I know the answer is to leave my job, and I am working on it.
Sales are down, and my boss – the Founder of the company, not a salesperson – is clearly getting very anxious and desperate and it's showing. I have leads I've been working on via email and then they schedule a call with me, and somehow my boss is finding out about the calls. I specifically do not include him because he has a tendency to make people uncomfortable and actually drive business away. He's very bragadocious is in a Trumpian way, like making shit up on the spot and quoting metrics I've literally never heard and know are not true.
I just sat on a call with him where he did not let me speak, so these women who have been emailing with me exclusively are suddenly talking to a guy who they don't know from Adam and I'm just sitting there looking like an absolute loser. I'm sure they could see that every time I opened my mouth to speak, he would cut me off. And he just goes on and on about how great our product is and doesn't let me show my slide deck, so a lot of their logistics questions do not get answered.
He also is doing a bunch of used-car-salesman-esque things, like he'll offer some reduced price point we've never previously offered to one lead but not to another, with no explanation for why one gets it and the other doesn't, even if it's clear that both are low on budget or that offering the other lead the deal would get them to bite. When I ask “why can't I offer this lower price point to so and so” he says things like “they're playing us, they have more money,” and I'm like well I've had a lot of candid conversations with them and they say they don't, can we extend a deal in good faith and he says “no, they're playing us.” and it's like ok….so we could make this sale right now for $30k instead of $40k, or we could lose them all together. Isn't $30k better than $40k, especially when I've been targeting this particular account for TWO YEARS NOW?
Sometimes if he warns me he's going to join a call, I tell him “we already spoke to this woman a year ago, she said xyz, etc.” and he'll get on the call and say “you and I have never met, it's nice to meet you” and the woman will have this look on her face like she's been slapped because we very much have all talked before.
My direct boss tells me not to say anything, to just leave him alone, “let him get it out of his system,” essentially. Meanwhile, I am watching my commissions sink into the sea as he just absolutely tanks these relationships I've worked so hard to create.