Dateline: 2017. I was hired by a software company based in London. I had met the CEO via LinkedIn a year or two earlier based on my apparent expertise in a certain type of consumer research. We kept in touch via vid chats and the chats morphed into me coming onboard to be their North American sales department.
And so innocently began a 1-year foray into a weirdly dysfunctional small tech co. To wit: they had a full time project manager in Canada, who I worked closely with (remotely). As in talking several times a day. She was a solid reliable pm, with this quirk: every. single. sentence. ended with her breaking into laughter.
As in: I just talked to this client about missing the deadline HA HA HA I'm going on my lunch break HA HA HA I'm so glad it's Friday HA HA HA.
I knew upon meeting her that co-pitching prospects would be a pickle given this distracting verbal tic. I always debated mentioning to her, but never did. Just silently cringed when talking to her. Never encountered this, before or since.
The other NA person was in the midwest, and was either awol or invisible. Never went to staff meetings. Yet she was managing large dollar accounts using the company software, basically a rogue agent. Presumably she was kicking back some cabbage to London. I met her once, in NYC, when I was new. We met with a guy from HQ, flew over, to give me 1 on 1 training & background (he was the euro sales dept). Laid back guy, easy to get along with. Turns out, he was on the edge of leaving due to issues with the managing director (MD) at HQ we'll circle back on shortly. I know we had some industry mixer at a rooftop hotel lounge, where a competitor startup was giving us the full court press to come join them. I was in my 1st week on the job and told them so. My colleague was listening more I reckon. He did indeed bounce out a month later, not there but some other place. My awol colleagues was a hyper bundle of nerves, amusing to be around. I flattered her smarts to break the ice (it worked, she ate it up) and we got along fine. The next day we attempted to go to a coworking office that was closed. Ergo, walking down yon blvd we foolishly settled on a ground floor hotel bar/lobby with ridic sound levels. That's where we spent the next 3 hours, them talking, me scribbling notes, when I could hear them. She let me dial in & eavesdrop on a client call regarding some big global project; she was indeed sharp with clients. That I could hear anyhoots.
Patience. I'm just setting the stage. Fret not no no.
There was one other almost NA employee, not hired yet, also in Canada. She came from ad agency world, in the research space. Something. She sure as shit was articulate. She had broken up with her fiancée recently and was moving to London HQ when visa arrived, which took weeks. She & I would be butting heads soon, mainly over her giving me assignments that had zero to do with sales or revenue. Big, intensive assignments out of the blue. She wasn't my mgr and even if she was I woulda said 'I'm in sales, not an analyst.' I'm paraphrasing.
But here's the #1 problem with that company, a problem that continuously fucked them out of any competitive horse races. The Managing Director / MD. A single ma with very young kid, who only worked 4 days a week. Paid for 5 though. Let's call her Rhiannon. In fact, the bloke I met initially who trained me & had 1 foot out the door at the time, told me he or someone found out her salary, and it was some staggering amount. I didn't ask, as he was clearly pissed about it to the point of leaving, which he did. If she was a heavy hitter MD, that's one thing. Ergo, let's break it down and you be the judge.
- This company had been around for over 10 years, and in the consumer research space, the software had a reputation for 'old reliable.' Wasn't fancy, hadn't improved much in those 10 years, in fact fixing bugs was what the dev team spent their time on, when they got around to it. But it worked and had many hands-on users around the world (it was cloud based).
- So, what happened when I was there? The MD talked the CEO into a total brand overhaul. Changing the name, the image, the branding, you name it. All new out of the blue company. Like facebook now calling itself meta or whatnot. But this was a tiny shop of 12 or so folks. Rebranding is not just pointless, it's damaging to the brand. Actually: it destroys the brand. It stamps it out. BUT! if you're the MD pushing for it, it gives you job security for months & months. And when you're as incompetent as she was, that matters.
- How incompetent (not to mention obscenely overpaid)? The long time accountant / money / invoicing person left on maternity leave shortly after I arrived. And was gone for months, actually close to a year. England way diff than USA there. Anyhoots, Rhiannon filled this key money role via a temp agency. A guy we'll call David.
