Why Salesdroids are evil

Some stories from my own experience

Anecdote: Ten Minutes A salesdroid came to my office asking for a job one day. I started telling him about our services, existing client base, approach, etc and he put up his hand to stop me. "I don't need to know any of that. Just give me a list of bullet points and I can be out there selling in ten minutes!" He said this as if it were a Good Thing. As you may have guessed, he did not get a job.

Anecdote: No Salesmen A salesdroid came into my office to sell copiers or somesuch. I asked him if he saw the sign on the elevators that said "no salesmen". He replied "Hey, when I see a sign like that I think it means 'Salesmen Welcome!'".

zig ziglar

It's not that they don't like you I found a Zig Ziglar pump-you-up salesdroid cassette course at a garage sale for a couple of bucks and turned it around on eBay for $27. While waiting for the auction to end I listened to some of the tapes during my commute.

Zig said: "When people don't buy from you it's not that they don't like you. They like you just fine."

Uh, no. They don't like you.

Anecdote: Willy Lomax Zig says "salesmen have been wronged by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Salesmen are nothing like Willy Lomax."

Reality check: salesmen are exactly like Willy Lomax.

"This is going to be really big!"

Why doesn't this clown remember that the last 5 ideas he pitched to me in the last year as "going to be really big!" went ass-nowhere?

NDA

The biggest buffoons with the most braindead "ideas" are consistently the ones who want utter secrecy, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and a secret handshake.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that these people are low-level grifters and junior conmen, and they don't even know it. They have the same drama addiction that the horserace bettors and card sharks do. They lie so naturally they do not even know they are doing it.

My mentor believed that salesmen were the warriors of the company; this is not true. They are profesional swindlers, operating in a seemingly straight job. Only part of the payoff is money; the rest is attention and the thrill of the "game" or "action".

Doing things differently

When I owned a company I made sure that anyone with public contact:
1) knew what they were talking about
2) told the truth
3) had the best interest of the potential client in mind.

I can't tell you the number of people that came to us because "you guys didn't BS me", the number of referrals and repeat customers, and the absolute lack of need to advertise because our customer base brought us all the work we wanted and could handle responsibly.

This page best viewed with a monitor.

You can if you are not a spammer.

Amazon.com 100 Hottest Books, CDs, Videos, and DVDs.