Some salespeople need anger management

Published: Wed, 06/22/22

June 22, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back to The Quota, the newsletter your sales manager can’t get mad at you for reading because it has to do with SALES. In this week’s issue, we’ll tell you the story of Chris Gardner, the man whose story inspired the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. We'll also show why controlling your anger in sales is important, and give some advice to a rep whose coworkers are getting preferential treatment. Enjoy!

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

The number of people employed in inside sales is growing at a pace of 15% every year.

Source: Deskera

SALES ROUNDUP

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

A door-to-door salesman recently saved a homeowner’s life in Killeen, TX after noticing a house fire while walking past the man’s home. Adam Martinez, a 24-year-old salesman with Auto Hail Repair not only saved a 67-year-old man’s life after dragging him out before the blaze exploded through the windows, he also went back and retrieved the man’s Chihuahua, whose name was… Dog. You can read the entire story here.
In another act of sales heroism, a 28-year-old car salesman was recently reunited with a customer whose life he saved after the latter suffered a heart attack while waiting for his car to get serviced. The 82-year-old man suffered cardiac arrest while waiting in the showroom, and the salesman came to his rescue, using a defibrillator to administer an electric shock while another customer performed CPR. You can read the story here.

FEATURE

The story of Chris Gardner, the inspiration for the movie The Pursuit of Happyness

Will Smith’s name has been in the news for other reasons lately, but long before “The Slap,” he took a turn in one of the most popular sales movies of the last 20 years, The Pursuit of Happyness (yes, the misspelling is intentional).

The Pursuit of Happyness is based on the life of Chris Gardner, a self-made salesman-turned-stockbroker-turned-philanthropist who went through untold hard times before finally scraping his way to success.

Gardner’s life was rife with turmoil from a young age. After enduring a turbulent childhood where he was predominately separated from his parents, Gardner felt a strong need to be self-sufficient in his adult life. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became a medical specialist, then made a connection with a celebrated surgeon who eventually offered him a position as an assistant at the University of California Medical Center. Over the next three years, Gardner developed contacts and experience in the medical field, and a career as a physician seemed to be the next logical step.

But it wouldn’t come to pass. Gardner needed to pay the bills, so instead, he utilized his experience and pivoted to selling medical equipment. Prior to his career shift, he only made around $8,000 a year as a research assistant – equivalent to about $26,000 by today’s standards. He quickly doubled that salary, an early sign that he had a knack for sales.

Everything changed for Gardner after one particular visit to the San Francisco General Hospital. He met Bob Bridges, a man who drove a red Ferrari and made $80,000 a month. After striking up a conversation, Bridges took Gardner under his wing, and organized meetings with major brokerage firms on Gardner’s behalf in hopes of landing him a position in a training program. Eventually, E. F. Hutton took him in, and under normal circumstances, the rest would be history.

The thing is, Gardner had all but abandoned his hustle of selling medical equipment while he was shopping around for an internship – a period of 10 months. Gardner had also racked up $1200 in parking tickets while attending interviews. This all came to a head after a domestic dispute with his girlfriend Jackie, resulting in Gardner being detained for 10 days after police learned about his outstanding fines. This ordeal put Gardner at rock bottom; Jackie had left, and once he was released, he found his apartment empty. Thankfully, he was still able to secure a position in Dean Witter Reynolds’ stock training program, but this role was completely unpaid. Eventually, Jackie returned to give Gardner custody of his son, but he was left with no income outside of what was now his side hustle of selling medical equipment, which wasn’t even enough to afford a place to live.

With the stakes as high as possible, he tried to make his mark during the training program by marathoning cold calls. As The Pursuit of Happyness famously shows, Gardner wouldn’t even hang up the phone between calls in order to increase efficiency. He even avoided drinking water so he wouldn’t need to “waste time” using the bathroom. While Gardner has since admitted that cold calling is “not a big part of [his] business,” at the time, he says it was “a numbers game.” (Sound familiar?)

This unparalleled effort eventually paid off. Gardner was able to pass his Series 7 Exam and moved on to proper employment at the firm, which officially got him off the streets for good. Aside from inspiring a hit movie, Gardner eventually started and sold his own firm, Gardner Rich & Co, and has since become a prolific philanthropist.

It’s a success story almost too unbelievable to be true, but that’s exactly what makes it so compelling. For some people, success is a lucky break. For Gardner, luck may have been on his side at times, but more than anything, his success is a result of sheer defiance of the odds. As he puts it, “you can be down and out, but only as down as you let yourself be.” Not a bad lesson to learn.

TOGETHER WITH LEADIQ

You just got a list of new accounts. As you're prospecting, you realize you're blocked from being able to reach out to almost half of them because you can't find any data.

Do you give up, start guessing emails, call main company lines... or do you complain about it to your dog as we do? Even if you're using the best data providers out there, you're missing an average of 30% more opportunities to connect with your prospects. Adding a second data source will give yourself an advantage over your competition.

So how can you use free data tools to reach more prospects? Find out more in this blog made for subscribers of The Quota!

If you'd rather take our word for it, you can try LeadIQ free right now. We'll even throw in 100 additional captures for the first 30 days. That's 100 chances to book your next meeting. The best part? After the first 30 days, you'll still get 15 free captures a week after that. Claim your bonus captures today!

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

What is the average age of an employed salesperson in the U.S.?

A. 41
B. 38
C. 44
D. 32

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).

