deals. I have no problem learning from others especially peers and managers, but I don't like being told how to do my job by someone who has never done it , and it is nearly entirely an outbound AE role since we have little inbound support. It's like taking relationship advice from your friend who is always in unhealthy relationships.

Our sales numbers and pipeline are fine, a lot of new people on the team but the team is full of mostly experienced AE's.

How would you handle this?

15

21 comment

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Gasty

Notable Contributor

10

War Room Community Manager

if I were you, I'd divert the pipeline conversation to an MQL conversation.

Pachacuti

Politicker

7

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

#HowToWinFriendsAndInfluenceEnemies

lol

Sadboysales

Opinionated

0

Account Executive

I've received 2 IB leads this quarter, this was brought up.

Slapsnacks

Praised Answer

8

Account Manager

Same way I handle my boss. Smile, nod, say ok - then go back to the way I was doing it. What are they going to do, report you to HR when you are not following their advice and still closing deals?

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

0

Rolling 20's all day

This is the way.
It's not like the marketing manager will be in charge for much longer right?

CuriousFox

WR Officer

6

🦊

Say sure thing and go on about your day. It's temporary. You can do it.

LordOfWar

Tycoon

5

Blow it up

"You're right, these numbers need improvement but the leads are shit. Do you know who is running marketing? They need to up their game"

CuriousFox

WR Officer

2

🦊

👀🍿

braintank

Politicker

3

Enterprise Account Executive

Grin and bear it. Your boss will be back soon.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

1

Sales Rep

Only 2 weeks, bite the bullet and deal with it

Sadboysales

Opinionated

0

Account Executive

It's 2 weeks, but their constant interjections into how our sales processes are done are becoming more frequent

Sunbunny31

Politicker

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

It's only two weeks.

Are you in an office environment, or working remotely? It will be easier to be "busy" when you're remote, and stop responding as immediately. If not, it's two weeks, and it sounds like you have 8 total working days to get through this situation.

Honestly, if there's something that directly contradicts what your actual manager has told you, you can politely but firmly say "Bob has directed me to do xyz in this situation". Or you can smile and nod and move on to doing your job and ignore as much as you can.

Anybody can deal with this for 8 days. Seriously.

Then all of you get the opportunity to tell your manager what a disaster this dude was and how he disrupted your sales processes.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

2

Bravado's Resident Asshole

Just go through with it and know that they aren't going to last long if they remain that way.

Fenderbaum

Politicker

1

Retired Choirboy🪕

.

TennisandSales

Politicker

1

Head Of Sales

I would have a meeting with that person and approach them about it.

just say something like "hey i appreciate you stepping in while the sales manager is out but i feel there are some issues could i share a few?"

and see what they say. if it goes poorly then you can just go on ignoring them like you have been doing.

if it goes well your life could improve at work, and you could also gain some points in the eyes of leadership. never a bad idea.

Pachacuti

Politicker

0

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I don't see that meeting going well. I'd just go 100% passive aggressive.

punishedlad

Tycoon

1

🧙‍♂️

I think the "Smile and Nod" approach mentioned by others is the best suggestion. See if you can harvest any nuggets of good advice out of your interactions, but other than that just wait for it to be over and keep your nose down.

Pachacuti

Politicker

0

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Take notes. Document everything just in case it comes back to bite you. Then just grin and bear it for the 2 week.

Or take some time off yourself.

jefe

Arsonist

0

🍁

I think you just have to suck it up. You'll be back to normal in no time.

rharris415

Contributor

0

Founder

Oh, these are always fun. One thing to keep in mind, make sure your reaction is not purely emotional "sales vs. marketing", its ok if it is, simply take some time to think it through.

On occasion, and probably not this one, marketing does have good ideas about process and conversation.

Regardless of what you decide, and assuming these are zoom calls. Record them all. Simply explain, they are giving a ton of great ideas and you want to make sure you don't miss anything.

Option 1 - Ride it out and simply say, "that's interesting, thanks for your advice, we will take it under advisement."

Option 2 - Ride it out and simply say, "that's interesting, if you want to make suggestions how we run sales I'll see what ___ has to say when they return. Changing right now would not be a wise move in my opinion."

Option 3 - Ride it out and say, "that's interesting, and if the shoe were on the other foot and someone from sales took over marketing for two weeks, would you want them to come in and change everything without you knowing?"

They will say, "Oh that will never happen." THen you say, I understand but does not answer the question. When you go on vacation would you want someone overseeing your team making these decisions without you being present?"

Option 4 - Ride it out and say, "that's interesting, I am not sure that will work, would you mind taking a sales call and closing it so we can see it in action?"

Option 5 - Ride it out and say, "um, as I understand things, you are here to oversee, not tell us how to revamp. If you want a full sales revamp, I am happy to do that once sales leadership tells me, in the meantime, we need to stay the course because we know it works. Sure we can always tweak, just not sure this is the right time.

Option 6 - Ride it out and say, "hey, that's interesting, before I do that, here's ____ cell phone, do you want to call them and tell them the changes you are making while they are on vacation, or should I?"

Option 7 - Ride it out and say, "that's interesting; we will take it under advisement."

Option 8 - Ride it out and say, "that's interesting, I am curious, how much of your compensation is based on us hitting a number?"

Option 9 - Ride it out and say, "That's interesting. I am always open to new ideas. However, please don't speak to me in that tone as if we don't have a clue about what we are doing.

Option 9a - Go to HR after Option 9 and tell them what happened and you suggest without throwing you under the bus, this person needs leadership training.

Option 10 - Tell them to f-off. And then go to HR.

Finally, if it gets aggressive, take time to document the shit out of the conversation, word for word.

Sadboysales

Opinionated

0

Account Executive

So many options, so many of these already went through my mind as well...

The issue is their injections are becoming more common and without our sales manager. I've decided to directly complain about marketing and give exact ways to improve our stuff

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