sales training (lyn)

Spend the day doing my census job.  If, like in WeightWatchers, there were stars to be given out, I’d get one.  I’d get many.  I bet I’d even be made a Lifetime Member.    I work hard, take my job seriously, am resourceful, and most importantly, produce results.  Now having said that, I don’t think it matters.  I am not, nor ever have been, the keep-your-mouth-shut-don’t ask-questions-just-do-your-job-type employee.  I mean really, so what if every day new rules are added that make no sense, inhibit my ability to get the job done, and are given no rationale for existing?  Why can’t I just say nothing, do my job, and collect my weekly paycheck?  My life would be so much easier if only I could.

29 years ago, I was a new assistant product manager at Gillette. I was one of six recent business –school grads (M was another of the six).  As part of our training, we were each given a territory in some part of the country and sent out to be salespeople for six months.  To be a good marketer, it is key to understand sales.  I was sent to Portland Oregon and M was sent to Louisville Kentucky. 

I arrive in rainy Portland in January 1983.  I spend a few days with my territory manager (a womanizing man named Bill), find an apartment, rent furniture, organize my accounts, get a car, and am set free.  I have never had a sales job before and am determined to be good at it.  And I am.  I befriend my clients.  I make good decisions.  I drive up and down the coast of Oregon, clocking in almost 1,000 miles a week.  My numbers are amazing.  Better than anyone has ever performed for my territory. 

One day, Bill’s boss comes up from LA to spend a day in the field with me. Andy, a seasoned, larger-than-life, jovial man who oversees the West Coast, is a fixture at Gillette.   I pick him up at the airport and we spend the next six hours or so driving around the Portland area, calling on my biggest client, Bi-Mart, and making stops at the little mom and pop stores in the area.  Everything goes splendidly.  We talk.  We laugh.  We discuss business.  By the time the day ends, I’m sure I’ve made a good impression, maybe even a new friend.

A few days later Bill calls and asks to meet me at the airport.  He’s flying in from Seattle just to see me, and I know the news can’t be good.  I remember saying to M at the time, “Well we know he’s not flying in to promote me.”

Bill has reserved a conference room at the Portland airport.   He greets me with a letter of reprimand, listing about 10 infractions, ranging from picking Andy up late at the airport (not true), to not properly stocking shelves (also not true) to over-selling customers (something I didn’t even know was possible).  Apparently, I had been doing too good a job, and Andy was not happy.  “No East-coast MBA is going to come out here and show up our sales force who have been doing just fine, thank you very much,” or at least that’s what I imagine him thinking.

I spend the weekend writing a 3-page, single-spaced response (before the days of computers; it took me more time to type it than to write it).  It was, perhaps, one of my best-crafted letters.  To this day, M still remembers and sometimes quotes our favorite line from that letter.  I had been falsely accused of always turning in call sheets late.  In truth, I had sent in one call sheet late.  In Bill’s letter he said something like,  “You always turn in call sheets late.  As an example (and then he went on to cite the one and only example.”  In my response I wrote, “The example you cite is not an example.  It represents the totality of the infraction.”  I copy my management in Boston.  I want to come home.

But I don’t.  To the disappointment of Bill and Andy, I stay on.  I scale back on my client-calls, sell fewer cans of Right Guard, question nothing, and everyone is happy.

Lesson learned, albeit not so well:  Doing a very good job is not always the best strategy.  Doing the job your boss wants done is.

In frustration, I end the day with an after dinner, after dessert, bowl of grapes at 10:30pm.  At least it isn’t a bowl of candy.