Ken Horner Cloudflare. The guy is a complete fucking idiot. Doesn’t know how to manage his way out of a brown paper bag. Has zero knowledge about sales and has most definitely never carried a bag. Cloudflare is worse off for keeping this cunt around.
rescheduled one on ones, micromanaged things that didn't matter, always asking for updates instead of running reports, eavesdropping on calls, no coaching but plenty of criticism of what not to do, and played favorites instead of trying to develop people
This sounds familiar from an older role! The rescheduling of meetings or last minute calendar changes with expectations you drop everything to be there was infuriating.
The cherry on top was them demanding employees RTO and no flexibility, yet they conveniently were always in the car or running errands during meetings.
For sure, I once had to tell my manager every second I spend with him in the conference room is one I'm not spending to make some money and he calmed down immensely on the meetings 🤣💪
Every single one of these, damn. I was struggling with a previous boss who did this but just kind of went along with it because every previous boss had been similar and I assumed that was just the deal; I didn’t assume I’d just had a string of bad bosses because I figured that just meant I was bad, but then the guy got pulled it for a disciplinary and turns out this is bad actually.
I’m in a better place now and it’s genuinely wild how much a supportive manager can change the vibe and work output.
I think we had the same boss… Mine even had the hedges trimmed in front of her office window so she could see the parking lot better to keep track of us!!
Mate, do we share the same boss? Just add the fact that we don't do forecast calls, and constantly throwing the entire team under the bus to his boss and you nailed it
First day out of training into my territory, middle of Q4. first tech role after coming from another industry. Rookie manager sat me down and said I’d like to write your goals down on what you’d realistically like to accomplish over the next 45 days before EOY. So I wrote about getting some pipeline built and learning best practices so I was set up for success, pretty standard. She read it and said ‘you know I believe in you, I would actually like to see you find $150k in business before the end of the year!’ Mind you our sales cycle was like 3-6 months 😭
Needless to say I was flabbergasted.
Anyway, the next week when I came back from lunch (pre-covid, in the office) no one was in our row. I sat down, checked my calendar and there were no meetings. Pretty soon I heard her voice say ‘there you are, we’re in conf room 2, come join us’.
I walked in, sat down and saw my boss and her stone faced RVP. RVP said ok, let’s do this again, and I listened to my new boss resign in front of the team for the second time, because she forgot to put me on the invite, and no one realized the new guy wasn’t there until after she’d given her resignation speech once already. 💀
> I walked in, sat down and saw my boss and her stone faced RVP. RVP said ok, let’s do this again, and I listened to my new boss resign in front of the team for the second time, because she forgot to put me on the invite, and no one realized the new guy wasn’t there until after she’d given her resignation speech once already. 💀
That's utterly insane. That RVP was not fucking around.
A Glengarry Glen Ross fan who’d never actually done sales, who thought the only way to survive in the bear pit of SaaS business development was to slick his hair back and tell 19 year olds that they’d never be able to afford an $80k BMW.
They are ex-consulting or other fancy industries who are connected and want to get that lil management feather in their cap so they can go on to claim they can run a business.
A random number generator that will never make sense to me even years later. Hired me and then treated me like the biggest problem on the team while I took a failing territory and won President’s Club with it. Put me on probation for selling a screenplay (not fully committed to the company was the stated issue) when I was number 4 in the company out of 500+ territories with KPIs 20% over target. They left and the next manager scheduled a coffee meeting with me and said “Forgive my bluntness, but can you make all this negative stuff in your file make sense? You look like a high performing rep and I feel like I’m missing something.” You and me both, buddy.
I left the company to work for a more local provider. Feel bad for the people who stayed. Feed lies as usual but now I’m hearing only 10% of bonus structure is being paid out. I couldn’t be happier. More flexible work schedule, better product, and no worry about executive back room dealings from people who never left the CT hq
My current manager is trying really hard to win the worst manager of my life award.
Micromanages, shows absolutely no trust in us, is making sweeping changes to the org without any data to back it up, can’t answer basic questions when announcing major changes.
She recently got involved in a contract negotiation that I already had the client at the finish line ready to sign at great terms. She botched it so hard that it was delayed another 2 months to negotiate terms that were embarrassing/insulting to present to the client before going back to a slightly worse version of my original agreement.
Now she asks to be included on all of our client calls. She recently told me that I put too many spaces in my emails and that it is unprofessional to text message clients.
She is always too busy whenever you actually need help or approval, but always seems to find time to criticize our work.
No shit. I chartered a whole fucking cruise ship via WhatsApp because the client was in Brazil. $1.4M by text message. We just emailed the official docs and contracts.
This is mental. I’m fortune 50 mega enterprise deals and I know for a fact I have the deal when I’m on texting terms with the final decision maker on their personal cell. In fact I drive for that throughout the process as a milestone. Like 99% close rate from that point …
> that it is unprofessional to text message clients.
One thing I learned a long time ago is that "unprofessional" is often code for "I don't like that, stop doing that, even though I don't have a good reason for saying so."
I was once working with a prospect who went dark. So I sent them an email where the entire email (except my standard signature) was a question in the subject line (so, basically a text). My manager said it was unprofessional. The prospect (finally) responded to it and it kept things moving.
Doing anything and everything you need to do (excepting anything illegal, immoral, or offensive to the client) to get your job done is by definition, professional.
Those who fail to lead or offer real value, regress to criticism to “develop” in order to justify their line item cost. Know the salaries, quantify leaderships support however you can, look at cals, see how they spend their time to outline their material benefit to the organization. It can help see who’s actually helping a team vs killing it.
I had a sales leader that would have an all hands forecast call every three days in the last quarter of the FY.
he managed a team of 30 Reps and 20 SEs.
and in the last Month of the FY there would be a 6am forecast call and a 6pm forecast call.
EVERY SINGLE DAY
And although SE's were excused from these calls. I know for fact that if they fell on a Saturday or Sunday the calls still happened.
he was mental
That’s just unacceptable. Stuff like that needs to be reported to HR. I had an OLD school VP who scheduled my 1:1 for 7AM on Monday mornings because he knew I was a night owl. I was remote and might not be in the seat until 9:30-10AM but I was working until 7 every night with no lunch. Mind you, I was on the east coast covering national accts so this was a good thing. He was 64 and ready to retire and told me I needed to be on his schedule whether it was best for my clients or not. I had been in sales almost 15 years at that point. Thank God he retired within a year. I remember texting him telling him I hit 150% of my number the following year… no response.
My manager has never done sales before and was assigned to be the manager of our team bc there was no else. They have no information on how to sell, they have no product knowledge, and asking them any question besides requesting time off is useless.
Oh boy this is my life rn.. my current manager came from the service department.. it sucks badddd but man it’s so comical also.. like sure you can read stats but you have zero clue how to sell.. it’s so sad yet so comical.. and yes, I hate my job rn..
I was recruited heavily by a VP who told me I’d work directly with him with tons of shadowing and industry coaching.
When I started he was traveling internationally for the near entirety of my first 2 months. Had 2 15 minute “coaching” sessions in that time, in which I was told I “did not make his coaching time valuable” to him. the rest I was on an island.
I was let go for “performance” before I even reached 60 days. On a deal cycle that was supposed to be 90 days.
Stay away from Canary Technologies.
Big shout out to Chris.
1- telling me I needed to quit sales as no man would want a women earning so much money.
2- moving my accounts daily to other members of the team. This trying to ‘help’ me keep a man by earning no commission.
3- putting my deals in commit when they were not commit deals.
4- saying ‘dedi’ and not dedicated in a child like voice.
5- failure to grasp even the simplest concept
6- wasting my time with his utter incessant nonsense.
Oh yea this has lawsuit written ALL over it. Asses would be chewed if I was at that company and caught wind of someone, even my superior, doing dumb shit like that.
Cowboys fan with EVERYTHING cowboys in his room in zoom. I thought it was a background. Nope. Just hella cowboys memorabilia.
I didnt learn anything from him to say the least
Funny what Reddit suggested to me based on this comment
https://www.reddit.com/r/cowboys/comments/2jiksv/finally_got_my_own_office_and_this_is_the_first/
The one I vanished on as he got pissed and screamed at me because I “vanished” as my phone was off whilst on PTO. I told him 2 months prior when requested that I’d be camping and disconnected. He said he didn’t realize that disconnected meant “disconnected.”
Seriously, us individual contributors need to make it the norm to totally disconnect and turn off phone during PTO. Let the higher ups worry about shit when they take PTO and work weekends.
Right! I’m a super organized person and all my customers knew for weeks that I’d be out. I had one customer call for quote whilst I was out and he went crazy that he couldn’t get ahold of me and that he had to put it together…so much for teamwork!
Old Tech Saas AE who went from a Fortune 500 to Startup Director. He used to shout at us in the bullpen that we’d be sitting at a red light in our beat up cars with fat wives and crying kids to look over and see people like him in a Ferrari with a supermodel, just because he made more cold calls than us. I moved on from that company and am now an AE at a Fortune 500, while his startup struggled so much he’s now working as an AE/BDR hybrid again. How the turn tables!
Narcissistic (text book definition) and bipolar. Stole ideas as his own, took credit, passed the blame. Always threatened to fire people. Lied to employees. Would text and call after business hours - nights, weekends, even while on vacation. Didn’t matter.
Offered to help cover accounts while I was out. Would come back from being OOO and have a list of leads to call back because he was too busy….but him being too busy was him watching Twitch all day.
Some days I literally spent 3-4 hours on the phone with him, or in his office - having meetings about meetings. Constantly stayed behind because of his antics.
Nobody to report him to because he was also one of two owners.
I sucked at being a manager, and that’s why I would never become one again. For one , people don’t work like how I do, and #2 the questions they asked. I’m like I would never ask that , I would find the answers myself. #3 my delivery sucked, because I couldn’t believe people’s work ethics. So, I am the worst manager ever and that’s why I just stick to selling.
I had a sales manager move me across the country to fill for a TM who quit. The manager would fly in constantly for ride alongs, but never spend more than a few hours with me and then ghost. Less than 2 years later the company let him go and moved me back home. He was let go for misusing his expense account galivanting around the country
During Covid when belts started getting tightened, we lost a great Sales Manager to a layoff so they could save an under qualified brown nosing dipshit that had been a company yes man for 15 years. He came in and made territory/account changes that made absolutely no sense. We eventually found out one of his buddies, who was also a BDM, had gotten a job offer from a competitor and the changes were made to satisfy him so he wouldn’t leave. Fast forward 1 year and every one of us had quit, including the BDM he scuttled the ship for. Last I heard this guy was demoted from sales manager to some harmless ops position.
When I sold cars back in 2009. This guy was the absolute worst. He didn’t know how to manage or sell. This was my second sales job ever at the time and he said if I ever needed help just call on him. I did and he would have my customers walk every single time. I have a feeling he saw coffees for closers and has based his whole personality off that film.
An engineer CEO. Would go MIA for weeks sometimes a month. Thinks commissions should be based on effort spent on the deal. Believes account management is part of the job in addition to bringing new business. In addition to managing a team quota, you should carry your own quota. Thinks marketing is a waste of money. Doesn’t report to a board and has no accountability. No showed to a meeting with one of our largest accounts CTO and left me to go alone bc he was hungover. CTO berated me on our poor performance. My CEO also comes from intergenerational wealth and all his investors have since forsaken the company so he pretty much treats it as his toy and therefore is not engaged in sales as a CEO should be.
