Garth's World

Sales is for Humans

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Monday I celebrated the legacy of the great Martin Luther King Jr.by going to an afternoon movie (hey, at least I admitted it) called “Up in the Air.” I chose that film for two reasons: A) I read the book-on a plane, no less- and I wanted to see how much Hollywood would water down the sarcasm and satire of the original and B) because I have a man crush on George Clooney. Both inclinations were fully realized, although there was still a high enough concentration of corporate buffoonery for me to be entertained. Also, the screenplay was completely re-written to the point where every scene and character was new, which was a good thing, because the book didn’t bother with simple details like having a plot.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give into the secret belief that all people who write blogs have that they really would be great film critics if given the audience. Any jack^ss with a gift for synonyms for the word “awesome” could fit that bill. I want to relate an idea in the film that struck the sales person in me as true, and if I can be so bold, important.

Getting a Leg Up at your Sales Kickoff

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    Guess who's back?
    Back again
    Shady's back
    Tell a friend

        - “Just Lose it” by Eminem

Just Lose It - Eminem

Happy New Year, everyone! I thought I would buck the trend of all the other “business” blogs out there and wait a couple weeks into the year to post. That is about how long the average person needs to renege on a bunch of hair brained resolutions, or in my case finish reading all the end-of-year pop culture magazine compilations of the Best and Worst (I’m addicted). Remember the last end-of-decade/millennium time? I was actually rooting for the Y2K bug (a now hysterical prediction of the complete meltdown of the world’s computer systems due to  a collective over site by early computer nerds to realize that there would be a need to use more than 2 digits to indicate the year after 2000) so I could hit “reset” and slack off around the planet for a year or so.  That ultimately happened in 2001, but I digress…

Image by designwallah via Flickr

It’s company sales meeting time! I originally wrote about these corporate masquerade balls a couple of years ago, but that was more of a general comment to sales leadership that they should only hope to accomplish the delivery of a somewhat reasonable sales compensation plan during the few days they spend in the cramped meeting room of a chain hotel in Scottsdale, Orlando, San Jose- or whatever tier 2, semi warm city.  Now that the economy has gone to hell in a hand basket (love that expression, although there is no clear visual), the nature of these meetings has changed quite a bit, and I thought maybe I could give some pointers to sales guys for navigating the murky waters of the 2010 annual sales meeting.