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Why Sales Reps Lose Deals to Their Own Managers
Season 1
Episode 32
Published 3 weeks, 1 day ago
Description
Lucas and Luna break down a counterintuitive finding from a recent study of 800 B2B sales cycles: more than a third of lost deals were killed not by a competitor or a price objection, but by the rep's own sales manager. They trace the problem to a specific behavior—the 'executive interrupt'—where a manager jumps onto a late-stage call and derails the rep's carefully built momentum. Using real examples from a med-tech case and a SaaS company that fixed the issue, they explore why managers override their reps, what the data says about win rates when that happens, and a simple pre-call protocol that one VP of sales swears by. The episode ends with a reflection on whether sales leadership is accidentally teaching reps to be passive.