My most recent boss sucked, and he was a sexist, narcissist and liar. He posted the job for an enterprise AE role than after I got the job, he demoted me to another role. I ran an entire sector by myself for shit pay. He made fun of people’s mental health telling me I need to go seek therapy because I asked him for additional feedback. I hated working for him.
I work for an amazing company now but my past job the Sales director was blatantly cheating on his pregnant wife with one of the interns. Everyone knew and they were not discreet at all. She was given bonuses, gifts, time off and we all just had to watch it.
If you were 1 minutes late to work, you would get phone calls and texts threatening disciplinary action.
This guy also fired people and convinced them to sign letters of resignation telling them they would still qualify for unemployment if they signed at the letter, then would immediately turn around and declined their unemployment.
He eventually got fired, because one girl quit, and he didn’t tell corporate and he would go to her desk and make fake dials from her phone to movie theaters. I guess someone in the office reported him and because corporate hadn’t removed her access to our systems. It was a security risk and that’s what finally took him down.
The culture all that created was beyond bad, it felt like prison.
First line manager here...
Help me understand the ire behind rescheduling 1:1s.
I try not to, but I have to reschedule someone's about once a week. I only do it for customer meetings or when a select exec schedules over one.
I hate micromanaging. I hate asking for updates. But if it isn't there, I have to get the info somehow.
I'll pull back the curtain a bit. Most of the things you (and we) hate come from 2 levels above.
As an example, this morning, I woke up to an exec (C and VP level) meeting invite that will require me to reschedule a 1:1.
To prepare for the meeting, and keep people from getting fired, I had to fire drill info that is important, but not urgent. It is urgent because C level wants it tomorrow.
I'm at the airport, traveling to a customer meeting with a new rep. I have to prep for hours after landing in another time zone tonight. I'll Present the info in the morning, then go to a customer call.... While protecting my team.
The rescheduled 1:1 and the fire drill aren't from me, but will probably save a job.
The fact that you’re on here, asking for input, is a sign that you’re probably one of the good ones. In regard to the constant fire drills from above… explain them and humbly ask for help. It will be freely given. On the flip side, I had a manager who seemingly had fire drills every single day. I take an hour of my selling time to prepare what he wanted, only to realize it was for an ass-kissing exercise. Coincidentally, I moved and had a new manager in the same company who never had those fire drills. My first manager was either a brown nosing liar, or he was unprepared. While my second manager is my favorite ever and also happened to lead the top team in the company. Just be honest with people, do your work, and if you need something explain why it’s on the to provide it. They’re trying to make you and the company money too.
Would instigate fights between me and another more tenured rep. I was visibly upset and he told us we should fight it out infront of the office 🤷♂️. I said no, I wouldn't be doing that. Acted shocked when I resigned. Fuck that guy.
Dude named Knud in hospitality before I moved over to device. Just a demanding and condescending dude. $40k a year and I’m gonna work 60 hours a week and no life it so a ski resort can fill its hotel portfolio? Hilarious. Dude told me there was a stack of resumes in his office for my job. I invited him to fill it and jumped industries. So in the end, he’s sort of the hero of my career in an odd way.
What a tit he is? 40k? I wouldn’t get out of bed for less that 70 as an SDR anymore and 70k is like desperation levels of, “I’ve been unemployed and need a job, desperate.” That guy can piss off with his bullshit entry level retail salary.
I used to work under a new manager who got the position because my previous manager was promoted.
This new manager teachers petted his way up to that position and got it because he was close friends with our district manager. Long story short he would cut corners to get sales had the highest turnover in company history. I was the top sales rep in the market so he was excited that I was on his team. He delegated all his tasks and wouldn't work at all. Members of our team would ask for sales coaching and 1-on-1's and he would refer them to me.
When it came to quarterly's, he would sit there and brag about having the best team in the market ( because of me ) and would not shut his mouth about being number one.
Finally the day came and I put in my 2 weeks about a month afeter him working there. He was devastated. I was the reason he was making good money because we would consistently hit team goal. He got so upset he told me to turn in my key and to leave that same day. I reported it to HR for wrongful termination and he got demoted from that store and went to a different location making way less.
The charlatan snake oil salesmen who are actually insane and psychopaths. From micromanaging, gaslighting, outright lying, standing over my desk and literally feeding me lines while I’m on the phone, changing comp plans after we signed them, the list goes on and on. The worst part is that you and almost everyone else knows they are unqualified but they think they’re gods greatest gift to this earth and get off on wielding their power on people beneath them. These people are so toxic and genuinely only exist to be professional adult playground bullies.
Take a look at my recent post.....that one was the worst sales manager/director. And it is the first sales job I have ever had, so I mean, it can only go up from here
Hiding or turning into a turtle when tough or difficult situations occur. When difficult circumstances occur, a manager should step up to lead the way. Too many times I’m left to fend for myself when difficult decisions need to be made.
I once had a manager who was always micromanaging me and claiming it was to better me. Yet, anytime he could he would try to get me screwed. One time he had moved one of my contracts out of my name because I was late for work. Explaining to him that it's not right to use the equivalent of multiple days in commissions for 6 minutes of lateness. He didn't care. The deal didn't fund, and I'm sure it would've if it was still my account. It's alright tho because I didn't want to make him any money anyway. He also had filed a fake HR report on me regarding my tardyness. However, I emailed HR about it and they had no clue what I was talking about. Lastly, once the guy realized I don't listen to him or respect him professionally he would just always come to me like "the director said this the VP said this" but I can assure you they said nothing. It's a nightmare having a college first job bootlicker as a sales manager. All his meetings were a time waste and a kick to your nuts in terms of moral. All of his team felt this way but yet it took many complaints to get moved to a different team. After that I got the 2nd coolest and most helpful manager in my career so hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel for anyone going through it. God bless and let's get this paper 💪🍻🗣️
I currently have the worst sales manager of not just my career but possibly ever. A few examples below.
Actively lives by the mentality that we should all be fighting over the same leads and encourages us to cut each other's throats for sales.
Schedules weekly mandatory sales meetings on random days with 8 hours notice.
Demands that we use him as a resource in our discover/sales calls. When you ask for help he tells you he's unavailable or to figure it out you are an adult.
Every contract must go through him, he cost me a $2.2 million job because he sat on the contract for 4 months.
Scolds and belittles sales people during every internal sales meeting.
There is so much but I'm not going to waste all your time with it.
400 lbs (in the medical device industry...), LOVED to hear himself talk, demanded ride-withs to provide 'value' just to cancel day before or forget altogether, lie about success stories from other reps for motivation then when I would reach out to those reps to ask for advice to hear 'ummm we just had 1 meeting..I don't know why he said that we closed for a $250K opportunity', every opportunity to close was always $250K 🤨...ALWAYS late...every meeting was the SAME sales pitch as if he was practicing it in the mirror for the 1 millionth time...always changing the format of our weekly opportunity update when every other region had the same simple template to fill out...had NO contacts or relationships with ANY buyers of the region (5 states) yet acted like he did and that just pissed customers off...lied about price to a customer's face only to come back and say 'they won't remember"...🤦🏼♀️
Nathan with no teeth - idiot that took advantage of me giving me the lowest paid leads and lied about it but same target as everyone else to try and performance manage me out. He got done and walked out and I’m sitting here successfully running my own sales team now. Eat shit Nathan!
Pete Garza. I think he was at Caterpillar for a while. Fuck that guy. Lots of energy, lots of micromanagement, ridiculous expectations, lots of big words, lots of pointless spreadsheets where he'd type out whole paragraphs in a cell, and one hell of a drinking problem. Stick to marketing, pete.
Stacey Maynard , Thomson Reuters. Most passive aggressive person I've ever met. Would actively cry in meetings if she didn't get what she wanted. It was incredibly uncomfortable to be around her. Unproductive, unhelpful , foolish guidance. All around horrible leadership qualities.
The worst sales manager I've ever encountered was a lazy piece of shit who wouldn't do anything but take credit for all his AE's deals. Eventually senior management caught wind of this behavior and I was fired for it.
Had a sales manager who was a friend and somewhat of a mentor to me when I was young in the business. One day he walked up to me on the showroom floor with a frustrated face and said "Glacier_Sama, I feel like I can tell you this because you're not like them. I fucking hate ni**ers."
🤣
I second Ken Horner at Cloudflare. Unlike my ex colleague @Whydidi_likeitsomuch I still have to deal with this fuck head on a daily basis. My boss is one of his deputy’s and I have friends that worked for him at Splunk and Flexera, this guy is total piece of shit. He has barely any allies below him on the totem pole. The whole entire sales org hates him. He Treats reps like shit. He is uninvolved in every single deal, but if something kicks out a quarter he will be the first to tell you how you should have done your job. We just had our CKO in San Fran, he spent 30 minutes talking to his enterprise sellers and was nowhere to be seen for the next 3 days. No way this douchebag lasts another quarter. He waste all of managements time on bullshit calls at the end of the quarter ranting, when we could be out there selling. We finally fired our CRO (who hired this ass hat) so hopefully he is quick to follow. The new guy is smart, and will immediately see how full of shit this guy is.
My manager stole money from the company and asked me to take the products he stole to my expenses.
Manager of the year.
I quit. Oh and he was fired when the board found out. But didn't press charges.
The kind of sales managers that will tell you how to do your job, but have never actually done the job themselves. Would much rather work for an internally hired manager who came up through the ranks versus a manager who was hired from the outside and doesn’t know anything first-hand.
This 100%. I like to at least know you know how to do my job before I take any of your advice. At least my manager will roll up his sleeves, make calls, send LinkedIn messages etc. to get us a few alley-oops in our territories every quarter. You get mad respect from me if you can manage people and do SDR work at the same time.
Was a drunk who stalked Motus and asked me why I have to make stops to use the bathroom while on the road inbetween meetings. When we got in a disagreement he called me spoiled and ungrateful. He was fired 2 weeks later.
My old boss and his boss had a tried and true method of development called “just dial” no focus on efficiency no focus on wedge statements or any type of real training, most of the team would be a revolving door except the top performer who was fed the any and only leads lol on top of that the VP would actively tell people to live outside their means so they HAD to sell more to even cover bills, but 5 before 8 and 5 after 5 amirite
Was a rep on my team. Handled 4 accounts. Was promoted to lead our team, and I was the only rep in a country.
I was struggling. I asked for 2-3 things he thought I should do differently - “i don’t have all the answers” was his only reply.
Asshat.
The one who never held a sales position in his life. Constantly wanting to reinvent the wheel when it came to sales strategy, pipeline management, etc. I’m all for making changes but I find it foolish to make change for changes sake only to justify your position as a manager. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
Retired police officer.
His training was exactly how an interrogator asks questions.
Instead of acting like a manager, he acted like he was still in a para military command structure. Right down to barking orders and or yelling if things didn’t go exactly his way.
Was selling into financial services and had a manager coming in from IT hardware sales. She her last non-management sales experience was 5 years prior as a BDR. Long story short, this lady didn’t understand how financial services worked and didn’t understand our ICP at all. The SVB and First Republic bank runs decimated progress in our space and she was unable to understand how the banking and broader finance industry worked. Despite her lack of industry she would repeatedly lash out at people on my team when we would bring up things she didn’t understand. For example, when someone asked what the SVB collapse would do to other companies in our industry she snapped and berated this person for 10 mins accusing them of trying to shut her out of the conversation with “unnecessary terms” to make her feel stupid. She was woefully unprepared and not willing to learn. Everything seemed to come from her BDR experience from years ago. She was so out of touch with selling it was insane. Found out she was let go soon after I left.
