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dimondwind
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NWMR: Changing Job Responsibilities
dimondwind
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in Working Moms
Mobile users: NWMR: Changing Job Responsibilities
I work in marketing for a small business. They never had a marketing person before, and were losing business like crazy. I've been there for a year and a half and have succeeded in retaining our current users, but only attracting a small group of new users.
My boss has decided that the only way to get new people is to cold call them. Like, make sales calls. Everyone on my team is expected to do this.
I HATE getting these calls, and the thought of being a sales person and calling people really bothers me. It's not what I signed up for when taking this job, and it's def not in my job description.
My solution was to email people instead, and if they responded I'd then follow up with a call. That way it's not cold calling, and I wouldn't feel too awkward contacting them since they already started a conversation via email.
My boss found out I was doing this and I got reprimanded for it. I'm pretty upset.
So be honest am I in the wrong? The way I view it is that I was hired to do marketing, not to be a sales woman. It's not in my job description and I feel very awkward doing this.
Should I just suck it up?
I work in marketing for a small business. They never had a marketing person before, and were losing business like crazy. I've been there for a year and a half and have succeeded in retaining our current users, but only attracting a small group of new users.
My boss has decided that the only way to get new people is to cold call them. Like, make sales calls. Everyone on my team is expected to do this.
I HATE getting these calls, and the thought of being a sales person and calling people really bothers me. It's not what I signed up for when taking this job, and it's def not in my job description.
My solution was to email people instead, and if they responded I'd then follow up with a call. That way it's not cold calling, and I wouldn't feel too awkward contacting them since they already started a conversation via email.
My boss found out I was doing this and I got reprimanded for it. I'm pretty upset.
So be honest am I in the wrong? The way I view it is that I was hired to do marketing, not to be a sales woman. It's not in my job description and I feel very awkward doing this.
Should I just suck it up?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: NWMR: Changing Job Responsibilities
In my opinion, yes, you were wrong. In a large company you can be secure in what your job entails but I think small businesses require positions with lots of flexibility. If you don't want to make sales calls, and it is now part of your job-- you need to find a new job.
Now, if your email then call method had some success, you can point that out and explain that you believe cold calling will turn people off-- but he doesn't have to agree with your or change his expectations.
But, you have to listen to your supervisors instructions. You can give him/her other suggestions but in the end, he has final say.
Considering how uncomfortable the new job responsibilities make you, I would start looking for alternatives.
I also don't like cold calling. But it sounds like your job is in getting new business, and your year of efforts has not worked out and you need to be realistic about what else has to be done to be successful. I don't blame your boss for being upset about the emails if there was an explicit conversation about everyone making calls... I recently had the same thing happen at work, someone who reports to me kept emailing someone about something and was not getting the desired response and I explicitly said in a meeting that a phone call was needed the next day on it. The next day I got follow up from the person that another email was sent. I said, did you call? the answer was no. I ended up having to send an email saying "please call xyz today" so that there was no perceived confusion and documentation of what was asked. My staff took offense to me giving a directive in that manner but I took offense to the clear lack of respect for my request when the email route was clearly not working. And once the phone calls started, we got the desired result.
Good luck. If you hate it that much and it is expected to be a big part of your job you should probably start looking around. Maybe it will be a temporary activity, will drum up some business and you'll be able to go back to what you love.
I'm not in sales, but I'm regularly on the receiving end of these sorts of calls. I would hardly say I HATE them; it takes a minute of my time to hear someone's pitch. If I'm busy, I let it go to voicemail. Many of the "decision makers" you're calling will have assistants screening the calls anyway.
I also have to make the occasional uncomfortable call. Again, I grit my teeth and do it. The worst that can happen is someone says "no." It's just business. No one should be taking things so personally.
P.S. I hear all the time that in the age of email, calling people is a dying art and actually a valuable skill to be able to list on your resume.
I'd walk out of a job before I did cold calls.
If I wanted to be any annoying pest I would have gone into sales.
No one who works in marketing should feel like sales functions are somehow "beneath" her. It's two sides of the same coin: marketing generates leads and sales closes leads. Without sales coming in, OP wouldn't even have a job. It's a vital corporate function.
Is your boss a marketer? I suppose some of this depends on your position and his...
I manage VP-level people. If I made a suggestion about how they might be able to be more effective in their roles, I'd hope that rather than just ignore what I asked them to do, they'd challenge me a bit if they had a better idea. Similarly, if my boss was telling me to do something that I thought was ineffective, I feel like we have the kind of relationship that we could talk through my concerns.
If you can kind of find some data to support your position - that an email prior to a call is more effective - then present it to your boss. But if you don't think he'll respond, you probably don't have much of a choice - you should find another job.
Good luck!
I can totally see where you're coming from. Selling is not my strong suit, and if my job suddenly became something I didn't feel comfortable doing, I would definitely take issue with it.
Rather than going around your boss entirely, I would bring up the concerns with him. Is this anticipated to be a long term expectation of your role? If you're not comfortable with doing so, is there another position they can move you into? If it's going to be ongoing and you're not comfortable doing it, I'd think at that point its time to start looking.
Marketing and Sales are completely different functions.
Sure sales is important but cold calling is the bottom of that profession. And again if someone wants to see they should go into sales. This person applied for a Marketing job, responsibilities should be Marketing related.
Thank you everyone for your honest and constructive feedback. While I am not happy or comfortable cold calling people, I will suck it up and deal with it. I guess I'm concerned that I won't be successful at this since I'm not comfortable with it and I'm not very pushy...and I don't want to get a bad review because I'm not making sales over the phone (even though my past reviews have been great, doing what I was hired to do).
Gah - anyway, maybe it's start time to start looking for a new job