Don’t Work For Idiots In Sales

<p class="MsoNormal">Bullying, humiliation, ridiculous stretch targets, rubbish goods, stress, shame – a toxic cocktail often suffered in the sales environment.  We often get into sales by accident.  There are not many varsity business courses in sales.  There is sales training available, provided by companies like ourselves, but often this is not offered by the employer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The assumption is you look after yourself.  We won’t invest in you and what’s more, we will fire you, if you can’t make your numbers.  “Churn em and burn em” is the dominant ethos.  The successful salespeople ride the favourable market conditions through until the inevitable downturn.  If they survive that experience, they often wind up being the sales manager.  Battlefield commands come on the back of your officer being removed by HQ or by the enemy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is a high turnover rate in sales both when people fail or succeed.  In either case, you are out the door and off to somewhere else.  The survivors who don’t want to move on the greener pastures, often become the bosses. They continue the toxic culture regardless of how stupid it is, because that is all they know.  It worked for them, so it is supposed to work for you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The client in all of this is the “mark”, to be harvested, to have their cash extracted and then abandoned to their own devices thereafter.  Often in bad sales organisations, area salespeople have to cover big territories. This is because they can only hit that one market once.  They are selling a lie.  Their product is not matched by good quality relative to the high price they charge.  They have to scarper with the cash and get out of Dodge.  They are like sharks, which have to keep swimming around in order to breathe.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Who decided it would be like this?  Not the salesperson.  They join a company and then discover the disconnect between the cost and the value, between the public rhetoric and the internal reality.  By this time th