Sorry About My Manager...
An important customer is about to make a decision, and the account manager asks their sales manager to join the conversation. That's a logical reflex: a manager can add seniority, build trust, and help move a complex deal forward. But there's also another possibility — the manager takes over the conversation, talks too much, corrects their salesperson, doesn't listen enough to the customer, or comes across as arrogant, disinterested, or simply awkward. What happens to the deal then? Recent academic research offers a nuanced answer to the question of when sales managers should — and when they should not — be part of customer conversations.
