Sometimes, you have to let people do their thing just so they can see how bad of an idea it is.

This guy had to deal with sales manager who wouldn’t give up on a terrible idea.

Result?

Keep reading to find out!

I already said we were going to do it, so just do it.

I work on an IT team for a small company, and one of the things we support are marketing campaigns for our company.

So to set the cast, let’s call my boss Kathy and there’s Peter the sales manager.

Peter wants to make it big.

Peter has this brilliant idea of targeting a cross section of two audiences for a new marketing campaign.

He pitches it in a meeting and everyone gets super excited about this.

After the meeting Peter asks Kathy to set it up.

Kathy doesn’t fancy the idea.

Kathy pushes back immediately saying she is confident that this new audience is not worth our time, and it is maybe 200 potential customers (out of 200K).

Now Peter has a LOT of sway in the company and doesn’t want to admit he made a mistake about ‘his’ customers and said ‘well I already said we were going to do it, so just do it.’

He did what he was asked for.

So I put in the requirements and it is worse than Kathy thought: 47 people.

Once again, this is escalated to Peter, who insists we just do it and he complains we are behind schedule on getting this done (admittedly it has been a few business days because we did not prioritize this stupid request).

I pass along the new audience to our marketing folks who design a campaign, set up a couple of new pages on the website etc.

The results aren’t satisfying.

Now re: profitability: Our average transaction sales are pretty small, but a lot of repeat transactions from our customers.

But just with the time I’ve spent on it there is no way this campaign is paying even my salary, much less everyone else who spent time on it.

Kathy doesn’t want me to spend another second on it, BUT … Peter, who again, we have kept in the loop this entire time, wants to see it in our Power BI reports for the sales team and the C suite.

He makes sure Peter knows it isn’t working.

Normally something this small would be rolled up into an “Other” category, but hey Peter wants to see it so I make sure that it is listed. In the updated bar chart there is a line of text at the bottom, no bar associated with it because after 4 weeks:

Clicks: 2

Sales: $0

He got what he wanted.

I was not at the meeting after this went live but I heard Peter went on a long spiel about the growth potential of this new campaign.

Kathy and I are confident he’s going to put it in his self review about how innovative he is. Assuming he still has a job.

Geez! Peter clearly learned his lesson. But guess he isn’t going to admit to it anytime soon!

Let’s check out what folks on Reddit think about this story.

This person loves the story!

This person has a personal opinion.

This person knows what Peter did.

This person wants Peter to see the consequences.

This person has on opinion on sales people.

If anything, Peter will think twice before giving an idea!

At least, one could hope.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.