Your sales manager may not wake up thinking about your problems, but they do wake up thinking about you. (Without you and your problems, your manager is out on the street.) It’s up to you to determine which of your problems need to be co-owned with your manager.

First and most importantly, your manager never wants you to lose business alone. In other words, if you feel a deal is going south, rope in your manager fast and let them decide which part of the cavalry needs to be engaged.

Last, your manager needs to know what weight you can handle; they need you to tell them what you can and can’t handle. And that becomes very hard for any proud and ambitious seller.

Hint: get over the pride and actively engage your manager; let those discussions guide you toward future decisions about leveraging your manager best.