Winners and Losers

Watching TV just saw a commercial for a program about an olympic swimmer, Victor Davis, who "had the hopes of an ENTIRE NATION riding on his shoulders, as stated by a woman in the story." Can you imagine the pressure? You must win at any cost, winners are hero's, and losers are...well losers, and who even remembers them, let alone their names? It started me thinking...
This is a mindset that exists, unfortunately, not just in "sports," but even more so in life. Being in sales, I've seen dozens, hundreds of guys, and gals, that subscribed to the same philosophy, winning at any cost, make the sale any way you have to, lie cheat, anything to make the sale. It's usually not by choice, although I know there are those out there who think this way naturally. That aside it's usually an aquired mindset, endorsed, taught, and pushed by over-aggresive, greedy, (or sometimes afraid for their jobs or don't know any better), sales managers who put dollars into their own pockets, everytime a salesperson makes a sale, however they made it, and learned by basically honest people who believe what they're told, that it's the only way that they can earn a living. After all, buyer's are liars, ask any sales manager. Personally that one never made any sense to me, how can a buyer be a liar? Looky loo's are liars, that I get.
When I was selling solar water heating in the mid 80's I worked with a guy named Jeff, or it may have been Geoff, who was literally the top salesman in the office, and also VP of sales. He looked like Michael Douglas from some angles and George Hamilton from others with a great tan. He had a condo in I think Balboa, and a house in Newport Beach for his ex. She also had the Rolls and Jag. Poor guy, he was stuck with the Porsche Turbo. From what he said about half his income went up his nose, and still he lived like a king, making half to three quaters of a million per year. How, you ask? I know I did. I saw literally the best salesman I've ever met, but he didn't believe it. I saw him work, as I said, and with all his skill and talent, if it took telling the prospect that the sky was purple, or that they'd recoup their investment in six months or kicking back x dollars, he'd do it to make the sale. He had entire housing developments where if a house was sold, someone would visit the new owner and suggest that they talk to Jeff, I was a ridealong on a couple of these, they were true laydowns. He told me that he kicked back $4-500. per referral. He was convinced that winning however he did it was key to survival, he didn't care what he had to do, he would win, and the prospects would lose. Losing, not making the sale, to him was completely unacceptable. There were about 15 of us in that office, and most of us would bring in 12-13 sales a month, Jeff normally brought in 40 to 50 every month. He had a 50% fallout ratio and still outsold everybody else. The reason was that while yes he was probably technically  no better than the best of us, getting the sale, bringing home the gold, winning, was vital, more important, to him than to us.
The sales manager that demands honesty is rare indeed, they are out there, but few and far between. The same thing applies to salespeople, those with honesty and integrity are there, and are more common that most customers would ever believe. I am one of those and so are most if not all of the salespeople I work with at Rascal. Yes, there have been those that I describe above, but for some reason they don't last in the VA div., perhaps it's selling to the VA that's the reason.

Lee Murray