The Cranky Sales Engineer swears that the next marketing person who flies into town and plunks himself down in the CSE’s cube and asks, “So what deals are you working on with my product?” will be boiled in his own bullshit.
The CSE does not need a marketing funnel hawk. Funnel hawks, for those who don’t know, are a parasitic form of marketing dweeb who think that they can maintain a funnel report by badgering the sales force. The sales force avoids talking to these people for the same reason they don’t reply to spam, because any communication will cause a sudden and annoying increase in valueless communication.
Compare this approach to another marketing person who has a 100% handle on the funnel. When this person learned about a deal I was working on, she hooked me up with a dynamite piece of training collateral that taught the customer how to use the product while highlighting all the features. The CSE keeps this marketing person apprised of all deals in hopes of getting help in closing the deals.
(BTW. Do not confuse funnel hawk activity with the CPM’s gathering of pricing information by talking to the sales force. I can’t imagine who would fire a PM for such an activity, but that person needs to try a new line of work. Perhaps something involving a squeegee and a dirty rag.)
Do not become a funnel hawk. If you want to know what’s happening in the field, provide useful help to your sales team and you will be welcomed with open arms. Random calls asking “How’s that deal coming?” will not make you anyone’s friend. Instead, become a sales partner, and you will get all the info you want.
Oh…alcohol helps as well.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
CSE- while I am personally NOT a funnel-hawk, I know how they are bred. Usually it is caused by a totally dysfunctional sales team. There is usually a secretive sales mgr, and a messed up forecast tracking tool/CRM(cough SalesLogix (cough) so that product management can’t see a ‘funnel’ at all. Then you train the CSE’s to not trust the ‘factory’.
Lastly you begin missing your plan 2 or 3 quarters, and BAM, you have created a funnel hawk. Unfortunately, sales refuses to accept any blame for the situation.
Sadly, replacing sales mgmt with better leaders isn’t enough to fix it, it usually requires executive intervention.
New Cranky Blog Post! “[Guest Post] Death to Funnel Hawks” – http://bit.ly/y8oYD
Funnel hawk seems too nice a term. How about Funnel worm?
I think Gander has a point. With a clearly published (or accessible) funnel report in the CRM system and a sales management team that is open to communication, this problem can be minimized.
In the end, like virtually every other problem, it comes down to having aligned objectives across teams and people who are measured, compensated and rewarded for working as a team and not in their own little political or functional silos.
Adding to my original reply(I typed it on my iphone while waiting at a bank). I should have also added that it can take a single territory or region to train the PM’s to be funnel hawks. Then they replicate this behaviors to the field ad nauseum. I am working with one, (funnel hawk) now and I have clear visibility to how the behavior initiates and propagates.
The CSE’s position in the guest post above, unfortunately, sets up a strong negative feedback loop, which will greatly amplify (and spread) the behavior of a funnel hawk.
I am in the uncomfortable position of needing to break a peer’s ‘hawk-like’ behavior, something that is hard enough when they report to me, but she has been trained over the last 2 years that you have to call and pester the individual sales engineers DAILY to keep an opportunity on track.
Of course, we have lazy SE’s who will not push, wait until the 11th hours (last week of the quarter) and then cry that they need obscene discounts to “close” the business. I am sure that NONE of this audience has a sales force that is in this category (snort).
Death to Funnel Hawks, new on Cranky Product Manager http://twurl.nl/qs8ou1
Nice blogging people!
Great post CrankyPM. “Become a sales partner, and you will get all the info you want.” http://bit.ly/TgOI0
does that mean we become demo boys/girls though
The @crankypm strikes again: “Death to Funnel Hawks” – http://bit.ly/y8oYD – guest column, by the cranky sales engineer.
I was wrong. There is another vehicle that creates funnel hawks.
Today I was ordered by my boss to become a funnel hawk, so I dropped the generation of a stage gate review for a new program, dropped a statement of work for a potentially lucrative upgrade program for a series of large customers, and started hounding sales engineers one by one to try to scrape up revenue for the third quarter.
I feel dirty, and I may not ever go back to work.