I’ve been a part of a lot of companies. In my 12 years as a digital marketing consultant, I got to work with some of the biggest names in tech (Apple, Dell, Intel, Amazon, HP) as well as some small and medium-sized businesses. The leadership and basic knowledge of marketing varied widely. Today, I’d like to illuminate some of the WTF experiences I’ve had joining a marketing team that was already in motion.

A Digital Marketing Consultant

At Dell, I was part of an e-Consultant team. Our job was to parachute into projects and teams that were not performing as well as expected. My presence was often resented. I often had to dig for the information I needed, rather than expect the cooperation of team members who reported to a different VP. I got used to asking the hard questions about the easy failures I could see.

In one small cybersecurity business I joined, I was hired and managed by the VP of Marketing. The only problem was, she had no marketing training. She’d been a promoter in the film industry for years and knew the owner. Okay, so I can work without clear leadership. Dell teaches everyone to expect ambiguity, and then build plans and strategies anyway. In this company, I gave my 30-day plan. It was ambitious. I wasn’t all that clear on Joomla as a CMS, but I was experienced, so I was certain I could do it.

Immediately I was given the role of using their Salesforce database to blast out promotional emails to drive new demand. The problem was, I was told to blast to EVERYONE and to do it each morning EVERY WEEKDAY. “What?” I asked my manager. “Is there a goal?” “Yes,” she said, “More sales.”

Then, since she was unsure of her decision, she wanted to approve the email each morning before the blast-all went out. We began a morning routine at about 6:30 am each weekday. I would draft the email. She wanted to see it, so I would send her the test message before the blast went out. Then after her approval, mostly without edits, I could release the email blast and go back to sleep for an hour before I had to drive to work and sit in my cube.

Blast, blast, blast.

“The email open rates are down,” she said a few weeks in. “I think we might want to target specific accounts and make the messages more targeted.” “Yeah, do that.” And I was given the keys to the SalesForce database and pointed to some online training. Um, hold up. The woman who had been doing the blast had been let go two weeks before I was hired. Funny how that happens. She left no notes.

Blast, blast, blast.

“Sales are still down, we need to do something different.”

As I also began optimizing the website and working on putting together a new e-commerce engine for their products, I found that ONE DOCUMENT, ONE PAGE, was responsible for 70% of their web traffic. “Wait, what?” I dove into the analytics and found that most of the pageviews were looking for something similar, but not our purchaseable PDF. How could I tell my manager that most of the web traffic was bogus?

I kept looking for a solution. I tried adding more similar pages and products to our SEO site index. I tried to find other “hot topics” to promote. But, I had ZERO budget for a paid search campaign. Meanwhile, the email blasts were scaled back to three times a week. M-W-F. And blind firehose “buy now” type emails.

At the end of week two, on a Friday, my manager dropped by my cute and said, “You’ve got a meeting with Vik to present your 30-day plan.” The meeting was at 5:30 when the executive leadership meeting was over.

Turns out the company was run by a maniac who had gotten lucky in his initial idea: selling security reports on the most expensive machines and software for cybersecurity. I was trying to streamline the purchasing process, so we could try and lift sales back up.

As it became obvious around 6:15, the ELT meeting was not going well. It is amazing and humbling to the VPs of your company standing around in the hall waiting to go into the CEO’s office for over 30 minutes. It was a comedy of dunces. The door opened, they all went in. They closed the blinds so the staff couldn’t see the meeting. And they met. Occasionally, Vik’s yell would penetrate the walls and send a shockwave through the rest of us. I was glad not to be in my boss’s shoes for numerous reasons.

She came out with the others, and I was asked to wait in the small conference room while Vik finished up with one of the VPs. He blazed in, hot and bothered, and interrupted my presentation during the first minute.

“What are you doing about the sales? Our sales suck! And they are dropping!”

He was right. I was three weeks into the job.

“I’ve got a new shopping cart and sortable catalog that will be ready in a week.”

“Sure. Good. And what about the emails?”

“Those have been less effective. I think we need to put together a more orchestrated plan.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, well, we need to segment our buyers. Since we serve several industr…”

“Just do it. Get the sales up, or you’re gone.”

The following Monday, around 4:30 in the afternoon, after working a stressful day trying to push on their web developer who was dragging his feet implementing my new website features, my manager called me into her office.

“We’re going to have to let you go.” She didn’t look me in the eyes. “Today, is your last day. We will pay you for this week and next week.”

I was flushed and frustrated. I was also relieved. Working for an abusive CEO and an incompetent manager was not my idea of success. The entire company failed a year and a half later. The poor man who started on Tuesday had left a pretty good “titled” gig at a hardware manufacturer.

“Good luck,” I said to my manager. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone as I packed my cube. Most of them had already gone home. I’m still connected with a few of them on LinkedIn. While I was there I made friends and allies. I suppose I made enemies too, but I didn’t know too much or care too much about them.

Lesson: when the company is “on fire” to hire you, there might be an underlying problem.

And, despite your admirable efforts, the situation may not be winnable. There was nothing inherently wrong with their product. The CEO was an issue. And my manager, VP of Sales was an issue. The new guy did a pretty good job refreshing the site after I left. He was unable to correct the failing business model.

Learn from your mistakes. Take everyone and every opportunity at face value. I didn’t get hurt by my manager’s incompetence. I got a taste of the CEO that I never wanted to talk to again. And I was in and out of a startup in about 5 weeks. I’m wondering what the performance plan they had in mind for me could’ve been: increase online sales by 50% with no additional budget.

I knew it was a problem when I uncovered a glaring issue (the site traffic) and had no one within the company I could tell. I tried to fix it. But the toxic culture was spitting out sales guys by the week, and I was only slightly different. I was marketing. I was not a magician.

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
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