Gyro25

Account Executive

Notorious Answer

Acclaimed Answer

I'm pissed at Marketing

Got assigned a ton of great enterprise leads along with a cadence which was written by marketing, which is a block of text and shit value prop, cta and a paragraph long. My sales director signed off on this and I've been told I'm unable to change the language on this because it's a team cadence that's they're tracking. Unsurprisingly, it's shit. 0 responses of the 60 I had.

I was able to salvage one or two from cold calling, but the rest are done for. What do I even do in this case? This is fucking with my money and my quota. I already went to my director and she said it's a joint Marketing+ sales effort. They've increased my quota and tied my hands and gone raw without even a courtesy wipe down. What do I do? I've already reached out to my director and not sure what else to do? I don't think I'll make quota this month at this rate.

🔎 Prospecting

👑 Sales Strategy

45

55 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

25

☕️

Sounds like you should be mad at your Sales Director, not marketing.

jefe

Arsonist

4

🍁

Marketing just doing they thing...

DefaultSalesDude

Executive

3

Director

I agree with this. Leadership is supposed to protect you from BS and inform you on things from outside your scope that will impact you business... including messaging. My view is the only way back is the hard tactical stuff you already did with cold calling and better direct email campaigns from you. Addressing the sh* messaging from marketing will be a longer process which you need to put in play.

InQ5WeTrust

Arsonist

10

No marketing, mayo isn't an MQL

Been there myself man, sucks when you can tell the messaging is off for sales outreach at the start.

RedLightning

Politicker

10

Mid-Market AE

Walk into a meeting and start talking about how great you are for 30 seconds straight. Pause and see their reactions. Then point out that is how marketing message comes across in a 1:1 setting. It works at scale as a magnet, but is not a viable 1:1 approach.

Premium_User

Fire Starter

3

Sales Manager

Oh pump this to my fucking veins

CaneWolf

Politicker

7

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

First off, you need to talk to your director and try to understand what happened and how you can fix it.

Second, you need to go to marketing and ask to help them shape language in the future.

Fuck marketing.

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

1

Account Executive

It's a hierarchy thing. I wouldn't be this annoyed if they weren't great leads, which they are. In my (limited) experience, CEOs don't respond well to a wall of text and multiple bullet points when they're viewing things over the phone.

I've reached out to them before about language, formating, personas, and cta and all I got was "We'll put your input into consideration", so I was pretty much told to fuck off. My manager agrees with me on this, but not much he can do either since it's from the top down.

CaneWolf

Politicker

4

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

Become the thorn in marketing's side. Do this over and over again. Push for meetings in which you discuss the strategy. Make recommendations on everything.

LordBusiness

Politicker

6

Chief Revenue Officer

The only thing worse than a garbage automated sequence, is one written by marketing...

hh456

Celebrated Contributor

4

sales

I pissed on marketing. They're into that sort of thing.

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

0

Account Executive

😭😭😭 Lmao

UrAssIsSaaS

Arsonist

3

SaaS Eater

This suck, a lot. They dead for sure? No chance you can work another angle to get in?

Are these all of your accounts or are there others in you BoB you can attack while these cool a bit?

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

1

Account Executive

They're in steps, so email, call, LI connect. I've always had good luck with cold calling, but cold calling fortune 500 Ceos without a reference email doesn't work well for me. Instead of "here's why I'm reaching out to you, how we've helped similar companies and would you be open to further this discussion" I have a paragraph, 6 bullet points and a link to my calendar. So, my hands are tied. I do have other leads which I'm working on, this was a complete waste of very good leads.

SaaSam

Politicker

3

Account Executive

Not that this is a good thing but it sounds like everyone on the sales team is likely to experience the same dip in performance as well. I would just make sure management remains aware why you think this is a shit idea so they will be forced to look at the truth when the numbers don't add up.

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

1

Account Executive

Mm yeah, I'm not the one on my team having a dry spell. Spoke to my director today and she said she'll speak to marketing. Voiced my concerns.

