Recently I was handed off an account from a previous manager. No big deal there, we align business as usual. During said alignment I observed several inconsistencies; spray and pray messaging, no talk track structure, 0 persona/industry to product feature knowledge, a non complex scope (0-250 employee size coherent to revenue) and the leading question on the phone is "are you looking for VoIP?".
I asked the previous manager, "bro, if you know this stuff is off, why haven't you fixed it?" He said, "sorry bro, I wasn't allowed to, so it is what it is."
(Quick background: I've already led a similar account, with a similar client base, with a similar product line but to bigger companies - millions of dollars in pipeline.)
I then took it to my own hands and booked a meeting with our "boss".
I told him, "hey listen, I just met the client, great people, we may have some easy wins here - she wants to reach further, potentially grow their account, this is their first outbound effort type of gig. I can lay up, free throw all day even shoot 3s for the hell of it, but we can win here."
"So, would you like me to win on this account or should I just play ball and drag a zero sum game?"
He said, "nah, don't win, if anything its free training for the reps, if we don't make it, we tell them their messaging sucks and they have to give us new messaging, as I told the previous manager, its too much effort and we will only do what the client gives us, we don't get creative."
.....
Now, I'm in between telling the client, hey listen, our company has changed a bit and we used to do this but we're not allowed to anymore at least not free (not true about the not free part but something to save face) - so tell you what - I redo the messaging - hyper focus our efforts on particular personas and industries and have a uniform talk track for all the reps... let's just say that all came from you... deal?
What do you savages think?
Would you risk your ass for the client and your win or would you play the game to lose?
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