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Dear Quota Team,

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I’ve been with my company for 10 years. I’ve been working in sales for the company for the last 6 years. We manufacture custom building products and used to be some of the top products available in the market. Things seem to be going downhill. Our prices have skyrocketed miles above our closest competition, and we aren’t investing in keeping up with the newest industry demands.

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One of my recent frustrations is we must keep a specific minimum margin for our quotes, but sales staff cannot see the margins. We must request a discount approval for every quote and then management tells us what the margin is at that discount. Every product seems to have a different margin, and it can differ greatly from each quote depending on how many of each specific item there are. It’s a complete mystery until you send the quote in for approval, and this process can take days depending on how busy management is. In turn, the customer has to wait longer for their quote.

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We have asked management to allow us to see the margins to save time, but they said it’s not possible, and act like they don’t trust us with this information. Is this normal?I think my time at this company may be coming to an end and I am starting to look for a different company to work for. Things have been very frustrating for the last 4 years and they keep saying things will change and get better and they just don’t.

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In the Dark — Location withheld 

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Dear In the Dark,

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This level of distrust is not normal, especially since it's directly hurting your ability to serve customers. Trust your gut—you've given this company more than enough time to change. Before you go, you could band together with the sales team in a last-ditch effort to address the problem to management—but be prepared that giving them an ultimatum could lead to firings. Good luck!