Hi Everyone! Hope you are doing well. I’m in software sales at a EU company that expanded in the US. We have full-stack and AI projects abroad, but in the US, we have a much more limited product set, and we don’t necessarily engage in that unless the project is huge. Our staff is almost all non-American and don’t really understand anything about the American market in terms of sales strategy, customer acquisition, and supporting sales efforts out here. I know I shouldn’t have to note this, but I am also queer and that’s pretty easy to pick out. I had one other sales person until October when he was let go for not performing, and a manager who was actually on my side. The manager liked my templates, but also never really had ideas on how to make them better. That coworker never really did much, and never had a sales template to give me but was there for over three years. He wasn’t an enemy, but definitely not helpful, but the reasons below make sense for his disenfranchisement.
Now we also have specialized solutions too and when I got hired, we tried to pitch that specialized solution to a large cloud provider, and they were not into it, so I tried to pitch those other services that net large deals we could have to work on joint opportunities. They were more receptive than before, but my coworker, a pretty typical conservative type, shut me down in the middle of the call and told me to stand down afterwards. After that, the technical folks who support me would not get back to me to help design messaging for customers with sometimes up to seven to nine follow-ups. And while they speak English, I’ve also been handed Google Translated templates that were incredibly low effort and just a list of product features. I’d communicate that to my manager and our CEO who she reported to dismissed our requests for more product demos and messaging or anything they could offer to help us book initial meetings with customers. I was even quoted from the team that we have no differentiators, and we are typically a bit more expensive than competition, but we are “thorough in our implementations”. As a sales person who was incredibly successful before, I had no idea on how to enhance my template that worked for me previously while at the same time having no input from my team.
I could not book meetings for the life of me. Just no customer cared and any input I would hear back would be negative. But my output was high, and kept increasing especially in 2023. Late last year though, there was an in-person meeting at the office that lasted two days. One day with a partner, the other just us. The partner day was good until one of the product leaders asked me to complete a list of 200 accounts that the partner wanted to work on. He harped on two of my 200 choices for over an hour and the partner was definitely a bit turned off from this behavior. The next day I was incredibly worried about since there was a three hour meeting on sales strategy. Basically got humiliated and told I was draining the company dry for that whole meeting with no real feedback on what to change and improve in front of the entire product team and the other divisions. Multiple coworkers came up to me saying the behavior was disgusting, but were afraid to say anything. Reported the offender to HR. HR said they did something, but couldn’t mention what they did. We then worked on a RFP (my first ever) with a partner, and I worked on virtually all portions of my side, and that coworker gave no real input, and also quoted the partner absurdly while we would be doing the smallest minority of the work. That partner then threatened to end the relationship with the whole company afterwards. We never heard back from the customer, as our bid was incredibly expensive. However, things worsened after we went to our CEO with this information. Sales was no longer allowed to engage in RFPs as product team now leads that business. We could no longer have budget to go to conferences. I no longer was a part of meetings with the product team and they became even more nonresponsive. So I was just doing countless emails and calls with no responses from customers and nobody in the product side to help me improve. Felt like screaming into the void. My mental health tanked so bad and then I was threatened a PIP and went on mental health leave afterwards. (Learning to enjoy life again one day at a time!)
My manager (my only life line) signed off on my leave wished me well, but in the same week left the company in some way and there is a lawsuit that is apparently happening. I’m getting emails from legal to not delete any data involving my interactions with her. Obviously tuning my resume now and trying to find a better gig while on leave, but was so bad mentally I was constantly dealing with suicidal ideation and pure despair.
Now we get to my question. Do I sign that form to not delete my data now or when I get back? Also if she is suing, should I be doing that as well after my leave? And if I don’t find something, do I go back and essentially weather that storm to bolster a case? I think it would be better to be fired and get unemployment than quit upon arrival. Is there a possibility they think this is on my mind and will want to just get me out the door with a package to keep my mouth shut?