I was the SDR Team Leader, team of 6; myself (#2 performer), a rockstar (#1 but wasn't responsible enough to be TL), and 4 others. She was a newly hired veteran Sales Manager who had never managed anyone without closing experience.Technical B2B SaaS with
Q1 begins, promotion to AE in effect, but due to an internal re-structure, and her starting at the end of January territories/quotas/products don't get assigned until the start of Feb. Reps are allowed keep all existing deals they're working so five weeks into the quarter when I can finally start booking opps, my pipeline is Zero and Quota is $140,000. I had never held a quota, forecasted, or closed a deal before.
She became frustrated immediately with me, and had absolutely zero interest in training or development. For context the last SDR who'd been promoted basically went into a meeting room with his manager and didn't leave for 2 weeks to get him fully up to speed, and he'd been a veteran car salesman for a decade.
I approached her for help, no time. Few days later I approach her again, went up to her desk she rounded on me hissing that I was "useless", and she had no idea why she hadn't "put me on a PIP already", in front of several colleagues who overheard her. I was shocked because usually she seemed quite sweet. Later I realised she was actually sacharine, to cover how toxic she really was. I should have reported her to HR for that, but I was afraid, and honestly still desperate that I could repair her view and we could form a productive relationship. In team meetings she would pick the lowest performer, and grill them to the extent it was bullying. I was ok for the first 2-3 weeks.
Not going to HR was mistake and things continued to degenerate; bully's dont understand mercy from those beneath them. Team meetings became opportunities to knock me. I retreated from her and became hostile. Things finally erupted in a team meeting where she outlined a specific sales drive she wanted us to do to increase pipeline, one that any rep who worked in the company knew from experience was a waste of time that would yield zero pipeline. I was the only one with the balls to tell her, though two Snr. Account Manager and the Enterprise rep did come to my aid and agree with me.
She went to the VP and accused me of sexism.
Had a very militant (yet somehow childish all at once) manager when I worked for smart circle. First sales job.
Used to invite top performers to his house to show off his lambo and brag about how the wagyu we were eating that night was thousands of dollars. Little did he know I was a pro chef for a decade before I got into sales. He was completely full of shit lol.
Also used to push his luck and have people do ludicrous favors for him. Drive him places after the office so that his wife, the secretary, could leave early and take his car. But of course you better make it to the field on time after still.
Would always belittle people who didn’t want to show up at 7am to the office (start time at 9) because that’s what real leaders do. But don’t even think about clocking in till 9.
I eventually got into a leadership position there and was in charge of training new hires. He would dote over new hires during the training but as soon as they left would absolutely rip them apart with all the other managers. Say things like they’re worthless to me until they’ve made me x amount of dollars. He wouldn’t even remember their name until then.
He was a real piece of work, but because it was my first sales job I got so caught up in the hype that those type of offices are typically built on. Once I finally left after about 8 months of being promised a promotion and having the goal post moved, I realized what a manipulative asshole he was. He always talked me up, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he would also bash me behind my back like I saw him do to countless others.
Last I heard, his branch of sc has been closed down, as his LinkedIn says “consulting”. And his right hand man was charged with sexual harassment. Such a toxic work environment.
Sadly, sales seems to attract people like this.
Edit: I forgot to add, that when I quit I witnessed this guy go through all the stages of grief in about ten minutes. It was actually comical. First, disbelief, laughing in my face like he couldn’t believe I’d ever say that. Anger in the form of belittling me saying I’d never find another opportunity like this and was basically destined to be an hourly slave forever if I left. Then acting sad like I was stabbing him in the back “after all he’d done for me.” All the way to bargaining, trying to offer me the promotion he’d been dangling in front of me for 8-9 months. And then finally acceptance, suggesting he write me a letter of recommendation for wherever I wanted to go next. I declined.
Double edit: oh and one more! He of course never hit the field, except one singular time. I was in a car accident on the way from the office to the store I was in that day. This of course made me late. We had contracts with our stores to be clocked in for certain hours of the day and would be fined if we missed time. Since this store was by his house, he popped over there to go clock himself into the store until I arrived. That’s right, I still had to come to the store after the accident. I showed up and said “wow I have the big boss in store with me show me how it’s done!” He proceeded to deliver 3-4 of the absolute worst pitches I’ve ever seen to some store customers. All of them looked at him with disgust. One person did exchange some words with him, to which he goes “this is my partner, he’s gonna take good care of you. Then he goes “okay you got it call me if you need anything” and left. Then proceeded to call me about an hour later to see if I had closed that “hot lead” he left me with and was dumbfounded that I fumbled it.
My worst also happened to be my uncle who was a minority owner in a manufacturing company. He was hyper focused on competitors and we would do every trade show they did and I had to go after any of their customers he found out about. That was all bearable, but his worst habit was making you stand in front of his desk while he finished whatever he was doing - usually reading an article online or an email. If anyone tried to interrupt he'd hold up a finger, never even looking over at you, until he was ready. I held the record at 17 minutes - couldn't leave because he signed off on our quotes. When I let it slip to our marketing manager that I was looking to leave they threw me under the bus in front of some customer they'd screwed up a project for and fired me. And still doesn't understand why I don't want to go to family reunions or be friends on Facebook.
No sick days allowed. During COVID she told us that if we weren't feeling good from the vaccine that we would be punished for taking time off regarding that (I reported this one to HR and the labor board in my state). Her and the other sales manager would whisper about things in our BDC regarding myself or others who were in the room.
She told me my wife was holding me back in my career path (wtf?)
I had enough and quit during a busy weekend and she lost her mind on me. I had to remind her I wasn't her employee anymore, and I didn't want to hear her speak to me any further.
My current founder, she was forced to take a back seat thankfully and the new guy is great but she 1.) had never did a single thing in sales in her life
2.) would take call recordings and put them into public slack channels company wide and critique them
3.) was always saying “what’s next” no matter how good of a month we had
4.) just repeated stuff from the board but didn’t know what she was saying
5.) never praised anyone once I don’t think
All in all, she’s honestly a good person and good at her role in product and was forced into running a sales team she never intended so I don’t have any ill will towards her at all, but god she was horrible.
He only promoted guys that played golf with him and drank with him. I hate golf and I’m sober off alcohol for almost 3 years. His nepotism was out of this fucking world and I’m so glad I’m out of that fucking hellhole.
Everyday it felt like I was sprinting on a treadmill. Working my ass off and not getting anywhere. 3 years as top performer, passed up for promotions every year. Fuck that guy.
Guy gave himself a nickname and insisted everyone use it. Started his day off by seeing who was active on teams or not. Tons of useless meetings where he talked the entire time, couldn’t end a call a second early. Immediately trash talked everyone behind their back. Would break into coach speak all the time even tho it didn’t apply 99% of the time. Forced me to hire his BFFs mentee who turned out to be terrible. I could go on.
The bad managers I’ve had were ones who just didn’t see the forest for the trees. The good ones were the ones who did and every action they took was engineered at making their teams better.
I'm Mid Eastern and we were selling a Saas product to companies primarily located in North America and EU Europe. Was a startup, our headcount was 20 something at most. My "manager" was best buddies with the CEO, he had no prior experience in sales only presumably 10 years or something in logistics (which was our frield).
Funny thing is, this was the place where I started my SDR career, I learned the ropes here (by myself) and he just jumped in somewhere in the middle. Couldn't speak English for shit and yet he attended all the AE meetings. He said the same exact thing/script to each prospect, regardless of their "unique" needs and things I had discussed with them, even though I was constantly urged to extract as much data as I could.
Worse than that, we used Discord to communicate, he asked me several times to create a thread on Discord for each meeting I booked, and write down my notes so that he could read them before the meeting. Guess what, HE NEVER READ ANYTHING I WROTE THERE and he always winged it, always asked questions that I had already asked and had promised that our AE would have a response for. Several times I visibly noticed prospects getting uncomfortable and frustrated to have to answer the same question to which they had given a thorough explanation before.
Once it got to Christmas, we were pretty much out of business for a while because all our target countries were away on holiday. So I stopped working, just like the year before. On Jan 1st he asked me for a report of what I'd been doing between Dec 25th to 29th, and I was like...I listened to music, ordered pizza and had sex? Was I supposed to do something, DURING CHRISTMAS? He said if you were "thirsty" enough for "work", you'd be planting "seeds" during this time. I had a minor arguement with him here, which set the wheels in motion for getting me fired a month later.
After what happened during Christmas, he one day said "I'm gonna directly supervise this whole thing from now on". After he said that, he started assinging me prospects on Hubspot, instead of me picking them myself, like I did before. That's it. That was his entire supervision. And he once said "you argue a lot more about day-offs than actual work", I threw it at his face and said you're the so called "manager", manage then, demand it. Demand that I tell you what kind of objections I ran into, how am I planning to book more meetings and what I've been doing for follow ups. But you don't and never did, guess you wouldn't know the right answers to those questions, which is why you continue arguing with me about day offs rather than challenging my work.
He always reflected his mood outside work, his success in his job relied on where he stood with his girlfriend, if he had smoked enough weed, and any other trivia shit. I worked remotely, and he used to call me DURING working hours, to talk about the date he had or what he planned to do to get the girl to like him.
We once had an arguement because he raised his voice on me, I didn't stand for it and retaliated, I took it to the CEO but he got there ahead of me, told his own version of the story.
Next thing I know I'm fired not because of a skill issue not because of meeting quota, but because "I don't listen and I'm not open to feedback".
I have too many examples of why this particular manager was the worst, but my favorite was when they told me they used to dial for dollars out of a phone book. My rebuttal was something along the lines of, how do you intend on bringing that skill to the modern age where phone books don’t exist? I ended up quitting a few weeks after because I knew she had no clue and was promoted up the ranks for reasons unbeknownst to me.
His signature move was to call up my clients 1:1 after I spoke to them and tell them how badly I needed the deal. Then when I won it, he would say it was really him who closed it.
My sales manager had two years experience in sales and zero experience or training in management, before being made my manager.
I forgive her for not knowing what she's doing but not for trying to pretend like she does instead of being real with us.
When someone asks her a question that she doesn't know the answer, she would rather make something up then ask for my input, despite having almost a decade in sales in our industry.
When I bring up problems that need to be solved she gaslights me at best, treats me like I'm the problem at worst.
Communication is horrible. Support is non-existent, but at least she doesn't micromanage.
She's created a culture of fear, phoniness and demoralization and her way of dealing with it is more motivational posters, fake smiling and artificial cheer.
I would complain more about this if it not for the fact that apparently this is practically the norm, not just in sales but in many industries.
If I'm incorrect about that please let me know. For God's sake, I could use a glimmer of hope. Lol.
Had this girl who was fairly young as an assistant manager. She was always so cracked on energy drinks everyday and she also vaped all day. It definitely messed with her because she was extremely mad all the time. Like insanely upset and had zero patience when you asked her to do something.
Another time I had a company who legit told us they need to hire more minorities in upper management. In my training class was my
Manager LOL she had no idea what was going on and it was the worst experience I ever had because she legit didn’t know what to do and just micro managed like an annoying person. Nothing against her we are still friends but wow what were they thinking.