“Currently, I work for a big tech company, but I put in a few years selling timeshare earlier in my career. It can be a pretty sleazy industry, and the company I worked for wasn’t exactly at the top of the charts for ethics, but I wouldn’t say that the majority of us were out to screw anybody over (at least I wasn’t).

In my time there, I saw a ton of crazy stuff, both from the sales reps and the customers (and sometimes, the owners). The guys who owned the company each made like $80k a month, but somehow, between paying for their huge houses and their supercars, they were always on the edge of being broke. They spent it as quickly as they made it.

The absolute craziest thing I ever saw happened when a new guy started on the sales floor. He was one of those guys who liked to show off (the watch, the designer sunglasses, etc.) but he was pretty cool and seemed laid-back, which is why what happened was so surprising to me.

We worked on the fourth floor of a building that had floor-to-ceiling windows. The view wasn’t anything special, just a parking lot and highway, but it made our business feel more “official” since we had basically the whole floor.

One day, about a month after the new guy had started, he was waiting on a prospect to call him back to get some paperwork signed for a deal the prospect had committed to. I sat next to him so I heard and saw everything with my own eyes. He had spent the afternoon trying to get ahold of this guy, but wasn’t getting a response. Finally, the prospect called him back and canceled the deal. I could hear the new guy struggling to close it, but the customer had been talked out of it by his family or something like that.

So the new guy hangs up the phone. But he doesn’t just hang it up, he slams it. Then he slams it again, and again, and again, then rips the phone out and slams it on the desk. Then he picks up his chair, and throws it as hard as he can against the window. It bounces off, so he picks it up, winds up, and starts slamming it against the window over and over again until cracks started to form.

We’re all (the sales reps) just watching with our mouths open while this guy is grunting and screaming and trying to break the glass. Finally, one of the owners runs out and grabs the chair out of the guy’s hands, then very calmly starts saying “it’s okay,” before walking him to his office and then (with another rep) walking him out of the building. He never came back. It was by far the nuttiest thing I ever saw at work, and I saw some pretty nutty stuff.”

Anonymous Florida

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- April 2022

WORTH A PEEK

Markets are in troubled waters, which (unfortunately) means more uncertainty for sales teams. Enter the sales geniuses at Gong, who launched Gong Forecast, a forecasting tool to track every buyer touchpoint so you can see which deals are on track to close (and which ones are not…). It’s arguably the most comprehensive and reliable forecasting solution on the market, analyzing everything buyers say, read, write, and engage with so you can get a real-time view of every risk hiding in your pipeline. Uncertainty is certain, so make sure you can drive accurate forecasts – learn more here.

Lots of people read this newsletter for the sales stories – it’s consistently one of your favorite features according to the weekly feedback form. Well, we recently discovered a relatively unknown book that has plenty of sales stories, and not just random ones, but stories from some of the most successful salespeople of all time, including Mary Kay Ash, Joe Girard, Tom Hopkins, and many others. The book is called The Greatest Sales Stories Ever Told, and was written by David Shook in 1997, but it’s still as entertaining and relevant (for salespeople) as ever. You can learn more or pick up a copy here.

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,

I’m an inside sales rep for a large telecom company. I sell B2B cable and internet services, and have an assigned region that I’m allowed to cover. Currently, I’m working remotely, but we’re probably going back to the office within the next year since my company is more of an old-school giant when it comes to stuff like that.

My problem with my job and the reason I’m writing this is because of unfair treatment from management and coworkers. Basically, what’s happening is the top producers on my team get deals handed to them by customer support and management refuses to do anything about it to make it fair. I am a good salesman and deserve to get equal opportunities, and not just the leads that are given to us through our queue system.

The other unfair thing is the territory assignment. Other teams have better territories so they can close more deals and make more money than our team, whose territory has been sold-through for years (the newer territories where our provider doesn’t have a foothold has way more opportunities).

I feel like it’s completely unfair the way our company is operating, and I feel that I deserve the chance to make as much money as the top performers. Should I just leave to go work somewhere else or is there anything that can be done? Keep in mind this is a major company that’s on the Fortune 500.

Frustrated in Maryland

Dear Frustrated,

Let’s start off by saying that some of what you describe does seem a bit unfair – specifically, the fact that customer support gives leads to some reps, but not others. If we had to guess, this has to do with the relationship between the support reps and the sales reps, and no clear process in place by the management team. So in that regard, we empathize with you and your concerns.

That being said, there really aren’t many situations in life where things are 100% fair. And in a role like sales, sitting around and blaming outside circumstances for your setbacks won’t accomplish anything… meaning, there literally is no benefit to focusing on what is and isn’t fair when there are plenty of other things you could be doing to better your situation.

This might sound harsh, but you should stop focusing on what you “deserve,” and start finding ways to achieve your goals. It’s possible that the reps who are getting fed leads have an unfair advantage, but that doesn’t mean you can’t outwork them in other ways, and close more deals despite the fact that you don’t have a special backchannel. And, by the way, there’s nothing stopping you from developing your own relationship with the customer support team – they did it, why can’t you?

The point we’re making is that you can sit around all day long and think about what’s fair, what isn’t, and make up a million excuses for why you’re not where you want to be. But those types of thoughts and conversations don’t get you anywhere, they’re just ways we try to make ourselves feel better without putting in the effort to figure out a solution. So if we were in your shoes, we’d focus more on what we could be doing, and less on what other people are up to.