When Your Boss Just Doesn't Get It (And How to Fix That)

Ever feel like your boss doesn't actually care how you do your job? Like, as long as the numbers hit and nobody's complaining, they're not bothered about the details. They don't want to hear about the strategic planning, the relationship chest you're playing three moves ahead, the fires you're preventing before they even spark. Just, are we hitting targets? Are the customers happy? Great. Moving on. Not bothered how the sausage gets made, just that it keeps selling. If you have ever wanted to scream. There is more to this job than just keeping everybody quiet and hitting the numbers. This one is for you. Hello and welcome to the Cam Club, the podcast where key account managers get real about the challenges that keep us up at night. Hello, I am Warwick Brown, your favourite cam coach. And today we're tackling something that drives most of us absolutely mental. Getting your boss to not only understand but care about what key account management is all about. So picture this, right? It's your quarterly portfolio, account review, your internal stand up meetings, whatever you want to call them. You've been up since 6am Perfecting your client updates. You've got insights, you've got strategy, you've got beautiful slides showing the health of each relationship. You start with your biggest account. So they're going through a merge right now, which creates some interesting. Are you going to hit your numbers? Well, that's what I'm trying to explain. There's a freezer. But will you hit your numbers, yes or no? Now, if we can navigate the merger, and that sounds like a no. What about account B? Well, they're actually in a great position for expansion because once they knew CFA when. Sorry? I said when will they expand? This quarter, probably Q3, because. So that's also a no for this quarter. Next account. And suddenly your carefully crafted 30 minute presentation becomes a 5 minute interrogation where the only acceptable answer is, yes, I'll hit those numbers. Even when you know that's not how strategic accounts actually work. Or what about this one? Even better. Your slot gets cut short because somebody else's numbers got dissected for 45 minutes. So now you've only got half the time in which to say what you wanted to say. But they're not listening. All they're asking you are the same bloody questions different ways, hoping you'll crack and say, yeah, fine, I'll magically hit the target, despite everything I just told you, no problem. Sound familiar? I mean, I have countless stories, don't get me started. Here's the thing. Managing your boss is often harder than managing your biggest client. At least you know your client chose to work with you. Your boss really doesn't have a choice. But we're going to flip this today. Instead of moaning that they don't get it, we're going to show them our value by helping them succeed through what we do. And honestly, whether you're called a key account manager, an account manager, an account executive, a business developer, customer success, or just that person who keeps the big clients happy, if you're trying to explain long term value to someone obsessed with short term results, I've got you covered. All right, so let's figure this out. What's actually happening here? Your boss is drowning in quarterly pressure. Board meetings, pipeline reviews, where are we on the numbers? Conversations that happen every single week. Meanwhile, you're talking to them about relationship building initiatives that they might pay off next year. It's like you're playing chess and they're stuck on snakes and ladders. All they want is to be the first to land their counter in the final square and maybe hit a bonus round or two. So let's have a little bit of empathy for the boss. I think understanding the environment that they're navigating can really help you shift your mindset a little bit because you have to remember a lot of what you do, your important work, it's invisible. You're preventing churn before it happens. You're identifying problems before they explode. You're building trust through dozens of small interactions every single day. And none of that shows up in the CRM as a neat little activity report that says, hey, save the company 500,000 today by having coffee with somebody. So I know it might sting a little bit. And maybe your boss has a right to be skeptical because it's hard to quantify that value. So sit with that for a second. If you can't clearly connect your activities to business outcomes, maybe they're not as strategic as you think they are. Harsh maybe. But that's the question your boss is asking, even if they're too polite to say it. So here's a quick exercise. Think about your last three client interactions, relationship building activities, whatever they were. For each one, can you put a dollar sign on the risk you mitigated, the opportunity you created, or the efficiency you identified? If not, then that's your first problem to solve. Now, before we get too frustrated with leadership, let's also acknowledge something. The problem may not be that they don't get it. Maybe you're speaking different languages. You know your boss speaks revenue, you speak relationships and trust building. It's like showing up to a French exam and answering in Japanese. It might be brilliant, but. But you're still going to fail. Now here's something that I used to tell my team all the time. I said, what I want you to be able to do is when you see the VP or the CEO or the GM just wandering through the office and they say, hey, how's this count A going? I don't want wishy washy answers, right? Don't say, oh good. You know, so and so is away right now. I'm going to see them in a couple of weeks for some training. Say solid performance year to date. We're on track to meet forecasts. And. And I've got a proposal in for an upsell that