Why you should always double check your emails before hitting send

Published: Wed, 03/09/22

March 9, 2022

Welcome back. We hope your March is off to a great start. The end of Q1 can be a bit precarious; the weather still sucks, you have to file your tax return, and the only sense of urgency from prospects is when they're booking cheap flights for their Spring vacation. In this week’s edition of The Quota, we’ll tell you the story of how RadioShack tanked their business by going all in on cell phone sales, bring you a Sales Fail that shows why you should always double check your emails before hitting send, and give some advice that concerns workplace dating. Let’s go.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

The median number of SDR-sourced appointments per AE per month.

Source: The Bridge Group

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

The Minnesota Timberwolves decided to poke a bit of fun at one of their owners: former Yankees star Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez, who, along with entrepreneur Mark Lore, bought a stake in the basketball team in 2021. In a video released by the team, Rodriguez joins the sales team by hitting the phones in an effort to sell memberships. Unfortunately, A-Rod’s sales skills leave a lot to be desired, at least according to the video. You can watch the short clip here.
Microsoft is just the latest company to halt all sales operations in Russia after the country’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. From Apple to Disney, to Ikea and Accenture, U.S. - based companies are fleeing the Eastern European country en masse, leaving the fate of the $1.5 trillion dollar economy uncertain. You can read an updated list of all the corporations that have pulled out of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine here.

FEATURE

"RadioShack Ann Arbor" by Nicholas Eckhart is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

How Radio Shack doubled down on cell-phone sales (and went out of business)

It makes sense that a company named for a device that many Gen Zers have never heard of has slipped off the map, but not many people know that before it declared bankruptcy in 2017 for the second time, RadioShack was nearing its 100th birthday.

Radio Shack (yes, it was two separate words until much later) was founded in Boston in 1921 by two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann. They sold both ship radios and radios for amateur gadget enthusiasts, so it made sense that they named their company for the “radio shacks” where radios were housed on naval vessels.

Despite its rapid growth in the following decades, partly aided by its foray into music, RadioShack had its first brush with bankruptcy in the 60s. Charles Tandy, a leather retailer, bailed out the company by buying it for $300,000.

As CB radios reached the height of their popularity in the 1970s, so did RadioShack. In fact, by that point, they were opening three stores a day. But neither trend could last forever. As the demand for CB radios waned, RadioShack started selling the TRS-80, one of the first personal computers widely available to consumers. It even outsold Apple at first, but that trend couldn’t continue either, as Apple and IBM started selling more powerful computers and RadioShack couldn’t keep up. In the 80s, they added cell phones and satellite TVs to their shelves in an attempt to move with the times.

And here’s where RadioShack’s focus on cell phone sales ended up costing them dearly. From BuzzFeed:

“As the cell phone market boomed, RadioShack concentrated on selling not only the actual cell phone but also service plans and accessories — even negotiating deals with cell phone carriers to receive percentages of customers' monthly fees. By 2011, cell-related sales accounted for 51% of RadioShack's $4.4 billion in sales."

"Due to their success, RadioShack stopped carrying legacy products, and its staff was trained primarily to sell cell phones. However, carriers soon began opening their own retail stores. Between 2000 and 2015, RadioShack's marketing lost focus and management saw constant shifts. This resulted in six different CEOs between 2006 and 2016 and in different slogans such as, "You've got questions, we've got answers," and, "Radio Shack: Let's Play," which confused and failed to connect with customers. On top of this, stores like Best Buy and Walmart began to gobble up market share. They offered lower prices and e-commerce options, pushing RadioShack out of its niche.”

Things continued to get worse for RadioShack from there, as online competitors like Amazon and Ebay continued to undercut prices, and a $250 million loan from Salus prevented the company from closing stores. These factors contributed to RadioShack losing $1.1 million per day, according to a quarterly report from October 2014.

