I’m compelled to write. It’s lunch, my habit as I eat my lunch is to scroll my LI feed. Fortunately, I have a strong stomach, so reading the feed seldom creates indigestion. But in the space of 5 minutes I saw two important posts. In different ways, calling out bad behaviors.
The first was a well intended person. He described sitting on a plane overhearing someone talking about how much she disliked sales people. This person was offended, needing to write a chest thumping piece about the greatness of sales people. He highlighted our hustle, grind, relentlessness, discipline, focus, resilience.
He talked about what it takes to be a high performing seller. All of which I was in vehement agreement.
But implicit in his discussion was, sellers are different and special. And that’s where this individual lost me.
I commented that I could have done a global replacement to every time he mentioned sales people, with product designer, engineer, manufacturing engineer, ops specialist, financial analyst, and so forth. The characteristics of high perfomers in any role in our organization are similar. They all require hustle, grind, relentlessness, and everything else.
The underlying traits of high performers in any role are all very similar. Our jobs and how we demonstrate those characteristics in doing our jobs are different. But, the degree to which we perceive ourselves as different or better than, is simply arrogance. And it is this arrogance which inhibits our ability to connect with those people we have to connect with.
We aren’t any more or less special than anyone else in the organizations. Our jobs are difficult and challenging, as are the jobs of any other persona in the organization. I know design engineers trying to develop the next gen AI chip that does more, faster, at lower energy consumption. I know manufacturing engineers trying to produce tons of highly sensitive medical materials–that contribute to saving thousands of lives. I know financial analysts trying explore how their organizations leverage each dollar spent with greatest impact. All are challenging, all are important, all are different.
The other error this person made is he got angry and resentful, but didn’t do anything about it. What if he had spoken to that person on the plane. What might have happened if he had said, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help hearing you express your dislike of sellers. I’d love to learn more, I’d love to learn what we should change…..” In my mind, it was such a lost opportunity. A chance to learn and maybe adjust our own behaviors. A chance to help someone else see a different perspective.
Now, I’m being overly critical of this individual. He wasn’t trying to be arrogant, he was just expressing his pride in selling and his frustration with how sellers are often perceived. But in his reaction, he was expressing his blindness. And it’s this conscious or unconscious blindness that can be devastating.
The second post was a fantastic post by Todd Caponi. Todd has a perspective on selling by deeply understanding the history of sellers and by being one of the best practitioners/experts I have met. Todd was expressing his frustration, one I share, with the advice of experts and gurus he sees in his feed. This expert was advocating “winning through lying.” What disturbed Todd, wasn’t just the opinion of the guru—there are idiots calling themselves gurus everywhere. What disturbed Todd were the hundreds/thousands of likes, and hundreds of comments in agreement.
It becomes a question of integrity. And if we have no integrity, what do we stand for?
While Todd’s example was extreme, I see so much that is questionable practice. How do we manipulate the customer, how do we get them to do what’s good for us, but may not be the best thing for them? What are the “tricks of the trade?”
And, while we may not be conscious of this, why do we let these experts and gurus manipulate us to do things we know aren’t right?
Do we care? Do we have any pride? Why do we permit this, why don’t we call it out?
And then, to connect the dots between these stories, perhaps we can begin to understand why this individual so dislikes sales people.
There’s a problem with this kind of post. The people this will resonate with don’t need it. They already know these things and practice them everyday.
The people that most need to read this, reflect, reconsider, will never see it. They aren’t looking for it, they aren’t asking themselves these questions, they aren’t reflecting on what it means to be a high performer of the highest integrity.
And that makes me sad.
And it frustrates me. We can and must be better.
Afterword: Here is a concise but great AI discussion of this post. Enjoy!
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