could land 50k by the end of the quarter. Can you see the difference? Same activities, but completely different story. And here's the thing, whatever language your boss speaks, learn it. If you're reporting to a founder, they probably care about growth and new opportunities. So talk growth. If you're reporting to a sales director, they care about pipeline and conversion. So talk pipeline. If you're reporting to an ops person who somehow ended up managing customer facing teams, they care about efficiency and process. So you guessed it, talk process. The more you sound like a CFO when you're talking about your accounts, the more your boss will trust you with strategic decisions. Numbers create confidence. Fluff creates doubt. Now, I know it feels wrong to reduce your beautiful, complex relationship down to a set of numbers. It feels like a betrayal, right? Your customers are more than numbers, more than margins, more than spreadsheets. But here's how I like to think about it. It's not that I'm not telling my client's story, it's that I'm translating their story. So try this. Tomorrow, practice your elevator update for one account. That's the 30 seconds maximum that you might have in front of somebody senior to talk about revenue performance, pipeline status, specific opportunities with dollar signs attached, no relationship fluff. Save that for the team meetings and let me know how you go. I would love to hear from you. So let's reframe this a little bit, right? I say this all the time. I don't need my boss to do my job. That's what I'm for. I need my boss to do their job. That means being my champion, you know, getting the word out in the organization about the good stuff I do. That means helping me get pay rises and bonuses. That means creating the environment where I can be my best, removing obstacles, getting me resources all that kind of stuff, right? So don't try to educate your boss about account management. Seriously, just stop. We don't all have the luxury of having a dedicated VP of account management that's been through the trenches. Oftentimes you're reporting into founders, commercial teams, marketing teams, operation teams. So focus instead on making your boss successful through the work that you do. And give them the tools to be your champion, to tell your story to their boss. Think about it. When your boss goes into leadership meetings, what do they need to say that makes them look brilliant? They need to say our key account management program delivered X percent growth this quarter, prevented X millions in churn risk and identified another X million in expansion opportunities. Not our team is building really strong relationships. I've learned this the hard way. Years ago, I tried to tell my boss all the details of like stakeholder mapping, business reviews, capture planning, all that kind of stuff. It was a waste of bloody time. You know what worked? When I started giving him one page summaries, he could literally forward to the CEO and suddenly I was his favorite person. Now here's something that might ruffle some feathers. Stop trying to get credit for your work. Now look, I don't mean the big rocks, right? The milestones. But you don't need to have every single thing that you do attached to your efforts because it's a team, right? You're all working together, your boss included. So the more invisible you make your efforts while making the results visible, the more valuable you become. Your boss doesn't need a blow by blow description, right? It's kind of like being a ghostwriter. Nobody knows you wrote the bestseller, but you're the one getting hired to write the next one. So here's a little exercise. What would your boss need to be able to say about you, your work, to get more resources, more support or more recognition from their leadership? Are you giving them those talking points or are you giving them process documentations and email updates and bullet points they'll never read? Think about it. So let's get practical and think about some tactics to help make your boss your champion. First up, create a monthly business review that your boss could literally forward to their boss without editing or even a little dashboard, a slide that's going to give them the highlights of what's been going on in your portfolio. It's easy and it doesn't take a lot of time, especially with like ChatGPT and Garra app and all these great tools that are out there right now now. So the thing I want you to know Though, remember this. Write it in whatever language the big boss speaks. Don't say relationship health is strong. Across the portfolio. Say account retention is 94%, six points above our benchmark, protecting, you know, $2.3 million in annual revenue. Don't say we're building strategic partnerships. Say key accounts show 23% higher growth rates than our transactional accounts, contributing 60% of total growth this quarter. Okay, lots of different ways you can position it, but short, sharp, sweet, impactful, whatever, whatever. And look, you can even chat with your boss, right? Say, listen, I want to give you some more proactive, clearer updates on my portfolio. Tell me what you need. Here's what I'm thinking. Does this suit you? One thing I would say, make sure that they're using what you send them. One time I couldn't send my boss some reports, and he goes, oh, don't worry, I haven't been reading them anyway. I said, well, since when? He goes, oh, March, like six months ago. Six months of me sending these weekly reports. Didn't even open them. So whatever you do put together, be proactive, but validate it. Make sure it's going to add some value, you know, to your boss. And you can always put some footnotes or a little commentary that relates your. Your activities or your efforts to those results. So it could be something like, you know, our account management approach is creating