SaaSam

Politicker

1

Account Executive

Yeah this shit has a way of working itself out when management starts to realize a dip in success. Problem is that marketing has a way of evading any responsibility, I've seen it. You just want to make sure your point is made clear from the beginning so as to make it harder for them to claim the problem is with sales and not a half assed marketing tactic.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

2

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

UGH. I feel your pain. We started a cadence where our contact list got blown up and we must have gotten blocked at several companies we're targeting. Absolutely ZERO engagement, and we are continuing a cycle that is dead, dead, dead.

edit: by blown up, I mean my hand-selected very small group of targets got added to by just about everything loose in the Salesforce contact list...and boom.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

2

🦊

I need clarity. They are forcing you to send an email from your Outlook or are they force sending that Marketo type bullshit from your CRM?

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

3

Account Executive

A cadence on salesloft that was made my marketing and then signed off by our new sales director, so the latter.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

5

🦊

Can you mistype the email addresses and then send what you want to the real contacts?

I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying. 🤷‍♀️

UrAssIsSaaS

Arsonist

2

SaaS Eater

Diabolical and brilliant

CuriousFox

WR Officer

4

🦊

Foxes are known to be cunning 🦊

MackAttack

Executive

2

Sr. Account Executive

Given you received 0 responses, I think you should share the feedback with marketing that whatever shit they wrote isn't working. Luckily people forget like 80% of the cold emails they receive/read so I would keep the leads in your pipe and just reach out in your way next week.

Diablo

Politicker

1

Sr. AE

Welcome to the anti-Marketing gang. I'm in a better position though where Marketing do listen to us and believe in running A/B testing.

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

2

Account Executive

There's literally not even option for an A/B test. I was explicitly told not to change the language, which is dog shit cuz these leads are great, but clearly fortune 500 c-suite love long paragraphs and bullet points from their iPhone as per marketing.

barney2021

Tycoon

1

Account Executive

Cold call them before the emails go out :p

ppg

Catalyst

0

All around good guy

I was about to write that, but wanted to see if someone had already written it!

cw95

Politicker

1

Sales Development Lead

Oh marketing, when will you change.

jackodiamonds

Opinionated

1

Account Executive

Typical marketing. They do this all the time at my company. Luckily the leads will probably just ignore the terrible emails (if they don’t unsubscribe) and you can try them again later with your own messaging or through other channels

NoSuperhero

Politicker

1

BDR LEAD

I've been hit by bad marketing and bad sales engineering and pile on top 40% of those leads being outdated or not the ideal customer profile, with automated email messaging directed to old partners but the goal is to draw in the competition's partners.

Now let's make gold outta that babyyy!!

I still managed to book 3% or so of those 500 leads into SQLs that are looking to start doing business within the next 3 months or in some cases within weeks and got some decent pipeline out of it so hey, it ain't all bad!!

slickchick

Opinionated

1

Account Executive

Send LinkedIn connects to each and short personalized messaging to start a fresh cadence with them from there based on actual persona and pains

donjuandelasventas

Personal Narrative

1

Manager, Sales Development

What does this cadence framework look like? Just emails? Emails, phone? Any social touches included?

Marketing has a right to push out messaging to test and sales is a great vehicle for it, BUT they should be trusting sales people use their best practices and knowledge about your prospects to convert (when have they ever picked up the phone?).

Personally think you should get the feedback from everyone else on your team and objectively present the results to your sales director - templates/copy should be the STARTING POINT for a personalized outreach, it will never be the solution.

If that don't work, ask for forgiveness for making the changes you feel are necessary to get the conversions you need. As a SalesDev Mgr, that's what I'd be telling my team and covering for them if they're seeing better results.

Biznasty

Opinionated

1

Lead Business Development Manager

Honestly, if it's the bad cadence and no one in the org can edit it, you'll be fine because if that's the true reason... everyone will fail.

There is no one in this world I hate more than a bad marketing person. Sometimes they just make us so irate that justice is the only option. In that case, I'd make sure you've voiced your concerns in a trackable way so you can CYA. Also, sounds like your company wants sales robots not sales reps and your director of sales is a dick wad.

