11/03/2026
Hey Marketing Directors/BDMs, can you handle constructive criticism?
For years, I walked into the wrong room.
I'd ask to speak to the Marketing Director. I'd talk about brand consistency, visual identity, design quality. And I'd watch their eyes glaze over, or worse, get defensive.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to work out why.
Marketing Directors live or die by their own decisions. So when someone like me comes in suggesting their materials could be more consistent, they don't hear an opportunity. They hear a criticism, however constructive it might be.
Everything changed when I started asking for the Business Development Manager instead.
Not because the message changed. Because the question did.
Instead of 'your design could be better' (never as bluntly as that, of course), it became 'are you losing deals you should be winning?'
Different room. Completely different conversation.
Here's something that illustrates it well. Two sales reps. Same company. Same prospect. Same week. Completely different presentations, one considered, one clearly thrown together. The prospect didn't raise a complaint. They just quietly started asking questions. About reliability. About whether this was really the right partner.
The deal wobbled. Not on price. Not on capability. On the way the business had shown up.
Marketing had done its job. The leads were coming in, the brand looked great, the awareness was there. That's when it turns into a revenue problem, in the gap between your last piece of marketing and your signed contract.
That's the part nobody tends to look at.
I've built a free 10-minute diagnostic called the TRACE Framework that maps exactly where that trust starts leaking. If you're in a commercial or BD role and deals are taking longer than they should, it might be worth a look.
I've dropped the link in the comments below...