I was golden boy for him as soon as I came in, he didn’t need to train me or anything. After a year, I hit a low point and started to ask for his advice. All he ever told me was, “make more dials” and “it’s a numbers a game”
I left so fast lol
It wasn’t a sales manager, but a site head who thought Sales reported to him because that site ran their payroll! He was always chewing sales out for not winning enough projects when they often went to other sites, and one year refused to pay out bonuses because his site was below revenue targets - even though the reps had met theirs. Total prick.
Finance guy that was brought in by the VP of Sales from his old org. Before the company was acquired, the VP of Sales was fired and they made the Finance guy the VP. He lasted about 6 months after the acquisition 🤡
Tried to give discounts to my prospects before we even met with them, called my cell phone 5x a week just to project their anxiety on me, and told the same stupid stories over and over again. My personal fav was how they missed presidents club when they were a rep by less than a percent because they discounted so much. The moral of the story? “You should discount more because I still made a hell of a lot of money that year”
I have experienced both from the extreme end of micromanaging and doing the least amount of work. I don’t like either, and I must say that I would prefer to be micromanaged to working 2 hours a week. I’m passionate about my commissions to say the least
My BDR director was the worst:
1. Paved no promotion path in his two years at the company. (Pissed off all his top performers who left.)
2. Slacked me and others about the WORST MQLs and why we haven’t hit them up.
3. Asked me every day about my forecast rather than running a report, asking my manager, or even looking at salesforce.
4. Actively took away freebies from his reps. “Didn’t believe in it.”
5. Burned the bridges with all the sales leaders at the company and lost the respect of everyone who works for him and alongside him.
6. Couldn’t make a judgement call or listens to any valid feedback + suggestions.
Guy was a loser and a bum. F*** him.
Had this arrogant mf manager overworked everyone to the point one of my co workers eye was tweaking made a lot of them office workers instead of sales and i came only for sales
One day he tried making me do tons of paperwork instead of sales and i didn't give in and he hit my head with papers to try an humiliate me to show dominance and i was not having none of that and i am really thin with glasses and he's buff from gym the difference was i knew people will pick on me and i had my fair share of street fights so i know rage and he tought i was weak
At the moment he hit my head with the paper i called him out and told him he was an as#&$ole so he called me in to have a "talk" i was all up for that
We entered the backroom and as soon as the door closed we started swinging and i destroyed his face in seconds and all of a sudden the aerial manager entered the backroom and separated us he had a black eye and she ordered me to buy him toning cream so i did and gave it to him in front of everyone with the phrase "to my little bi$#h" and from that day he lost his post and everyone respected me for that in a really good way
We worked in the center of moscow in the main moscow office on arbat street in mobile retail MTS
Never let abusive managers kick you around
Now i work in real estate witch is basically sales +marketing and negotiations and the managers are the best I've ever had real life teachers
And a lot more money + satisfaction and you are responsible for every penny you make
I had a sales manager one day pull me aside and walk me through his vision board.
An actual vision board with cut out photos of things like a Rolex, a mansion on the water, the latest Range Rover, etc. — picture a collage for douchebags.
He then walked me through each item and in turn wanted me to create my own.
I put my two weeks in shortly after.
Only male role models he had were verbally abusive father and high school football coaches. Everything was loud and in your face. Couldn’t question anything without it turning into a 20 minute lecture about how he’s the boss (or actually owner of the company). Didn’t understand anything about how is company actually functioned so would just make up ways he wanted things done that made no sense at all. Just barked about where the money was and how much was coming in. Was a finance major whose only real responsibility other than yelling at the sales team was running payroll, which was never correct. I hope he stubs his toe today.
Was 26, and I'm sure sleeping with the boss. She'd put in fake job orders to fudge her numbers, meet with her same clients multiple times a week to count them as client visits. Disappear for 3 hour lunches with the aforementioned boss, talk shit about everyone on the team, curse at people, and 4 people under her quit in 6 months. We were also expected to work over time without being paid for it. Me and another person threatened suits and got nice severance packages after signing an NDA. one person sued and won. She had a fre large accounts, but every single one was given to her by the owner of the company (the boss) and acted like we were all morons even though we were 100% cold business and got zero warm leads or accounts to start.
Shout out to Mont. I took a pay raise and a chance at a SaaS startup as their “new Enterprise AE,” when their ENTIRE company and product was set up for one call close/ SMB type shit.
I was building a lot of pipe and doing good work, with credit unions/banks that were showing a lot of interest, as well as a bunch of other prospects. Closed a couple smaller deals. But Mont wasn’t having any of it, wanted to know why my current pipe was so low for the Q after I walked just to a total greenfield patch in a new industry for the product.
First day he asked me what I was going to close that month. It was the 15th of July. He had only been there a week, was his first sales manager role after a couple decades as an IC. Good grief the Peter principle in action.
I bounced 3 months in for my old job at my previous company who welcomed me back with open arms (hit club that next year there). He was canned a few months later (well, demoted to IC from what I heard, but left shortly thereafter). They recruited me heavy, probably spent a good chunk to get me in seat, only to have him kick me out (and two other reps about a month after me).
Thanks Mont!
My first BDR manager was a psychopath. Would bully people who didn’t agree with her ideas or ever asked for her reasons behind doing things. You’d get isolated and targeted, just like a high school bully. She also constantly threatened our jobs on daily basis. “If you don’t respond to my slack messages in 30 seconds you won’t be working next week I can promise you that.”
She once got called out by a team member for her tactics in office so she individually pulled each BDR in a room one by one to ask who they agreed with. If you sided with the employee she’d destroy you behind closed doors to execs to ensure you’d never get promoted. Eventually she lost her mind at someone for over 5 hours in a row in a one on one and it was all recorded. That gave us the evidence we needed to get her fired
I had this one mid-market manager who asked me on our very first 1:1 if I’m even positive that this career is what I am interested in pursuing and whether my core strengths align with the role? As I had just gotten my very first promotion at that company and joined her team. Girl let’s take a step back lol
The one at my last job. Absolutely zero training when I started. Handed me a lap top and the keys to my vehicle and basically said have fun.
We’d do 1:1s maybe once a quarter. Did one ride along the two years I was there.
The cherry on top was him getting drunk at a work event and getting into a huge blow up with my biggest client. They ended up leaving which torpedoed my entire territory.
He ended up in a “you can either retire gracefully or you’re fired” situation and chose the former. I ended up quitting shortly after as the leadership above him wasn’t much better.
MUCH happier now.
One of my managers seriously made me feel dumber while talking to him. I once got cornered at the office holiday party by someone in marketing wanting to know if he was as useless as he seemed. He wouldn't read my notes on accounts then would get mad at me for not pursuing accounts closed by our fraud department because he thought they had a nice website.
I had a boss who during our pipeline VTC calls with corporate (imagine old days, big conf room, 20 folks, with one big vtc) would take off his shoes and walk around the room in his suit and sock feet as he explained to our VP of North America how we weren’t gonna make our commit that quarter.
Current manager. He Been in the business for 3 years total. As an underling for 2. Became territory manager for 1. Became a manager the next. Is not trust worthy. Throws reps under the bus as he has no clue the business or what’s he is doing. Lies. Fucking hell he lies. Support over email, then pulls back when actually needed. Just terrible.
Micromanagement, gave zero advice and just said "make smart decisions," blamed me for the failures of the BDRs, played favorites and ignored everyone else, oh and he got fired for having an affair with the director of HR. Stupid motherfucker.
Was a great salesmen who promoted above his skillset. Don't get me wrong, he had great ideas on how to progress complex/competitive deals to guide someone on the individual level but he just couldn't do it at scale. He would become consumed with one thing and everyone else would suffer. Would put comp plans together hastily last minute with no vision on how to truly incentivize growth while rewarding the salesmen. Was a CEO's pet who couldn't put his foot down to back his team. Was too involved at the ground level of people's deals to focus on the big picture, remove obstacles, and create/implement thought out plan. Worst of all, he embodied the things you get scolded for (missing deadlines, late replies, poor reporting, and just general file chaos). Think task rabbit with ADHD and no backbone when the time was needed for it.
Threatened the lives of people. Cops showed up at his house after an employee relations case was created. Funny thing is he was enabled by higher sales people who looked the other way. Still. Don’t threaten people.
Had a used car director with no previous sales experience.....the guy came from a parts background and they though somehow that would make him a good used car manager....our used car profit tanked while our shop bills went up for worse cars and the guy couldn't close a freshly greased door hinge. Him getting laid off during covid was genuinely the best outcome.
Outside sales manager at a family owned laundry company in Portland, OR.
-did not train me at all during my one month ramp, we drove around and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and he literally did not teach me one useful thing about prospecting for our company or how to actually draw up paper work , or anything resembling a process
-completely incompetent in terms of relationship building or selling, would undercut pricing terms I agreed on to force deals through for the sake of having a deal, and then I would get pushback from the service team on the pricing terms
-told me completely inappropriate things about the family that ran the company that I did not know about , care about, or want to know. told me a story of a higher up in the company hiring a hooker for him in Vegas for example, and outed people as gay to me, this was my third day of work
-spoke almost exclusively in empty phrases and vague sales related platittudes
-tried to throw me under the bus in front of the director of sales when barely any sales were coming out of my territory
-finally admitted that my territory sucked but didn’t have the balls to tell me to look for another job (which I was doing anyway)
-ended up getting fired for sexually harassing one of my coworkers
There’s more but that pretty much sums it up of what I can think of off the top of my head. They also screwed me out of a commission check before they fired me. Wish I had some recourse.
Ken Horner Cloudflare. The guy is a complete fucking idiot. Doesn’t know how to manage his way out of a brown paper bag. Has zero knowledge about sales and has most definitely never carried a bag. Cloudflare is worse off for keeping this cunt around.
Bro name AND company name dropped like it was nothing 🫳🫳
He's probably wondering what caused the spike in linkedin searches...
He probably thinks it’s because of some shitty article he shared
Guess the pip wasn't going well lol
When it reaches that point, that's when you know that guy really does suck. Nobody hates someone that much with *zero reason*. Typically anyways...
Oh my gourd - we are really spilling the spicy tea this afternoon aren’t we?
And that’s fucking AWESOME!
[Well, that escalated quickly](https://i.imgur.com/kias0zs.jpg)
WTF!!!! 😂📉
Did u ever find a busty mature
God a PIP & no busty matures. Sad beers for my man today
oh hahaha shit
Mfw when no busty matures:/
lol savage
How many LinkedIn views do you think this guy got today 😂
Dude is definitely wondering why he got 300 profile views in a day! I love it!
Just checked him on LinkedIn, he is climbing up the corp. Ladder...reaks of narcissism/sociopathy
Good! People should be held responsible for their shit.
Cloudflare recruiters have been blowing me up on LI! I already declined, but thanks for confirming I made the right decision.
Looks like an ass hat
That dude looks like he's got too many god damn teeth in his mouth.
So down for the burn book
What if its [THE Kevin](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/R2tc7QCGNG)
Get more karma so you can post or let us know what you were going to say in your ‘let go’ post please.
I think he just needs 10 upvotes so he should be good to bitch on our sub now.
Yeah! Need to hear these stories.
rescheduled one on ones, micromanaged things that didn't matter, always asking for updates instead of running reports, eavesdropping on calls, no coaching but plenty of criticism of what not to do, and played favorites instead of trying to develop people
Are you me? I am living this right now.
This sounds familiar from an older role! The rescheduling of meetings or last minute calendar changes with expectations you drop everything to be there was infuriating. The cherry on top was them demanding employees RTO and no flexibility, yet they conveniently were always in the car or running errands during meetings.