On Feb. 3, 2015, RadioShack defaulted on its loan from Salus, and two days later, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A 2015 partnership with Sprint Mobile in an attempt to capitalize on commissions from their sales did not go as planned. Later that year, General Wireless bought RadioShack for $26.2 million, but the company was forced to file for bankruptcy again just two years later, in 2017.

In 2020, amid declining retail profits across industries due to the pandemic, entrepreneurs Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez (yes, the sleazy garage-Lamborghini guy) invested in the now twice-bankrupt chain, this time online. Indeed, you can go to radioshack.com and purchase everything from drones to robotics kits to t-shirts with the RadioShack logo on them. Luckily for RadioShack, the 80s became cool again.

But the future of the company remains murky. “It’s a very thin line between being iconic and being dead,” Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys Inc., told ABC News of the company’s online shift. “Being iconic a lot of the time just means people have a memory of it. I’m not sure that just remembering something is leverageable enough to be able to convert something into success.”

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram-- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Before founding Salesforce, which company did Marc Benioff work for?

A. Oracle
B. Microsoft
C. Yahoo
D. AOL

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

“This actually happened to me pretty recently. I’m an AE for a software company in restaurant tech, and I got a referral from one of my customers to someone they know at another restaurant, which is actually pretty rare (for me anyway). I was pumped to get the referral and reached out to the new prospect right away.

But here’s the deal: this guy (the new prospect) is one of those people whose last name sounds like a first name, so it’s pretty confusing. For example (and this is one I just made up since I can’t reveal his identity), pretend that his name was Robert John. Confusing, right?

Anyway, when I first reached out, I got his first name right, because I was reading it off the other email. But after he responded and we started talking, I was too quick to type up my responses (what can I say, I type fast) and accidentally kept calling him by his last name. So, using the example above, I was basically starting my emails with “Hey John” instead of “Hey Robert.”

This went on like this for a few emails, but I noticed he kept taking longer and longer to respond. Finally, on the third response, he said: “By the way, my first name is X, and X is my last name.” I apologized profusely, but he took forever to respond and eventually just stopped getting back to me. Can’t tell if he didn’t like our pricing/product or if it was the name thing, but either way, I’m sure it didn’t help.”

Anonymous, 35 New York

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- March 2022

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

My company is fairly small – less than a thousand employees in one building. We recently all came back into the office after two years of remote work.

Here’s my question: our employee handbook prohibits employees from dating one another. This is very clearly outlined as a company policy. However, I recently found out that one of our sales reps, who happens to sit near me, has been dating a woman from customer service.

Apparently, the two of them started hanging out outside of work during the pandemic, and are now trying to keep their relationship a secret, but there are a handful of us who know about it, and, obviously, gossip gets around pretty quickly.

What I’m wondering is whether or not I should report them to HR? I’m not close with either one of them, but they’re very obviously not following a stated policy. I doubt either one of them would get fired for it. Should I send an anonymous message?

Wondering in North Carolina

Dear Wondering,

After reading your question, we’re left wondering something too: who made you the sergeant of the office dating police?

Seriously, is there maybe something else that you should be focused on aside from which of your coworkers are dating one another? Maybe there's something in your CRM that might be a bit more important. But, of course, that would require you to temporarily tear yourself away from being neck-deep in other people’s business.

To be sure, workplace policies can have good intentions. And the ones that prohibit relationships between managers and their subordinates do make sense. But in this case, it sounds like two people from completely different departments, who are presumably both adults, have decided to enter into a consensual relationship. Who are you to stand in their way?

Not only is it none of your business, it also doesn’t sound like there’s a problem. So no. You shouldn’t send an anonymous message. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is respect other people's privacy, especially when, as you said, they're trying to keep the relationship secret. So delete the anonymous message you've drafted, take a deep breath, and draft an email to one of your prospects instead.

Quiz Answer: A

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

Got a tip or an idea for something you'd like us to cover? Send us a message at [email protected]

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