barriers that competitors can't replicate quickly. Client X told me they rejected company Y because of our strategic review process. So it's not like you can't give some context. It doesn't always have to be exclusively numbers. You always want to add a little bit of insight to go with those numbers to tell that story. But it's just going to be much more briefly and the focus is obviously numbers. So an action for this week. Create a business case document your boss could use to justify more resources for your function. Now, that doesn't mean extra headcount. That could be getting some software approved or some training approved or, you know, some job craft, whatever it might be. Think small, right? We're dipping our toes in the water here, but create that business case and include things like retention rates, growth differentials, competitive wins, risk mitigation. Make it so compelling they'd be mad not to invest more. In fact, you could build a business case for why you should join the Cam Club. The Cam Club is my membership community for key account managers. I'm going to put a link to the Show Notes. Actually, I have a, a manager approval toolkit that might give you some inspiration to get your company to pay for your membership, but inside you're going to find training courses, tutorials and even one to one coaching with yours truly. So yeah, if you've got nothing else to position as a business case, why not try that little shameless plug there now? Have I said this already? If I have, it bears repeating. Treat your boss like your number one client. That will make your life so much better, easier. If you want a book on the topic, I recommend picking up a copy of Managing up by Mary Abhijay. It's a brilliant book for understanding different boss types. I actually did some videos. I did a video on managing your boss and I also just recently put a video out around office politics. So I will put links to all of those in the show notes. So check those out@tkcpodcast.com I've already talked about this, but different bosses need different approaches just like different clients. And one of the things I'm always looking for is how can I compliment them? How can I fill the gap where their weaknesses might be? How can I be the yin to their yang? So if my boss is terrible at long term planning, then I will pick up the slack and become their strategic thinking partner. If they hate detailed reporting, I will become their translator, the person that distills those numbers into manageable chunks. If they're scared of client escalations, I will. I'll become the early warning system. So instead of complaining or moaning about their shortfalls, about their lack of skills in certain areas and thinking well, they should be able to do that, they're the boss. How about you step up and fill the gap that's going to position you for succession planning. As a second in commanders, all sorts of opportunities may come your way simply because you embraced your boss's weaknesses and said hey, I could help you there. Keep that mindset up and at that and you know, execute, your boss is going to think that you walked on water. So the big question is if you mapped your boss as a stakeholder and thought about them in the same way you did as your client's procurement contact or as anybody senior in your client's organization, what would you discover? What are their personal wins? What's their priorities right now? What would make them look good to their boss? What do they need to accomplish to get their bonus at the end of the year? You probably don't know. I would challenge you to find out so you know your boss's lack of understanding about key account management or your job. Whether you're in customer success or Sales or business development or any role isn't really a character flaw. Well, mostly not a character flaw. It's usually a knowledge gap. But more importantly, it's an opportunity for you to become indispensable. The best account managers, whether they're called key account managers, accounting executives, CSMs, whatever, they're also the best internal influencers. You're the bridge. You're the conductor, as they say. I want you to understand that success depends on creating internal champions, not just external ones. And maybe probably the most controversial thing I'll say today is that your boss doesn't need to understand your methodology. They need to be able to articulate your value to their stakeholders. It's a massive difference. So stop trying to teach them your process. Start giving them the ammunition to fight for what you need to help them create the environment where you can succeed and be your best. Are you making your boss's life harder or easier? They're not the enemy, right? They're a stakeholder who needs different value propositions and than you're currently delivering. So stop waiting for them to get it. Start making them wildly successful through your work. Because when they win, you win. When they look good, you get resources. When they can defend your value, you get respect. Talk like a cfo, think like a strategist. And always, always make your boss the hero of your story, just like you do with your clients. So if you're struggling with any of this, you don't have to figure it out alone. Pop over to the Cam Club where I run open office hours every Tuesday and Wednesday. That means one to one coaching to work through your specific strategy for getting your boss on side. Because sometimes you just need someone who's been there to help you think it through. And honestly, haven't we all been there? Every single one of us has had that boss who just didn't get it. The difference is whether you let that stop you or whether you turn them into your biggest champion. So until next time, Cam fam. Keep building those relationships both inside and out, and I'm going to see you in another episode real soon.