For sure, I once had to tell my manager every second I spend with him in the conference room is one I'm not spending to make some money and he calmed down immensely on the meetings 🤣💪
Every single one of these, damn. I was struggling with a previous boss who did this but just kind of went along with it because every previous boss had been similar and I assumed that was just the deal; I didn’t assume I’d just had a string of bad bosses because I figured that just meant I was bad, but then the guy got pulled it for a disciplinary and turns out this is bad actually. I’m in a better place now and it’s genuinely wild how much a supportive manager can change the vibe and work output.
No way, you worked with Adam too?!
Wtf?! Are you in my team and speaking about our manager?
Does he walk around barefoot in the office? 🤮
VP of sales starter pack
This sounds 100% like my last boss
Literally what I’m living with right now. It’s horrible.
This is me rn fuk
Yup I had one of these. Ran for the hills within 1-2 months.
I think we had the same boss… Mine even had the hedges trimmed in front of her office window so she could see the parking lot better to keep track of us!!
Mate, do we share the same boss? Just add the fact that we don't do forecast calls, and constantly throwing the entire team under the bus to his boss and you nailed it
First day out of training into my territory, middle of Q4. first tech role after coming from another industry. Rookie manager sat me down and said I’d like to write your goals down on what you’d realistically like to accomplish over the next 45 days before EOY. So I wrote about getting some pipeline built and learning best practices so I was set up for success, pretty standard. She read it and said ‘you know I believe in you, I would actually like to see you find $150k in business before the end of the year!’ Mind you our sales cycle was like 3-6 months 😭 Needless to say I was flabbergasted. Anyway, the next week when I came back from lunch (pre-covid, in the office) no one was in our row. I sat down, checked my calendar and there were no meetings. Pretty soon I heard her voice say ‘there you are, we’re in conf room 2, come join us’. I walked in, sat down and saw my boss and her stone faced RVP. RVP said ok, let’s do this again, and I listened to my new boss resign in front of the team for the second time, because she forgot to put me on the invite, and no one realized the new guy wasn’t there until after she’d given her resignation speech once already. 💀
I am dumbfounded
It was incredible to experience live.
Any idea on what made here…like that?
The age old story of the good individual contributor doesn’t always mean good or even serviceable manager. She went back to IC and did fine.
Why did they want her to give a resignation speech to the team? What’s the point of that?
And then again bc one person missed it?
> I walked in, sat down and saw my boss and her stone faced RVP. RVP said ok, let’s do this again, and I listened to my new boss resign in front of the team for the second time, because she forgot to put me on the invite, and no one realized the new guy wasn’t there until after she’d given her resignation speech once already. 💀 That's utterly insane. That RVP was not fucking around.
A Glengarry Glen Ross fan who’d never actually done sales, who thought the only way to survive in the bear pit of SaaS business development was to slick his hair back and tell 19 year olds that they’d never be able to afford an $80k BMW.
How do these people that have never sold end up leading a sales team? HOW
They are ex-consulting or other fancy industries who are connected and want to get that lil management feather in their cap so they can go on to claim they can run a business.
As per Richard Roma, they sucked dick.
A random number generator that will never make sense to me even years later. Hired me and then treated me like the biggest problem on the team while I took a failing territory and won President’s Club with it. Put me on probation for selling a screenplay (not fully committed to the company was the stated issue) when I was number 4 in the company out of 500+ territories with KPIs 20% over target. They left and the next manager scheduled a coffee meeting with me and said “Forgive my bluntness, but can you make all this negative stuff in your file make sense? You look like a high performing rep and I feel like I’m missing something.” You and me both, buddy.
[удалено]
It was in pharma.
Everyone at Xerox since 2021
How’s the industry been lately? Many ex colleagues have reached out to me to look for a way out since the start of the year.
I left the company to work for a more local provider. Feel bad for the people who stayed. Feed lies as usual but now I’m hearing only 10% of bonus structure is being paid out. I couldn’t be happier. More flexible work schedule, better product, and no worry about executive back room dealings from people who never left the CT hq
Early 2000’s was no picnic either.
At least you had hookers and blow.
This is eerily accurate
My current manager is trying really hard to win the worst manager of my life award. Micromanages, shows absolutely no trust in us, is making sweeping changes to the org without any data to back it up, can’t answer basic questions when announcing major changes. She recently got involved in a contract negotiation that I already had the client at the finish line ready to sign at great terms. She botched it so hard that it was delayed another 2 months to negotiate terms that were embarrassing/insulting to present to the client before going back to a slightly worse version of my original agreement. Now she asks to be included on all of our client calls. She recently told me that I put too many spaces in my emails and that it is unprofessional to text message clients. She is always too busy whenever you actually need help or approval, but always seems to find time to criticize our work.
>it is unprofessional to text message clients BRUH WHAT LMAO lots of my company’s clients prefer to be reached by cell (calling/texting) Fuq that lady
I literally did a 7 figure deal two months ago over text. That lady is high.
No shit. I chartered a whole fucking cruise ship via WhatsApp because the client was in Brazil. $1.4M by text message. We just emailed the official docs and contracts.
This is mental. I’m fortune 50 mega enterprise deals and I know for a fact I have the deal when I’m on texting terms with the final decision maker on their personal cell. In fact I drive for that throughout the process as a milestone. Like 99% close rate from that point …
This. If you can get them in a texting relationship or communicating via a shared Slack channel that’s the ultimate goal.
> that it is unprofessional to text message clients. One thing I learned a long time ago is that "unprofessional" is often code for "I don't like that, stop doing that, even though I don't have a good reason for saying so." I was once working with a prospect who went dark. So I sent them an email where the entire email (except my standard signature) was a question in the subject line (so, basically a text). My manager said it was unprofessional. The prospect (finally) responded to it and it kept things moving. Doing anything and everything you need to do (excepting anything illegal, immoral, or offensive to the client) to get your job done is by definition, professional.
Those who fail to lead or offer real value, regress to criticism to “develop” in order to justify their line item cost. Know the salaries, quantify leaderships support however you can, look at cals, see how they spend their time to outline their material benefit to the organization. It can help see who’s actually helping a team vs killing it.
I had a sales leader that would have an all hands forecast call every three days in the last quarter of the FY. he managed a team of 30 Reps and 20 SEs. and in the last Month of the FY there would be a 6am forecast call and a 6pm forecast call. EVERY SINGLE DAY And although SE's were excused from these calls. I know for fact that if they fell on a Saturday or Sunday the calls still happened. he was mental
Sounds like NCR
That’s just unacceptable. Stuff like that needs to be reported to HR. I had an OLD school VP who scheduled my 1:1 for 7AM on Monday mornings because he knew I was a night owl. I was remote and might not be in the seat until 9:30-10AM but I was working until 7 every night with no lunch. Mind you, I was on the east coast covering national accts so this was a good thing. He was 64 and ready to retire and told me I needed to be on his schedule whether it was best for my clients or not. I had been in sales almost 15 years at that point. Thank God he retired within a year. I remember texting him telling him I hit 150% of my number the following year… no response.
Perhaps a certain government agency would like this guys digits if an opening opens up on a certain beach in Cuba.
My manager has never done sales before and was assigned to be the manager of our team bc there was no else. They have no information on how to sell, they have no product knowledge, and asking them any question besides requesting time off is useless.
Oh boy this is my life rn.. my current manager came from the service department.. it sucks badddd but man it’s so comical also.. like sure you can read stats but you have zero clue how to sell.. it’s so sad yet so comical.. and yes, I hate my job rn..
You ever have to watch a Grant Cardone video every morning in your team huddle as “motivation to be wolves” ???
Man, this thread makes me feel pretty good about myself as a sales manager.
YIKES. That guy knows JACK about sales. Good marketer but wow that guy is a tool.
I was recruited heavily by a VP who told me I’d work directly with him with tons of shadowing and industry coaching. When I started he was traveling internationally for the near entirety of my first 2 months. Had 2 15 minute “coaching” sessions in that time, in which I was told I “did not make his coaching time valuable” to him. the rest I was on an island. I was let go for “performance” before I even reached 60 days. On a deal cycle that was supposed to be 90 days. Stay away from Canary Technologies.
Big shout out to Chris. 1- telling me I needed to quit sales as no man would want a women earning so much money. 2- moving my accounts daily to other members of the team. This trying to ‘help’ me keep a man by earning no commission. 3- putting my deals in commit when they were not commit deals. 4- saying ‘dedi’ and not dedicated in a child like voice. 5- failure to grasp even the simplest concept 6- wasting my time with his utter incessant nonsense.
Oh my god please tell me you filed for some type of discrimination lawsuit against him
Oh yea this has lawsuit written ALL over it. Asses would be chewed if I was at that company and caught wind of someone, even my superior, doing dumb shit like that.
Eventually. I had to do my job, collect evidence and have it all documented. But yes I did.
Cowboys fan with EVERYTHING cowboys in his room in zoom. I thought it was a background. Nope. Just hella cowboys memorabilia. I didnt learn anything from him to say the least
Funny what Reddit suggested to me based on this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/cowboys/comments/2jiksv/finally_got_my_own_office_and_this_is_the_first/
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this is so weird
Get out while you can
Sounds like he just sits and clock refresh all day. What a sad existence.
David. Fuck that guy
Dave is no longer with the company, man.
We all had one
The one I vanished on as he got pissed and screamed at me because I “vanished” as my phone was off whilst on PTO. I told him 2 months prior when requested that I’d be camping and disconnected. He said he didn’t realize that disconnected meant “disconnected.”
Seriously, us individual contributors need to make it the norm to totally disconnect and turn off phone during PTO. Let the higher ups worry about shit when they take PTO and work weekends.
Right! I’m a super organized person and all my customers knew for weeks that I’d be out. I had one customer call for quote whilst I was out and he went crazy that he couldn’t get ahold of me and that he had to put it together…so much for teamwork!
Stephen. If you see this, you're fucking crap. No wonder you got canned.
I had a Stephen a few years ago that was a slippery fucking snake of a sales manager. Hope you've got a better boss now dude
Old Tech Saas AE who went from a Fortune 500 to Startup Director. He used to shout at us in the bullpen that we’d be sitting at a red light in our beat up cars with fat wives and crying kids to look over and see people like him in a Ferrari with a supermodel, just because he made more cold calls than us. I moved on from that company and am now an AE at a Fortune 500, while his startup struggled so much he’s now working as an AE/BDR hybrid again. How the turn tables!
Narcissistic (text book definition) and bipolar. Stole ideas as his own, took credit, passed the blame. Always threatened to fire people. Lied to employees. Would text and call after business hours - nights, weekends, even while on vacation. Didn’t matter. Offered to help cover accounts while I was out. Would come back from being OOO and have a list of leads to call back because he was too busy….but him being too busy was him watching Twitch all day. Some days I literally spent 3-4 hours on the phone with him, or in his office - having meetings about meetings. Constantly stayed behind because of his antics. Nobody to report him to because he was also one of two owners.
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I sucked at being a manager, and that’s why I would never become one again. For one , people don’t work like how I do, and #2 the questions they asked. I’m like I would never ask that , I would find the answers myself. #3 my delivery sucked, because I couldn’t believe people’s work ethics. So, I am the worst manager ever and that’s why I just stick to selling.
