ManServant

Ego

 

There does seem to be a definite correlation between sales people and the inflated ego. We all know that the bigger the ego the more the underlying and deep router issue(s) there must be but knowing this doesn’t seem to make our lives and doing business any easier.

 

There is one I have come into contact with recently; American, ex Marine, small, stocky, WW VP of Sales. His dept. has the highest turnover I have ever heard of and the tentacles of threats, fear and loathing around him seem to circumnavigate the globe.  I guess he just can’t stand the thought of anyone getting anywhere near to outperforming him in whatever shape or form.  

 

This is no great surprise however. The Ego in sales needs success and the hit of confirmation and recognition that comes with the next deal. Competition from the market and colleagues adds fuel to the fire of burning insecurity. The bigger the challenge the larger the ego and the hot air enveloping it are likely to be. The spoils of war are spent predominantly on the goods to deflect attention from pain and problems inside. Hence the Porsche, $100K Audi, Rolex Watch and bucket loads of substance abuse. Charlie was there. 

 

Sales people in our industry also aspire for City level, Master Of The Universe level status. Some actually believe they have parity. Hence the big spending expense account, wine and dining snobbery, misogyny, tailor made suits, shiny shoes, expensive aftershave, fiddling of cufflinks and constant talking about ones self otherwise known as ‘ME’ or ‘I’.  

 

Truth is however, the true City types will always outclass the simple sales guy who supplies to him. There was one in UBS I met who started every meeting with, “So, what the f*** do you want”. Or with “Remind me why you are wasting my time again”? I found it best to remain calm, smile and stick to business. This was only after the first few meetings though when I actually wanted to ram the PC down his throat.

Another at Deutsche was South African (another dimension!) who had the stock answers and objections about my company being slow, non responsive, all the time threatening to ‘cancel our relationship and go with the competition’. This chap was the biggest actor I have ever met. Initially he threw me aswell however. Truth is stranger then fiction and we always think we’ve met them all until along comes another surprise….…

Taking Stock....

 Before the halcyon days of the late 90’s and early 00’s your company stock was about as useful to you as a fading memory or creeping timber dry rot in the roof of your house. At best your monthly contribution or purchase scheme was about the worst investment you could make but as you were in this – all for one and one for all – you participated like the dutiful lamb to the slaughter and dreamt at various times in the day that your CEO might indeed eventually turn out to rival Steve Door, Duncan Wall, Bill Gates, and other clever people in the industry for whom making money was long since a thing of the past.

 

Instead those people were already starting to focus their attention on solving real world issues like poverty, disease and why it was that their favorite football team never seemed to win anything. The scheme had been sold to you as a benefit and you didn’t know any better so you signed up.

 

Suddenly, as if by magic, along came the .com boom. If you were lucky your company had already gone public. This later event did of course improve your chances of the stock purchase scheme amounting to something and combined with the options you had on a piece of paper in the office bottom drawer at home, the dream of a static caravan on the cliffs of Weymouth were starting to become vivid. And then it all changed.

 

Overnight you were meeting excited people in Starbucks outside their office so that they could tell you how much they now thought they were worth ‘on paper’. If they had done a quick calculation that morning because like all of us they could not keep their eyes of the NASDAQ, and it added up to a million dollars (Dollars always sound bigger than Pounds) then they would be asking you with crazy eyes if they could nip out for a fag after the second Cappuccino. Naturally you both knew that at some point in your meeting you should talk about the prospect’s project, next steps, and how to spin a solution against your competition but the gossip and the dream had taken over, like the red weed in War of the Worlds gripping all of us in its path.

 

All you had to do now was decide when to take action; when to sell some of the vested options that now sang to you when you opened your eyes each morning, causing your hands to itch during the day, until you went to bed at night dreaming of a much bigger caravan. Bollocks why not buy one in Spain, better still an old pile of bricks to ‘do up’ in the South of France.