Manager who won’t mange: at a loss

I have a sales manager, who we’ll call Z, who simply won’t execute on managerial duties, follow-ups to conversations, or remember details to almost any conversations pertaining to accounts.

I’m genuinely at a loss on how to handle this scenario. Z has a habit of saying they’ll do something and not do it. You ask Z how the process is going and it becomes continually postponed for some (insert excuse).

Anytime I call Z during business hours, you can hear them outside watering their garden, going on a walk, taking care of their kids, etc. To make matters worse, Z has a habit of calling and texting well after business hours for questions that have no urgent excuse as to why it can’t first thing the following business day.

It happens our area is a highly competitive and a largely producing territory that requires extra finessing. There’s been no effort to secure meetings with internal stockholders to help our mission to quota. Of all the territories in our region, Z has invested little to no time meeting and strategizing with me or my internal stakeholders in efforts to sell to our customers.

I’ve been documenting our conversations to a T, just because I felt like I was losing my mind as Z kept talking me I was outright incorrect or vaguely misunderstood. I’ve found a fine balance between telling Z tactically they are wrong and this was our previous understanding, and thankfully they’ve been mostly receptive.

And before we discuss reporting to Z’s boss, the director who we’ll call G, G appears overbooked, overworked, and has clearly made it known to communicate with their managers first. G was approachable in the beginning but as the whole region grew, they’ve become inaccessible and objectively aggravated when we do reach out.

Anybody have ideas? I don’t want to refer to the age old “just quit” mantra because I genuinely love what I do, but the lack of ownership and involvement from both direct and upper management is making OTE an ever elusive goal. Not feeling good about this…