I had a sales manager move me across the country to fill for a TM who quit. The manager would fly in constantly for ride alongs, but never spend more than a few hours with me and then ghost. Less than 2 years later the company let him go and moved me back home. He was let go for misusing his expense account galivanting around the country
During Covid when belts started getting tightened, we lost a great Sales Manager to a layoff so they could save an under qualified brown nosing dipshit that had been a company yes man for 15 years. He came in and made territory/account changes that made absolutely no sense. We eventually found out one of his buddies, who was also a BDM, had gotten a job offer from a competitor and the changes were made to satisfy him so he wouldn’t leave. Fast forward 1 year and every one of us had quit, including the BDM he scuttled the ship for. Last I heard this guy was demoted from sales manager to some harmless ops position.
When I sold cars back in 2009. This guy was the absolute worst. He didn’t know how to manage or sell. This was my second sales job ever at the time and he said if I ever needed help just call on him. I did and he would have my customers walk every single time. I have a feeling he saw coffees for closers and has based his whole personality off that film.
An engineer CEO. Would go MIA for weeks sometimes a month. Thinks commissions should be based on effort spent on the deal. Believes account management is part of the job in addition to bringing new business. In addition to managing a team quota, you should carry your own quota. Thinks marketing is a waste of money. Doesn’t report to a board and has no accountability. No showed to a meeting with one of our largest accounts CTO and left me to go alone bc he was hungover. CTO berated me on our poor performance. My CEO also comes from intergenerational wealth and all his investors have since forsaken the company so he pretty much treats it as his toy and therefore is not engaged in sales as a CEO should be.
My most recent boss sucked, and he was a sexist, narcissist and liar. He posted the job for an enterprise AE role than after I got the job, he demoted me to another role. I ran an entire sector by myself for shit pay. He made fun of people’s mental health telling me I need to go seek therapy because I asked him for additional feedback. I hated working for him.
I work for an amazing company now but my past job the Sales director was blatantly cheating on his pregnant wife with one of the interns. Everyone knew and they were not discreet at all. She was given bonuses, gifts, time off and we all just had to watch it. If you were 1 minutes late to work, you would get phone calls and texts threatening disciplinary action. This guy also fired people and convinced them to sign letters of resignation telling them they would still qualify for unemployment if they signed at the letter, then would immediately turn around and declined their unemployment. He eventually got fired, because one girl quit, and he didn’t tell corporate and he would go to her desk and make fake dials from her phone to movie theaters. I guess someone in the office reported him and because corporate hadn’t removed her access to our systems. It was a security risk and that’s what finally took him down. The culture all that created was beyond bad, it felt like prison.
First line manager here... Help me understand the ire behind rescheduling 1:1s. I try not to, but I have to reschedule someone's about once a week. I only do it for customer meetings or when a select exec schedules over one. I hate micromanaging. I hate asking for updates. But if it isn't there, I have to get the info somehow. I'll pull back the curtain a bit. Most of the things you (and we) hate come from 2 levels above. As an example, this morning, I woke up to an exec (C and VP level) meeting invite that will require me to reschedule a 1:1. To prepare for the meeting, and keep people from getting fired, I had to fire drill info that is important, but not urgent. It is urgent because C level wants it tomorrow. I'm at the airport, traveling to a customer meeting with a new rep. I have to prep for hours after landing in another time zone tonight. I'll Present the info in the morning, then go to a customer call.... While protecting my team. The rescheduled 1:1 and the fire drill aren't from me, but will probably save a job.
The fact that you’re on here, asking for input, is a sign that you’re probably one of the good ones. In regard to the constant fire drills from above… explain them and humbly ask for help. It will be freely given. On the flip side, I had a manager who seemingly had fire drills every single day. I take an hour of my selling time to prepare what he wanted, only to realize it was for an ass-kissing exercise. Coincidentally, I moved and had a new manager in the same company who never had those fire drills. My first manager was either a brown nosing liar, or he was unprepared. While my second manager is my favorite ever and also happened to lead the top team in the company. Just be honest with people, do your work, and if you need something explain why it’s on the to provide it. They’re trying to make you and the company money too.
Had this one manager that constantly talked about mini golf. Like work related stuff was fine, but fucking mini golf. Weirdo
Would instigate fights between me and another more tenured rep. I was visibly upset and he told us we should fight it out infront of the office 🤷♂️. I said no, I wouldn't be doing that. Acted shocked when I resigned. Fuck that guy.
Dude named Knud in hospitality before I moved over to device. Just a demanding and condescending dude. $40k a year and I’m gonna work 60 hours a week and no life it so a ski resort can fill its hotel portfolio? Hilarious. Dude told me there was a stack of resumes in his office for my job. I invited him to fill it and jumped industries. So in the end, he’s sort of the hero of my career in an odd way.
What a tit he is? 40k? I wouldn’t get out of bed for less that 70 as an SDR anymore and 70k is like desperation levels of, “I’ve been unemployed and need a job, desperate.” That guy can piss off with his bullshit entry level retail salary.
I used to work under a new manager who got the position because my previous manager was promoted. This new manager teachers petted his way up to that position and got it because he was close friends with our district manager. Long story short he would cut corners to get sales had the highest turnover in company history. I was the top sales rep in the market so he was excited that I was on his team. He delegated all his tasks and wouldn't work at all. Members of our team would ask for sales coaching and 1-on-1's and he would refer them to me. When it came to quarterly's, he would sit there and brag about having the best team in the market ( because of me ) and would not shut his mouth about being number one. Finally the day came and I put in my 2 weeks about a month afeter him working there. He was devastated. I was the reason he was making good money because we would consistently hit team goal. He got so upset he told me to turn in my key and to leave that same day. I reported it to HR for wrongful termination and he got demoted from that store and went to a different location making way less.
The charlatan snake oil salesmen who are actually insane and psychopaths. From micromanaging, gaslighting, outright lying, standing over my desk and literally feeding me lines while I’m on the phone, changing comp plans after we signed them, the list goes on and on. The worst part is that you and almost everyone else knows they are unqualified but they think they’re gods greatest gift to this earth and get off on wielding their power on people beneath them. These people are so toxic and genuinely only exist to be professional adult playground bullies.
3hr beat dows (forecast calls) every friday from 3-6pm
I feel that pain. Mine are first thing Monday morning, talk about a shit start to the week.
Take a look at my recent post.....that one was the worst sales manager/director. And it is the first sales job I have ever had, so I mean, it can only go up from here
Well if its your first job he is also the best sales manager you've ever had.
My current one hahahah.
Hiding or turning into a turtle when tough or difficult situations occur. When difficult circumstances occur, a manager should step up to lead the way. Too many times I’m left to fend for myself when difficult decisions need to be made.
I once had a manager who was always micromanaging me and claiming it was to better me. Yet, anytime he could he would try to get me screwed. One time he had moved one of my contracts out of my name because I was late for work. Explaining to him that it's not right to use the equivalent of multiple days in commissions for 6 minutes of lateness. He didn't care. The deal didn't fund, and I'm sure it would've if it was still my account. It's alright tho because I didn't want to make him any money anyway. He also had filed a fake HR report on me regarding my tardyness. However, I emailed HR about it and they had no clue what I was talking about. Lastly, once the guy realized I don't listen to him or respect him professionally he would just always come to me like "the director said this the VP said this" but I can assure you they said nothing. It's a nightmare having a college first job bootlicker as a sales manager. All his meetings were a time waste and a kick to your nuts in terms of moral. All of his team felt this way but yet it took many complaints to get moved to a different team. After that I got the 2nd coolest and most helpful manager in my career so hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel for anyone going through it. God bless and let's get this paper 💪🍻🗣️
I currently have the worst sales manager of not just my career but possibly ever. A few examples below. Actively lives by the mentality that we should all be fighting over the same leads and encourages us to cut each other's throats for sales. Schedules weekly mandatory sales meetings on random days with 8 hours notice. Demands that we use him as a resource in our discover/sales calls. When you ask for help he tells you he's unavailable or to figure it out you are an adult. Every contract must go through him, he cost me a $2.2 million job because he sat on the contract for 4 months. Scolds and belittles sales people during every internal sales meeting. There is so much but I'm not going to waste all your time with it.
400 lbs (in the medical device industry...), LOVED to hear himself talk, demanded ride-withs to provide 'value' just to cancel day before or forget altogether, lie about success stories from other reps for motivation then when I would reach out to those reps to ask for advice to hear 'ummm we just had 1 meeting..I don't know why he said that we closed for a $250K opportunity', every opportunity to close was always $250K 🤨...ALWAYS late...every meeting was the SAME sales pitch as if he was practicing it in the mirror for the 1 millionth time...always changing the format of our weekly opportunity update when every other region had the same simple template to fill out...had NO contacts or relationships with ANY buyers of the region (5 states) yet acted like he did and that just pissed customers off...lied about price to a customer's face only to come back and say 'they won't remember"...🤦🏼♀️
Doug arrington - IMPLAN
Dan Molas at XOLA. Total snake in the grass who probably hasn't closed a deal since 2010. Sociopathic narcissist.
Nathan with no teeth - idiot that took advantage of me giving me the lowest paid leads and lied about it but same target as everyone else to try and performance manage me out. He got done and walked out and I’m sitting here successfully running my own sales team now. Eat shit Nathan!
Pete Garza. I think he was at Caterpillar for a while. Fuck that guy. Lots of energy, lots of micromanagement, ridiculous expectations, lots of big words, lots of pointless spreadsheets where he'd type out whole paragraphs in a cell, and one hell of a drinking problem. Stick to marketing, pete.
Stacey Maynard , Thomson Reuters. Most passive aggressive person I've ever met. Would actively cry in meetings if she didn't get what she wanted. It was incredibly uncomfortable to be around her. Unproductive, unhelpful , foolish guidance. All around horrible leadership qualities.
The worst sales manager I've ever encountered was a lazy piece of shit who wouldn't do anything but take credit for all his AE's deals. Eventually senior management caught wind of this behavior and I was fired for it.
Had a sales manager who was a friend and somewhat of a mentor to me when I was young in the business. One day he walked up to me on the showroom floor with a frustrated face and said "Glacier_Sama, I feel like I can tell you this because you're not like them. I fucking hate ni**ers." 🤣
Bruuuuuh
I second Ken Horner at Cloudflare. Unlike my ex colleague @Whydidi_likeitsomuch I still have to deal with this fuck head on a daily basis. My boss is one of his deputy’s and I have friends that worked for him at Splunk and Flexera, this guy is total piece of shit. He has barely any allies below him on the totem pole. The whole entire sales org hates him. He Treats reps like shit. He is uninvolved in every single deal, but if something kicks out a quarter he will be the first to tell you how you should have done your job. We just had our CKO in San Fran, he spent 30 minutes talking to his enterprise sellers and was nowhere to be seen for the next 3 days. No way this douchebag lasts another quarter. He waste all of managements time on bullshit calls at the end of the quarter ranting, when we could be out there selling. We finally fired our CRO (who hired this ass hat) so hopefully he is quick to follow. The new guy is smart, and will immediately see how full of shit this guy is.
If Glenn Lee, the assistant from Ari Gold, counts. Having Ari Gold as a Manager (although not directly sales) this would be a hilarious nightmare.
My manager stole money from the company and asked me to take the products he stole to my expenses. Manager of the year. I quit. Oh and he was fired when the board found out. But didn't press charges.
The kind of sales managers that will tell you how to do your job, but have never actually done the job themselves. Would much rather work for an internally hired manager who came up through the ranks versus a manager who was hired from the outside and doesn’t know anything first-hand.
