Sales Indignities:

• Generic business cards: Nothing says “temporary” like a generic business card. You know, the type with a blank space where your name and phone number would be. You need to handwrite your name and contact info on the card, which is made worse if you have bad handwriting.(1) If you get a job with a company that wants you to use generic business cards, you have to figure they don’t have high expectations. Management has decided to put off investing $50, until they feel better about your prospects of making it. Of course, your chances of success will be diminished by the use of the cards. What do you think of when you’re handed a generic business card? “Does this person know what they’re talking about?” “Will they be around in six months?” “What kind of company am I dealing with?”

• Gimmicks: When I sold roofs for The Home Depot I was supposed to wear an orange Home Depot apron to a prospect’s house. I never did. I wore a polo with a Home Depot logo on it.(2) But, the people that set my appointments told the customers that I would be showing up wearing the apron. I remember one time when an entire family came to the door when I arrived. They were all smiles until they noticed I wasn’t wearing the apron. Then they simultaneously frowned. They must not have owned a TV set.

• Sales results: Public display of sales results is a staple of every sales organization and completely foreign to the rest of the world. There’s a sales board displayed predominantly, usually on the first wall you see when you enter the office. The reps that are on plan, their names and numbers are written in black or green (the color of money) and a red marker is used for the reps that are deficient. Just in case the board doesn’t provide enough embarrassment, a portion of every sales meeting is dedicated to taking turns vocalizing your sales commit.(3) Nothing is more fun than waiting for your turn to speak with a sales commit of zero.

• All Hand Meetings: These are meetings that the entire sales department attends. They’re a complete waste of time. They give the managers and annoying marketing people(4)a venue to pontificate. It’s also the time when sales awards are presented. That’s fine if you’re receiving one. If you’re not, you want to throw up.

• Call blitzes: This is a sales strategy employed by desperate sales managers. They’re about as creative as a coloring book. By no means am I against prospecting, it just bugs me when a manager forces everyone to engage in an activity. If you need to be forced into cold calling, you shouldn’t be in sales. There’s usually a competition(5), and one of the worst reps invariably wins. We had one of these when I was working for the phone company. I was the only “hunter” in our department. The rest of the reps were “farmers”, which means they were account managers. Farmers don’t prospect. Of course, some guy who only left his desk when he was headed towards the vending machines or the restroom, won. He ended up with the most business cards. More likely, he robbed some restaurant’s fish bowl.

• Sales contests: If you’re on the ball, you know what you need to do and you do it. If you’re not on the ball, you have to be prodded and poked into doing what you need to do. So, who wins sales contests? Reps that need to be prodded and poked. Any good rep has a regimen, an amount of activity that they engage in each and every day. They’re not going to spike it to win a sales contest. Reps who win sales contests are like fat people who diet. Thin people don’t diet; they make it a routine to eat right and exercise.

• Action plans: Nothing’s worse than being put on an action plan. Typically, an action plan requires you to be in the office between 8:30 and 9:30 and again between 4:00 and 5:00. You need to meet with your manager daily and provide progress reports. Usually you have to cold call with your boss. This is presented as a strategy to help you make sales but it is a cloaked strategy to get you to quit. Usually, the rep being put on a plan has developed horrible work habits that can’t be corrected. For example, they routinely cold call malls and movie theatres or worse, bars and strip clubs.

(1) No matter how good your handwriting is, your printing is going to be much larger than the print on a business card. Your writing looks like Manute Bol standing next to Muggsy Bogoes.

(2) This was another indignity. Instead of The Home Depot providing us with shirts to wear, they provided us with iron on logos that we were supposed to affix to our own shirts. When I left the company, I was able to remove the logos, but they left a mark and made the shirts unwearable.

(3) Commits range from fact to fiction; from 60 Minutes to H.R. Pufnstuf.

(4) Some failed sales rep with a big personality. They routinely come up with unhelpful promotions and pricing plans.

(5) It’s even worse when sales managers have completely unrealistic expectations. They’ll always add getting a signed contract to the list of ways to score points. Like, the whole time, you were going about it all wrong. You were bothering with first appointments and proposals when all you really needed to do was pop in with a contract in hand.