Sometimes, managers underestimate the importance of certain roles until things go south.

What would you do if someone under you cut you out of a major deal only to come back in a panic when everything fell apart?

In today’s story, one sales engineer faces this exact scenario.

Here’s what happened

Manager thought my job role was unnecessary, learns the hard way it wasn’t

About 20 years ago, I worked in the technology field as a sales engineer, supporting sales reps.

A new sales rep manager joined the field team and didn’t like the control sales engineers had over the sales process.

Because I was the lead sales engineer, he decided to make me an example of his brilliance.

He got a very large lead with a Bank and proceeded to close a very large deal without involving any sales engineers at all.

Just after the deal closed, he called to gloat, saying something to the effect of “The biggest deal this month, oh wait, you did not participate at all.”

It didn’t take long for that big deal to turn into a bigger deal.

About a month or so later, I get a call from that manager, in a bit of a panic, and I partake in a conference call with the customer.

It is decided I need to come to the company for a meeting.

At the meeting, I figured out the sales manager and the sales rep totally ****** things up and sold the customer an incompatible set of solutions. In the meeting, I casually mentioned that maybe the customer could return one bit of stuff and replace it with another, as they were roughly the same price.

After the meeting, the sales manager started screaming at me for mentioning the price – price was the exclusive domain of the sales rep! He calls my manager, who **** all over me.

I didn’t like my manager at all, so when he took the sales reps side, I said **** you and quit. I send a very lengthy defense of my actions during the meeting to HR.

Here’s where things took another turn.

Four months later I get a call from another sales rep still at the company, he asks, “Hey what happened at XYZ Bank? They are suing us.” I call XYZ Bank and get the email for the CIO and send them a letter explaining I was the sales engineer for the company you are suing, call me.

They eventually sent a lawyer to interview me and get my side of events.

My testimony was devastating to my former company’s defense; I showed the Bank the letter I sent my HR, in which I claimed, ‘Our company lied to the customer to get a sale.’

Eventually, my former company’s lawyers subpoenaed me to testify in the Bank vs. Company lawsuit.

By that time, I was working elsewhere, hanging out on Yahoo stock message boards and bashing the company’s stock.

Then, an innocent message board comment came back to bite him.

One day, another sales rep from a distant territory that I still talked to called me to say that a huge deal we had worked on for over a year had just fallen through in dramatic fashion.

I posted it to the Yahoo message board devoted to that stock. The stock crashed $13 the next day, and I wondered if my post had anything to do with it.

About 6 weeks after the stock crash, it’s the day before I was supposed to get deposed in the Bank vs. Company matter, I got served with a lawsuit by the company; they had used the SLAP laws to get my identity from Yahoo and sued me for the post that crashed their stock!

Finally, things turned around for him.

So I went to the deposition the next day, and said, “I’m sorry, the company you represent today just served me with a law suit last night, this deposition is over!”

They were dumbfounded.

It turns out there were two separate legal teams, one working on defending the company against the bank’s suit and one finding that pesky internet troll who crashed their stock.

The two never noticed the same person was central to each other!

The company settled with the bank and dropped their suit against me soon thereafter.

That long letter I sent to HR, turns out the managers above me didn’t read it.

Once the lawsuit was over, the sales rep, the sales manager, and his manager were all fired.

It’s funny how things work out.

Let’s see how Reddit readers relate to this situation.

This person suggested something else he could’ve done.

Here’s why engineers guide salespeople.

Great point.

Another reason engineers are important.

Lots of mistakes were made here!

Hopefully, everyone learned their lesson.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.