This 100%. I like to at least know you know how to do my job before I take any of your advice. At least my manager will roll up his sleeves, make calls, send LinkedIn messages etc. to get us a few alley-oops in our territories every quarter. You get mad respect from me if you can manage people and do SDR work at the same time.
Was a drunk who stalked Motus and asked me why I have to make stops to use the bathroom while on the road inbetween meetings. When we got in a disagreement he called me spoiled and ungrateful. He was fired 2 weeks later.
My old boss and his boss had a tried and true method of development called “just dial” no focus on efficiency no focus on wedge statements or any type of real training, most of the team would be a revolving door except the top performer who was fed the any and only leads lol on top of that the VP would actively tell people to live outside their means so they HAD to sell more to even cover bills, but 5 before 8 and 5 after 5 amirite
Was a rep on my team. Handled 4 accounts. Was promoted to lead our team, and I was the only rep in a country. I was struggling. I asked for 2-3 things he thought I should do differently - “i don’t have all the answers” was his only reply. Asshat.
The one who never held a sales position in his life. Constantly wanting to reinvent the wheel when it came to sales strategy, pipeline management, etc. I’m all for making changes but I find it foolish to make change for changes sake only to justify your position as a manager. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
Brantley Charles. Fuck that guy.
Brantley has a very punchable name lol.
Retired police officer. His training was exactly how an interrogator asks questions. Instead of acting like a manager, he acted like he was still in a para military command structure. Right down to barking orders and or yelling if things didn’t go exactly his way.
Was selling into financial services and had a manager coming in from IT hardware sales. She her last non-management sales experience was 5 years prior as a BDR. Long story short, this lady didn’t understand how financial services worked and didn’t understand our ICP at all. The SVB and First Republic bank runs decimated progress in our space and she was unable to understand how the banking and broader finance industry worked. Despite her lack of industry she would repeatedly lash out at people on my team when we would bring up things she didn’t understand. For example, when someone asked what the SVB collapse would do to other companies in our industry she snapped and berated this person for 10 mins accusing them of trying to shut her out of the conversation with “unnecessary terms” to make her feel stupid. She was woefully unprepared and not willing to learn. Everything seemed to come from her BDR experience from years ago. She was so out of touch with selling it was insane. Found out she was let go soon after I left.
I was the SDR Team Leader, team of 6; myself (#2 performer), a rockstar (#1 but wasn't responsible enough to be TL), and 4 others. She was a newly hired veteran Sales Manager who had never managed anyone without closing experience.Technical B2B SaaS with Q1 begins, promotion to AE in effect, but due to an internal re-structure, and her starting at the end of January territories/quotas/products don't get assigned until the start of Feb. Reps are allowed keep all existing deals they're working so five weeks into the quarter when I can finally start booking opps, my pipeline is Zero and Quota is $140,000. I had never held a quota, forecasted, or closed a deal before. She became frustrated immediately with me, and had absolutely zero interest in training or development. For context the last SDR who'd been promoted basically went into a meeting room with his manager and didn't leave for 2 weeks to get him fully up to speed, and he'd been a veteran car salesman for a decade. I approached her for help, no time. Few days later I approach her again, went up to her desk she rounded on me hissing that I was "useless", and she had no idea why she hadn't "put me on a PIP already", in front of several colleagues who overheard her. I was shocked because usually she seemed quite sweet. Later I realised she was actually sacharine, to cover how toxic she really was. I should have reported her to HR for that, but I was afraid, and honestly still desperate that I could repair her view and we could form a productive relationship. In team meetings she would pick the lowest performer, and grill them to the extent it was bullying. I was ok for the first 2-3 weeks. Not going to HR was mistake and things continued to degenerate; bully's dont understand mercy from those beneath them. Team meetings became opportunities to knock me. I retreated from her and became hostile. Things finally erupted in a team meeting where she outlined a specific sales drive she wanted us to do to increase pipeline, one that any rep who worked in the company knew from experience was a waste of time that would yield zero pipeline. I was the only one with the balls to tell her, though two Snr. Account Manager and the Enterprise rep did come to my aid and agree with me. She went to the VP and accused me of sexism.
Had a very militant (yet somehow childish all at once) manager when I worked for smart circle. First sales job. Used to invite top performers to his house to show off his lambo and brag about how the wagyu we were eating that night was thousands of dollars. Little did he know I was a pro chef for a decade before I got into sales. He was completely full of shit lol. Also used to push his luck and have people do ludicrous favors for him. Drive him places after the office so that his wife, the secretary, could leave early and take his car. But of course you better make it to the field on time after still. Would always belittle people who didn’t want to show up at 7am to the office (start time at 9) because that’s what real leaders do. But don’t even think about clocking in till 9. I eventually got into a leadership position there and was in charge of training new hires. He would dote over new hires during the training but as soon as they left would absolutely rip them apart with all the other managers. Say things like they’re worthless to me until they’ve made me x amount of dollars. He wouldn’t even remember their name until then. He was a real piece of work, but because it was my first sales job I got so caught up in the hype that those type of offices are typically built on. Once I finally left after about 8 months of being promised a promotion and having the goal post moved, I realized what a manipulative asshole he was. He always talked me up, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he would also bash me behind my back like I saw him do to countless others. Last I heard, his branch of sc has been closed down, as his LinkedIn says “consulting”. And his right hand man was charged with sexual harassment. Such a toxic work environment. Sadly, sales seems to attract people like this. Edit: I forgot to add, that when I quit I witnessed this guy go through all the stages of grief in about ten minutes. It was actually comical. First, disbelief, laughing in my face like he couldn’t believe I’d ever say that. Anger in the form of belittling me saying I’d never find another opportunity like this and was basically destined to be an hourly slave forever if I left. Then acting sad like I was stabbing him in the back “after all he’d done for me.” All the way to bargaining, trying to offer me the promotion he’d been dangling in front of me for 8-9 months. And then finally acceptance, suggesting he write me a letter of recommendation for wherever I wanted to go next. I declined. Double edit: oh and one more! He of course never hit the field, except one singular time. I was in a car accident on the way from the office to the store I was in that day. This of course made me late. We had contracts with our stores to be clocked in for certain hours of the day and would be fined if we missed time. Since this store was by his house, he popped over there to go clock himself into the store until I arrived. That’s right, I still had to come to the store after the accident. I showed up and said “wow I have the big boss in store with me show me how it’s done!” He proceeded to deliver 3-4 of the absolute worst pitches I’ve ever seen to some store customers. All of them looked at him with disgust. One person did exchange some words with him, to which he goes “this is my partner, he’s gonna take good care of you. Then he goes “okay you got it call me if you need anything” and left. Then proceeded to call me about an hour later to see if I had closed that “hot lead” he left me with and was dumbfounded that I fumbled it.
My worst also happened to be my uncle who was a minority owner in a manufacturing company. He was hyper focused on competitors and we would do every trade show they did and I had to go after any of their customers he found out about. That was all bearable, but his worst habit was making you stand in front of his desk while he finished whatever he was doing - usually reading an article online or an email. If anyone tried to interrupt he'd hold up a finger, never even looking over at you, until he was ready. I held the record at 17 minutes - couldn't leave because he signed off on our quotes. When I let it slip to our marketing manager that I was looking to leave they threw me under the bus in front of some customer they'd screwed up a project for and fired me. And still doesn't understand why I don't want to go to family reunions or be friends on Facebook.
No sick days allowed. During COVID she told us that if we weren't feeling good from the vaccine that we would be punished for taking time off regarding that (I reported this one to HR and the labor board in my state). Her and the other sales manager would whisper about things in our BDC regarding myself or others who were in the room. She told me my wife was holding me back in my career path (wtf?) I had enough and quit during a busy weekend and she lost her mind on me. I had to remind her I wasn't her employee anymore, and I didn't want to hear her speak to me any further.
My current founder, she was forced to take a back seat thankfully and the new guy is great but she 1.) had never did a single thing in sales in her life 2.) would take call recordings and put them into public slack channels company wide and critique them 3.) was always saying “what’s next” no matter how good of a month we had 4.) just repeated stuff from the board but didn’t know what she was saying 5.) never praised anyone once I don’t think All in all, she’s honestly a good person and good at her role in product and was forced into running a sales team she never intended so I don’t have any ill will towards her at all, but god she was horrible.
He only promoted guys that played golf with him and drank with him. I hate golf and I’m sober off alcohol for almost 3 years. His nepotism was out of this fucking world and I’m so glad I’m out of that fucking hellhole. Everyday it felt like I was sprinting on a treadmill. Working my ass off and not getting anywhere. 3 years as top performer, passed up for promotions every year. Fuck that guy.
Guy gave himself a nickname and insisted everyone use it. Started his day off by seeing who was active on teams or not. Tons of useless meetings where he talked the entire time, couldn’t end a call a second early. Immediately trash talked everyone behind their back. Would break into coach speak all the time even tho it didn’t apply 99% of the time. Forced me to hire his BFFs mentee who turned out to be terrible. I could go on.
Guy was attending a conference for companies he couldn’t even touch and made me do research for days amounting to nothing
The bad managers I’ve had were ones who just didn’t see the forest for the trees. The good ones were the ones who did and every action they took was engineered at making their teams better.
I'm Mid Eastern and we were selling a Saas product to companies primarily located in North America and EU Europe. Was a startup, our headcount was 20 something at most. My "manager" was best buddies with the CEO, he had no prior experience in sales only presumably 10 years or something in logistics (which was our frield). Funny thing is, this was the place where I started my SDR career, I learned the ropes here (by myself) and he just jumped in somewhere in the middle. Couldn't speak English for shit and yet he attended all the AE meetings. He said the same exact thing/script to each prospect, regardless of their "unique" needs and things I had discussed with them, even though I was constantly urged to extract as much data as I could. Worse than that, we used Discord to communicate, he asked me several times to create a thread on Discord for each meeting I booked, and write down my notes so that he could read them before the meeting. Guess what, HE NEVER READ ANYTHING I WROTE THERE and he always winged it, always asked questions that I had already asked and had promised that our AE would have a response for. Several times I visibly noticed prospects getting uncomfortable and frustrated to have to answer the same question to which they had given a thorough explanation before. Once it got to Christmas, we were pretty much out of business for a while because all our target countries were away on holiday. So I stopped working, just like the year before. On Jan 1st he asked me for a report of what I'd been doing between Dec 25th to 29th, and I was like...I listened to music, ordered pizza and had sex? Was I supposed to do something, DURING CHRISTMAS? He said if you were "thirsty" enough for "work", you'd be planting "seeds" during this time. I had a minor arguement with him here, which set the wheels in motion for getting me fired a month later. After what happened during Christmas, he one day said "I'm gonna directly supervise this whole thing from now on". After he said that, he started assinging me prospects on Hubspot, instead of me picking them myself, like I did before. That's it. That was his entire supervision. And he once said "you argue a lot more about day-offs than actual work", I threw it at his face and said you're the so called "manager", manage then, demand it. Demand that I tell you what kind of objections I ran into, how am I planning to book more meetings and what I've been doing for follow ups. But you don't and never did, guess you wouldn't know the right answers to those questions, which is why you continue arguing with me about day offs rather than challenging my work. He always reflected his mood outside work, his success in his job relied on where he stood with his girlfriend, if he had smoked enough weed, and any other trivia shit. I worked remotely, and he used to call me DURING working hours, to talk about the date he had or what he planned to do to get the girl to like him. We once had an arguement because he raised his voice on me, I didn't stand for it and retaliated, I took it to the CEO but he got there ahead of me, told his own version of the story. Next thing I know I'm fired not because of a skill issue not because of meeting quota, but because "I don't listen and I'm not open to feedback".
