Phillip_J_Fry

Director of Revenue

Valued Contributor

Acclaimed Answer

What's the worst way you've seen a deal fumbled?

I know I have some deals that still haunt me from years ago, and would love to hear some of the WR members experiences.

I'll go first: A relatively new hire sort of fell backwards into a large ICP and was able to get a quote out that was 3x our annual quota. Customer says that the quote looks good, they have technical sign-off already, and they'll get this processed before EOQ. New guy is absolutely pumped.

THE MILISECOND THAT THE DEAL IS MOVED TO 'FORECASTED', it hits all of upper management's radar. They are constantly asking new guy for updates. Our org was notorious for blowing up a champion to get the deal moving, so I warned him and let him know he needs to run this deal and not let management steamroll their way into fucking it up, as they usually do.

He had drank the corporate kool-aid real hard and followed management's advice by calling the contact 6-7 times per day to get updates and move the deal forward, even though we are weeks away from EOQ.

Customer goes dark and eventually sends an email with all our involved people CC'd telling us to kick rocks because they have annoyed the bejeesus out of him over the last few weeks, and that even though we have a superior product and a lower cost, he's going with a competitor solely because of how we approached doing business.

🏰 War Stories

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19 comments

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CuriousFox

WR Officer

6

🦊

That sucks for a few reasons. The upper brass needed to see that they are too pushy. The new guy should've said ok I'm top of it guys then do what he wanted. Always remain in the driver's seat on your deals kids.

jefe

Arsonist

3

🍁

.

Pachacuti

Politicker

5

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Company went all out to respond to a RFP just before I joined. When I came on I asked to review it and they told me not to worry about and I would get credit for the deal.

I get to the RFP opening and I’m told me company was disqualified. Why? They failed to sign the first page of the RFP response where it clearly said “must to signed to acknowledge RFP contents”.

So that happened.

HVACexpert

Politicker

0

sales engineer

Lol like on those tests where you sign your name and you get 10 points. People would always forget 🤦‍♂️

Phillip_J_Fry

Opinionated

0

Director of Revenue

Oof. The old 'you did great on test, but forgot to put your name on it'

BTQ

Politicker

4

Account Manager

oof that's rough man. when you got a fish on the hook you don't jerk your rod around.
I bet he got blamed for it too didnt he?

jefe

Arsonist

3

🍁

Ouch. Victim of his own inexperience and terrible management.
He DEFINITELY got blamed for it too.

youngsmoky

Celebrated Contributor

1

Senior Account Executive

This is why I document what’s being asked of me! “VP said to call three times today” goes right into the CRM deal notes.

At this point I can push back. But when you’re new, you often do as you’re told.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

3

Sales Rep

During the demo meeting and they SE just said he didnt prepare anything and did not know what to do.

Before you say anything, we talked to him a week before and said he was confident to demo

Sunbunny31

Politicker

2

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Oh hell no. Inexcusable.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

1

Sales Rep

Yup, talks about getting the SE fired 5 min after the call

youngsmoky

Celebrated Contributor

1

Senior Account Executive

Oh yeah I had a sort of SE totally flub a deal for me. On the integration call she kept getting really flustered, saying the wrong technical terms, said she didn’t know where her head was, etc.

I spent months building up a solid rapport with this team because they used a competitor’s tool that was terrible but they were stuck in a contract with them. I told them our tool actually works and we’re the experts on the subject. She ruined that in 10 minutes. flat.

bja009

Politicker

1

Enterprise AE

Had a near miss last week.
I sell consulting and implementation, 90% of our business is via partner channel (major SaaS company).
The SaaS AE and SE bomb a basic proof of concept demo for a client who told them A MONTH AGO that this was the FINAL GATE before they would sign for the licenses and my services SOW.
Was pretty sure the deal was lost... but my paper is out for signature right now thanks to MY SE who can actually make the software work.
tl;dr get a good sales engineer on your team

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

1

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

They didn't like my accent - 4 calls after. They said they didn't want to deal with someone with an accent and just ghosted. So.

GDO

Politicker

1

BDM

my manager killed a deal by communicating a different price than me

Phillip_J_Fry

Opinionated

1

Director of Revenue

I hope it was at least lower, so you could pull a "he's the boss and has more say on final pricing than i do".

0

BDM

Nope he put more fat on without telling me

youngsmoky

Celebrated Contributor

1

Senior Account Executive

Had a deal with my champion. Champion ghosted me. Champion comes back in the system as SQL for new company. SQL was assigned to a different AE. That deal fell through.

Turns out the person in charge of assigning SQLs broke the rules to give this lead to someone else. That AE said he asked if I was still there and they said yes but management kept pushing them to be the lead on the deal.

Champion got mad they pulled the deal from me and decided to not work with us. I think he had sales experience?

I will always give SQLs away if they had a conversation with someone on my team. Partly because of this story but also because sales is a team sport. You’re supposed to be competitive to make each other better - not to make us resent each other.

SaaSsy

Politicker

0

AE

Oh god, I’m sweating just from reading this! I was going to write a very similar story about desperate founder and VP simultaneously texting/calling & almost full on stalking several deals I had worked perfectly - all pushed. One texted me “you gotta get them to stop…” so so so embarrassing.

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