Biznasty

Opinionated

1

Lead Business Development Manager

lets make a dummy email address that you can add to the cadence. promptly upon getting the first email I will find your director of sales and copy him in on a scolding email with all the things wrong with your cadence that you have provided me before hand. LMK

Blackwargreymon

Politicker

1

MDR

Been there myself man, sucks when you can tell the messaging is off for sales outreach at the start.

TheSalesPitbull

Executive

0

Cofounder & CEO

Just call them instead. And once you find success w your calling script maybe share it w leadership. Might just open the door also for them listening to you on the cold emailing side once you’re show them you know how to close accounts even w shitty marketing. If what you say is true, then it should quickly become apparent to the org that the shit ain’t working.

Classic marketing silo shit. Sounds like you guys need a killer CRO or something

washedD1soccer

Politicker

0

Regional Sales Manager

Sounds like you work for a marketing org and not sales. The minute I lost control over any part of my own sales process I would be sending my resume out.

TheKing

Good Citizen

0

CEO

Marketing's job is to build and promote the brand and to help get you in front of prospects. At that point, they should hand it off to sales, not tell them how to sell.

Several years ago I took over an office for a national credit card processing company. They had offices in most major cities in the U.S., and this office had historically been ranked the lowest one in sales nationally.

I thought that to continue doing what they had been doing, they would continue to get the same results (definition of insanity, right?).

We generated appointments for our reps with a phone room during the day, while my reps were out selling. I thought that our sales presentation was pretty tight, with only some minor tweaks to improve it.

The phone scripts for our telemarketers were kind of stale, and needed n overhaul. I reached out to our national office for permission to overhaul everything there. I was denied.

Our headquarters was in a different city, hundreds of miles away. I figured "fuck 'em, if they're not here, they'll never know."

I changed everything. Fired most of the telemarketers, brought in some fresh blood, and changed their scripts while I coached them.

Our improvements began immediately. Within a few months, our office went from worst to first. Not just first, but higher sales than the next three offices...combined.

Now, national was calling me. They wanted to know what I was doing. I fessed up and told them I changed everything. Now they wanted me to travel to all of the other offices to train them on my new scripts and methods.

I'm telling you this story because I wanted to make a point. It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. Of course, you better bring the receipts when you do. Go for it!

bigiron

0

Territory Manager

Man, that is brutal. I'd abandon ship and look for a better company if that's the kind of BS they're gonna force down your throat

SaaSData

Catalyst

0

VP of SaaS & Unit Economics 🏴‍☠️

Your Sales Leader is most likely dead. I can usually predict Sales Leaders getting fired within 1 month of their termination date.

Keep an eye out. When Sales Leaders do this, they're missing the number and it's a problem.

Gyro25

Notorious Answer

0

Account Executive

Hmm she's been here a few months, so idk. She's definitely started to turn around though, so that's good.

Woody

Politicker

0

Business Development Executive

15 years ago we didn't have cold emails and cadences. We just called the front desk at Bear Sterns and sweet talked the contract receptionist into helping us find someone who bought telephone headsets.

Turns out the headsets didn't work very well and they couldn't hear the guy trying to warn them about credit default swaps. Then some bad things happened.

dwightyouignorantsale

Politicker

0

Account Executive

Marketing sucks, but in this case, you need to have a very direct conversation with your sales director to understand why they signed off on it and what value they saw in this. If they stiff arm you, then have a conversation around where you can fill the gaps. “How do you envision me to hit my quota this quarter when I have no control in the current outreach?” etc.

bravochromatic

Opinionated

0

Sales Manager

build your own cadence and run it, phone first always.

Outbound

Contributor

0

AE (Account Executive)

Should have sent it to 60 shit leads

justatopproducer

Politicker

0

VP OF SALES -US

Hahahah my company has been force feeding us garbage just like this since I started two years ago. And they get pissed when they don’t see a return. Sorry you’re dealing with the same BS gyro.

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