I Once Got Fired Because I Wouldn't Lie: A Cautionary Tale

After just seven months as a sales manager, and after having improved the inside sales team's performance to 103% of monthly quota — something they had not done before — I was unceremoniously fired by my VP because I refused to lie.

The warning signs had been there. I chose to ignore them. That's on me. Here's what happened.

Onboarding and Early Signs

After a full first day of onboarding, my VP — let's call him Donald — and I went out for dinner. Things were cordial and professional. We talked about the business and our competitive position in the marketplace. We talked about the systems and resources that could help my underachieving team to perform better. We were both confident that the team would be more productive and more successful now that they would have me as a local sales manager versus continuing to report to a remote sales manager.

After dinner is when the first warning signs appeared. Regrettably, I chose to look past them.

The backstory is that I had gotten referred to this company by a friend and former colleague whom I'll call Susan. Susan was this company's marketing director. She also reported to Donald.

How Donald talked about Susan that evening was troubling, especially given that Donald, of course, knew Susan to be a friend and former colleague of mine. He told me how unhappy he was with how she was doing her job. He said that there weren't nearly enough leads being created for the sales reps. In my view, generating leads is the only job marketing has, but his language and his tone, coupled with the fact that he was doing this at all with me, was a big reveal. It was only the start.

Cultural Misalignment

It wasn't long before it became even clearer that the culture Donald was nurturing was the product of an approach to leadership that was far different from mine.

The salespeople's disrespect for marketing and operations was a direct reflection of Donald's attitude towards those groups. It was troubling to me, and I committed myself to changing my team's mindset not because the marketing director was my friend but because I truly believe that sales and marketing must be collaborative and fully aligned. They are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other.

To foster a confrontational and disrespectful attitude between sales and marketing and operations is not only counterproductive, frankly, it's stupid. How does anyone expect an organization to reach its full potential without collaboration? It's unreasonable to think you can succeed if sales and marketing are not completely aligned on who the target markets are, what their problems are to be solved, who the buyer personas are, what their decision-making behaviors and processes are, and what the real value is in the solutions to the problems that you have to offer that marketplace. That's just for starters.

Operational Challenges and Truthfulness

We were in the software and services business serving mostly small and mid-sized product manufacturers eager to get their products on store shelves. The way to do that was and is to comply with each retailer's unique application of data exchange standards. In the supply chain world, it's a bit of a misnomer to use the word 'standards'. Large retailers have their own variations, and this creates the problem we solved for producers.

What this also meant was that a fair bit of coordination was needed between sales and operations in order for sales reps to properly qualify prospects, establish the project price, and to then set and manage expectations. The operations group would use information from sales to project the time and effort required to meet the requirements for each new customer. Weekly meetings between sales and operations were held to review what was in the forecast so that operations could then provide sales with project forecasts; when could projects begin, how long before testing and production, and the effort required that drove pricing in our proposals.

Donald was never satisfied with operations. In fact, he consistently attempted to bully operations into doing their jobs faster than was humanly possible. This created constant stress and a strain on my relationship with the operations group because, unlike Donald and the other sales team and manager, my team and I shared physical office space with them. We saw them every day. I very intentionally worked to develop a personal relationship with everyone in our office, including the operations leadership and their staff. I was careful never to undermine anything Donald or the other sales manager was saying or doing. Instead, I worked hard to develop trust with operations. That trust allowed me to have conversations about the deals my people were working on that were different from the kind of conversations they had in the weekly forecast review meetings.

Standing Up for Integrity

In just the first few months, it became clearer with each weekly meeting that while Donald and the other sales manager were consistent in their expressions of unhappiness and disappointment with operations, I was taking the approach that we had to be forthright and realistic. I made sure that my team understood that operations were doing the best they could and that their timelines and levels of effort would be what my team would communicate to our prospects. In other words, we would tell the truth. This did not make Donald very happy. He insisted that I share with the team the unrealistic dates he had instructed the other sales manager to share with his team. Donald's rationale was that our competitors were lying in their quotes and so we had to do the same to compete and win.

Whether or not that was true was and is irrelevant. Donald was requiring us to misrepresent to the prospect what their expectations should be about the services we would deliver and when. This was made even easier for him because it would not be the salespeople who would have to explain to the prospect why services weren't being delivered in the timeframes originally presented to them. That responsibility, sadly, would fall to the project manager from the operations department.

The only way to describe all of that was as a massive failure of leadership. While I sincerely liked and respected the president and CEO, it must be said that he allowed this to happen. He knew what Donald's modus operandi was. He knew we were having issues with customer satisfaction that were traceable back to a misrepresentation of expectations. Nothing changed in the short time I was there.

The Aftermath and Lessons Learned

So, it wasn't a surprise that after just seven months the HR manager, with whom I had created a friendly working relationship, came to my office one morning. I could tell immediately by the look on her face that the news wasn't good. When she asked that I join her in her office, I knew why.

Turned out that Donald was on her speakerphone. He unceremoniously informed me that my services were no longer required. The look on the HR manager's face said it all. She had the look of someone who, through no fault of her own, felt guilty by association. She looked troubled by the fact that someone she had gotten to know, someone whom she presumably respected because I wasn't onboard with lying to prospects, was being fired.

My team's performance had improved in the short amount of time I had been there. They had been underachieving and not hitting their activity or sales quotas. Their enthusiasm for their work was lukewarm. To their credit, they had begun to exceed the team quota. Not by a lot, but collectively, the team was more cohesive, and they performed their jobs with greater confidence and energy. They knew I had their back.

The team and I would often talk about the importance of properly setting and managing prospect expectations. We acknowledged that the reputation of the company and their reputation as individuals depended on it. Everyone agreed that the old saying that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression is true. As salespeople, they understood that means being held accountable for what expectations the customer has. Like anyone who has spent any amount of time in sales knows, they knew that no matter what happens after the paperwork is done it's the sales rep's throat that gets choked first if things don't go well.

After seven months of attempting to have a positive influence on performance and culture, I succeeded only in the former. Given that, and while I got the "this just isn't working out" explanation, it's hard not to conclude that I was fired because I wouldn't tow Donald's line of lying. I refused to lie to my team, my colleagues, or to our prospects and customers.

No amount of success justifies straight-up lying to anyone. The ends never justify the means. It's unfortunate that such a mindset and behaviors still exist in the 21st century. It's one of the things that gives capitalism and capitalists a bad name.

So to all current and future leaders reading this, the lesson I hope you'll take from my tale is simply this:

How you make money matters.