- It's not just that David was incompetent. He was, literally, a person who didn't know what accounting is. Invoices, payroll, meeting deadlines, following client instructions (e.g., always include the PO number on an invoice). You name it, he fucked it up. 100% reliability. I told this to Rhiannon. Repeatedly. What did she do about it? Fuck-all. Literally nothing. Towards the end of my year there when I went to London for a week, I saw that they sat at the same long table, separated by 2 chairs. Almost elbow to elbow. Me, in the colonies, Mtn time zone no less, saw all this happening from thousands of miles away, basically instantly. She, oblivious, overpaid, apparently not caring that my clients, i.e., the company's clients, were repeatedly baffled why the paperwork stuff on our simple 1-page sales agreements were fucked up ALL THE TIME.
- Rhiannon made a few decisions that are memorable as they were impossibly incompetent for someone holding an MD position. They also had the side benefit of stabbing me in the back. So: yay. Incompetent decision #1: I found a firm (actually a few) stealing our software with elevated (near-admin level) logins. Who the hell knows how far back that went? Who the hell knows why the newish sales guy in USA was the one to find this? But they were launching free projects, on our platform, going back: months? Years? And NOBODY in London even knew about it. How the fuck is that even possible? How did I crack it? I got a call out of the blue from some random focus group moderator asking for a password reset or something. Looked them up in admin, found them, dug around, and spotted dozens of projects I had never heard of. The person calling me was just a contractor, not a firm, but the firm hiring them had given them access, obviously. What did I do? Reached out, told them I have project access going back 6 months, added it up and you owe us $30,000. Why the fuck was I doing this? This is an MD's job through & through. She knew about it. Everyone did. She just didn't care.
- Another: I busted an Australian company who was months late on their invoice. They owed us around $20,000. I went into to their online account and froze it. They couldn't access their project data They freaked the fuck out, calling me nonstop, also London. I said: pay the invoice and it gets unlocked. But: wait for it! Rhiannon goes in and unlocks their account, full access provided. I was so frustrated at her inability to show the slightest bit of spine. She's the MD for fuck sake. Manage shit. Say no. Actually when she did that idjit move behind my back I realized my time there was nigh.
- Another: so I go to London for a week, a flat is rented with the pm from Canada HA HA HA also the new pm from South Africa, who's way cool. We're all flatmates, got along dandy. Other than I caught the flu apparently on the flight over and midway through the week got sick as fuck. Ok so, I'm the NA sales department, and I don't talk to Rhiannon all week. Literally. I'm sitting 10 feet away but she's 'so busy' with whatever she fails at, I finally tell her: hey we gonna catsup or what? She says, no shit: I can give you 30 minutes on Friday afternoon. Way to manage, you MD you.
- Another: this is fucking classic. She decides half of the office needs 'sales training' and hires a guy who is:
- not a sales trainer
- never once taught a sales class (I asked)
- was unemployed but starting a new gig the next week
- spent both half day sessions (two full 4-hour sessions) reading bullet points off powerpoint slides.
- Fun fact: you don't teach sales in a classroom. Well, you can try, but it's pointless. Any legit MD knows how revenue creation works, and this ain't it.
- And the kicker. The entire tech team, at least 5 devs, were working full time on a new snappy platform. All new product. Since before I arrived. I deliberately refused to get involved in it until it was ready, because I know from experience, across multiple stops at tech shops, that devs don't give a rat's arse about what sales guys think. For real: dev's spend their lives in cubes & whiteboard meetings thinking that build a better mousetrap and clients will simply dump their software incumbent and come running! Yes it's that easy. So whilst I was in london I saw, for the first time, what they had all been working for over a year. There was the big unveiling, training, talking points, etc. This went on for 3 days actually. Basically, the company went all in on this groovy new WYSIWYG platform. And it was super snappy. And, (I kept this part to myself), I absolutely knew the market wouldn't care less.
- So then: was I right? We launched the new platform with press releases, their advert agency was doing their thing, beta tester quotes were all over the space, yadda. Zero sales week 1. Zero sales week 2. Rhiannon is bugging me about it, utterly clueless nobody gives a fuck about better mousetraps, because everyone says their mousetrap is better. Everyone.
- So what happened next? No joke, we lowered the price to...zero! FREE! How many users signed up? Also zero! It was absolutely DOA, which I knew months earlier would be the case. I knew the devs team, sort of, or at least I knew their work. I knew for an entire year, or more, all they did, literally, was huddle amongst themselves talking about 'what if we made it do this? or that? or that? wouldn't that be awesome!' Making that toy all shiny & snazzy. This is what is called job security for all devs teams, all over.