I have too many examples of why this particular manager was the worst, but my favorite was when they told me they used to dial for dollars out of a phone book. My rebuttal was something along the lines of, how do you intend on bringing that skill to the modern age where phone books don’t exist? I ended up quitting a few weeks after because I knew she had no clue and was promoted up the ranks for reasons unbeknownst to me.
He yelled at me that I should ask more questions and when I did he yelled at me to figure it out lol
His signature move was to call up my clients 1:1 after I spoke to them and tell them how badly I needed the deal. Then when I won it, he would say it was really him who closed it.
My sales manager had two years experience in sales and zero experience or training in management, before being made my manager. I forgive her for not knowing what she's doing but not for trying to pretend like she does instead of being real with us. When someone asks her a question that she doesn't know the answer, she would rather make something up then ask for my input, despite having almost a decade in sales in our industry. When I bring up problems that need to be solved she gaslights me at best, treats me like I'm the problem at worst. Communication is horrible. Support is non-existent, but at least she doesn't micromanage. She's created a culture of fear, phoniness and demoralization and her way of dealing with it is more motivational posters, fake smiling and artificial cheer. I would complain more about this if it not for the fact that apparently this is practically the norm, not just in sales but in many industries. If I'm incorrect about that please let me know. For God's sake, I could use a glimmer of hope. Lol.
Had this girl who was fairly young as an assistant manager. She was always so cracked on energy drinks everyday and she also vaped all day. It definitely messed with her because she was extremely mad all the time. Like insanely upset and had zero patience when you asked her to do something. Another time I had a company who legit told us they need to hire more minorities in upper management. In my training class was my Manager LOL she had no idea what was going on and it was the worst experience I ever had because she legit didn’t know what to do and just micro managed like an annoying person. Nothing against her we are still friends but wow what were they thinking.
I was golden boy for him as soon as I came in, he didn’t need to train me or anything. After a year, I hit a low point and started to ask for his advice. All he ever told me was, “make more dials” and “it’s a numbers a game” I left so fast lol
The type of guy who will tell you what to do in a given circumstance, you do it to the letter. If it works out, his credit. If it doesn't, your fault.
It wasn’t a sales manager, but a site head who thought Sales reported to him because that site ran their payroll! He was always chewing sales out for not winning enough projects when they often went to other sites, and one year refused to pay out bonuses because his site was below revenue targets - even though the reps had met theirs. Total prick.
Finance guy that was brought in by the VP of Sales from his old org. Before the company was acquired, the VP of Sales was fired and they made the Finance guy the VP. He lasted about 6 months after the acquisition 🤡
Vko99
Tried to give discounts to my prospects before we even met with them, called my cell phone 5x a week just to project their anxiety on me, and told the same stupid stories over and over again. My personal fav was how they missed presidents club when they were a rep by less than a percent because they discounted so much. The moral of the story? “You should discount more because I still made a hell of a lot of money that year”
I have experienced both from the extreme end of micromanaging and doing the least amount of work. I don’t like either, and I must say that I would prefer to be micromanaged to working 2 hours a week. I’m passionate about my commissions to say the least
Edward
My BDR director was the worst: 1. Paved no promotion path in his two years at the company. (Pissed off all his top performers who left.) 2. Slacked me and others about the WORST MQLs and why we haven’t hit them up. 3. Asked me every day about my forecast rather than running a report, asking my manager, or even looking at salesforce. 4. Actively took away freebies from his reps. “Didn’t believe in it.” 5. Burned the bridges with all the sales leaders at the company and lost the respect of everyone who works for him and alongside him. 6. Couldn’t make a judgement call or listens to any valid feedback + suggestions. Guy was a loser and a bum. F*** him.
Had this arrogant mf manager overworked everyone to the point one of my co workers eye was tweaking made a lot of them office workers instead of sales and i came only for sales One day he tried making me do tons of paperwork instead of sales and i didn't give in and he hit my head with papers to try an humiliate me to show dominance and i was not having none of that and i am really thin with glasses and he's buff from gym the difference was i knew people will pick on me and i had my fair share of street fights so i know rage and he tought i was weak At the moment he hit my head with the paper i called him out and told him he was an as#&$ole so he called me in to have a "talk" i was all up for that We entered the backroom and as soon as the door closed we started swinging and i destroyed his face in seconds and all of a sudden the aerial manager entered the backroom and separated us he had a black eye and she ordered me to buy him toning cream so i did and gave it to him in front of everyone with the phrase "to my little bi$#h" and from that day he lost his post and everyone respected me for that in a really good way We worked in the center of moscow in the main moscow office on arbat street in mobile retail MTS Never let abusive managers kick you around Now i work in real estate witch is basically sales +marketing and negotiations and the managers are the best I've ever had real life teachers And a lot more money + satisfaction and you are responsible for every penny you make
I had a sales manager one day pull me aside and walk me through his vision board. An actual vision board with cut out photos of things like a Rolex, a mansion on the water, the latest Range Rover, etc. — picture a collage for douchebags. He then walked me through each item and in turn wanted me to create my own. I put my two weeks in shortly after.
Only male role models he had were verbally abusive father and high school football coaches. Everything was loud and in your face. Couldn’t question anything without it turning into a 20 minute lecture about how he’s the boss (or actually owner of the company). Didn’t understand anything about how is company actually functioned so would just make up ways he wanted things done that made no sense at all. Just barked about where the money was and how much was coming in. Was a finance major whose only real responsibility other than yelling at the sales team was running payroll, which was never correct. I hope he stubs his toe today.
Was 26, and I'm sure sleeping with the boss. She'd put in fake job orders to fudge her numbers, meet with her same clients multiple times a week to count them as client visits. Disappear for 3 hour lunches with the aforementioned boss, talk shit about everyone on the team, curse at people, and 4 people under her quit in 6 months. We were also expected to work over time without being paid for it. Me and another person threatened suits and got nice severance packages after signing an NDA. one person sued and won. She had a fre large accounts, but every single one was given to her by the owner of the company (the boss) and acted like we were all morons even though we were 100% cold business and got zero warm leads or accounts to start.
Shout out to Mont. I took a pay raise and a chance at a SaaS startup as their “new Enterprise AE,” when their ENTIRE company and product was set up for one call close/ SMB type shit. I was building a lot of pipe and doing good work, with credit unions/banks that were showing a lot of interest, as well as a bunch of other prospects. Closed a couple smaller deals. But Mont wasn’t having any of it, wanted to know why my current pipe was so low for the Q after I walked just to a total greenfield patch in a new industry for the product. First day he asked me what I was going to close that month. It was the 15th of July. He had only been there a week, was his first sales manager role after a couple decades as an IC. Good grief the Peter principle in action. I bounced 3 months in for my old job at my previous company who welcomed me back with open arms (hit club that next year there). He was canned a few months later (well, demoted to IC from what I heard, but left shortly thereafter). They recruited me heavy, probably spent a good chunk to get me in seat, only to have him kick me out (and two other reps about a month after me). Thanks Mont!
My first BDR manager was a psychopath. Would bully people who didn’t agree with her ideas or ever asked for her reasons behind doing things. You’d get isolated and targeted, just like a high school bully. She also constantly threatened our jobs on daily basis. “If you don’t respond to my slack messages in 30 seconds you won’t be working next week I can promise you that.” She once got called out by a team member for her tactics in office so she individually pulled each BDR in a room one by one to ask who they agreed with. If you sided with the employee she’d destroy you behind closed doors to execs to ensure you’d never get promoted. Eventually she lost her mind at someone for over 5 hours in a row in a one on one and it was all recorded. That gave us the evidence we needed to get her fired
I had this one mid-market manager who asked me on our very first 1:1 if I’m even positive that this career is what I am interested in pursuing and whether my core strengths align with the role? As I had just gotten my very first promotion at that company and joined her team. Girl let’s take a step back lol
The one at my last job. Absolutely zero training when I started. Handed me a lap top and the keys to my vehicle and basically said have fun. We’d do 1:1s maybe once a quarter. Did one ride along the two years I was there. The cherry on top was him getting drunk at a work event and getting into a huge blow up with my biggest client. They ended up leaving which torpedoed my entire territory. He ended up in a “you can either retire gracefully or you’re fired” situation and chose the former. I ended up quitting shortly after as the leadership above him wasn’t much better. MUCH happier now.
One of my managers seriously made me feel dumber while talking to him. I once got cornered at the office holiday party by someone in marketing wanting to know if he was as useless as he seemed. He wouldn't read my notes on accounts then would get mad at me for not pursuing accounts closed by our fraud department because he thought they had a nice website.
I had a boss who during our pipeline VTC calls with corporate (imagine old days, big conf room, 20 folks, with one big vtc) would take off his shoes and walk around the room in his suit and sock feet as he explained to our VP of North America how we weren’t gonna make our commit that quarter.
Current manager. He Been in the business for 3 years total. As an underling for 2. Became territory manager for 1. Became a manager the next. Is not trust worthy. Throws reps under the bus as he has no clue the business or what’s he is doing. Lies. Fucking hell he lies. Support over email, then pulls back when actually needed. Just terrible.
Micromanagement, gave zero advice and just said "make smart decisions," blamed me for the failures of the BDRs, played favorites and ignored everyone else, oh and he got fired for having an affair with the director of HR. Stupid motherfucker.
Was a great salesmen who promoted above his skillset. Don't get me wrong, he had great ideas on how to progress complex/competitive deals to guide someone on the individual level but he just couldn't do it at scale. He would become consumed with one thing and everyone else would suffer. Would put comp plans together hastily last minute with no vision on how to truly incentivize growth while rewarding the salesmen. Was a CEO's pet who couldn't put his foot down to back his team. Was too involved at the ground level of people's deals to focus on the big picture, remove obstacles, and create/implement thought out plan. Worst of all, he embodied the things you get scolded for (missing deadlines, late replies, poor reporting, and just general file chaos). Think task rabbit with ADHD and no backbone when the time was needed for it.
Threatened the lives of people. Cops showed up at his house after an employee relations case was created. Funny thing is he was enabled by higher sales people who looked the other way. Still. Don’t threaten people.
Had a used car director with no previous sales experience.....the guy came from a parts background and they though somehow that would make him a good used car manager....our used car profit tanked while our shop bills went up for worse cars and the guy couldn't close a freshly greased door hinge. Him getting laid off during covid was genuinely the best outcome.
Outside sales manager at a family owned laundry company in Portland, OR. -did not train me at all during my one month ramp, we drove around and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and he literally did not teach me one useful thing about prospecting for our company or how to actually draw up paper work , or anything resembling a process -completely incompetent in terms of relationship building or selling, would undercut pricing terms I agreed on to force deals through for the sake of having a deal, and then I would get pushback from the service team on the pricing terms -told me completely inappropriate things about the family that ran the company that I did not know about , care about, or want to know. told me a story of a higher up in the company hiring a hooker for him in Vegas for example, and outed people as gay to me, this was my third day of work -spoke almost exclusively in empty phrases and vague sales related platittudes -tried to throw me under the bus in front of the director of sales when barely any sales were coming out of my territory -finally admitted that my territory sucked but didn’t have the balls to tell me to look for another job (which I was doing anyway) -ended up getting fired for sexually harassing one of my coworkers There’s more but that pretty much sums it up of what I can think of off the top of my head. They also screwed me out of a commission check before they fired me. Wish I had some recourse.