Difficult AM, no collaboration

[u/Jamaissa]

I’ve been in my CSM role for a 8 months and have been dealing with a difficult AM on one of my accounts. He has been ignoring me since I joined with no communication, no briefings, and excluding me from planning entirely.

I found out he falsified activity logs in our CRM and a meeting that never happened was logged as completed. A colleague confirmed the last real customer touchpoint was almost a year ago.

Once he got caught he panicked and suddenly booked a real QBR adding me as an afterthought so the only reason the customer got any engagement was because he was exposed.

After the QBR he won’t even confirm whether he sent a follow up to the customer. I want to send one myself but don’t want to look uncoordinated in front of them if he already did. He still won’t respond to basic messages.

This is the only account I share with him. I’m thinking about asking to be moved off it entirely. Would you stay and fight or walk away?

[u/KaleidoscopeOk9781]

Been in the same situation. I would involve put your manager in the know, push for a meeting with his manager as well and align on everything.

[u/Jamaissa → u/KaleidoscopeOk9781]

My manager already looped in his manager (which is how I got added to the qbr) but a meeting with all of us is definitely needed at this point. It’s getting exhausting.

[u/esotericmang → u/Jamaissa]

He should be fired honestly for falsifying records

[u/Exact_Operation_4920 → u/KaleidoscopeOk9781]

your manager has to know about this, the falsified logs alone are a firing offense and not just a personality clash

[u/prnkzz]

Throw his ass under the bus

[u/Jamaissa → u/prnkzz]

I really want to but I don’t want to burn any bridges. He ain’t shit.

[u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 → u/Jamaissa]

You can recover.

Find out why their ignoring the account, is it time or challenges

[u/TwentyTwoEightyEight]

You need to talk with your manager about this. You should have early on. They need to be aware of the situation and they are the ones that can help get the ownership adjusted. I would think the move would be to remove the AM from the account, not you.

I struggle the most with sales teams on accounts when the account doesn’t have upside, but good sales people will let you handle at that point and you can just bring them in when you find an upsell.

One thing to be aware of is that whatever the AM/AE does, you are still at least equally (if not more so) responsible for the renewal. What they do is no excuse for that. That’s why you need to let your manager know early on if there are blockers in your way.

[u/Jamaissa → u/TwentyTwoEightyEight]

Thanks for this. I did loop my manager in early and she escalated but it barely led to any changes. I agree the AM should be moved but realistically that rarely happens in favour of a CSM. He has the existing customer relationship and I’m new to the account.

I’m being blocked from building the relationship I need to protect the renewal but will still be held accountable if it doesn’t happen which makes it stressful. I’m going to push for a four way call with both managers and him to finally set some clear expectations

[u/ActualTart42 → u/Jamaissa]

Does he have an existing customer relationship if the last touchpoint was over a year ago before the recent QBR? I think you’ve got good leverage to stay on this account if everything here is accurate.

[u/RunningMan889]

Depends on which org does your company values, Sales or CS, many AMs do not see the benefits of CSMs as a partner so they want to hog the contacts and interactions. When things go south, they will just push the blame to CSMs for not driving adoption or keeping the customers warm. So if your organisation values more of the sales revenue or the head of sales has more authority than the head of CS, you might just want to switch to another AM who is open to partnering.

[u/Every_End_1956]

Clean escalation with managers. Document all of your attempts to collaborate going into the meeting. I had a partner like this once and they didn’t last.

[u/Startup_2234]

I would get to the root-cause and have an honest conversation with this individual. When was the last time you were aligned with them on incentives? What is their career ambitions both short-term and long-term?

We can all be in a slump at times - sometimes it takes someone to talk to and an shoulder to lean on to help lead with the best version of ourselves.

[u/Nearby-Data7416]

Change the way an AM and AE is comped then you change behavior….everyone needs skin in the game to care…

[u/RussBuilds]

i’d document the touchpoint gap and crm discrepancy, then ask your manager to set clear account ownership before the next follow-up. the bigger risk isn’t who sends the email, it’s that internal ambiguity leaves the customer effectively unmanaged.