Über die Verlogenheit von Verkäufern und Business
Eine kleine Geschichte über die mentale Gesundheit von Autisten; ihrem Drang nach Wahrheit, Korrektheit und Ehrlichkeit – und über das verlogene, dreckige, hinterfotzige Raubtiergebaren von Verkäufern und ihren „Sales“, „Leads“ und „Quartalsabschlüssen“.
Von Dee Emm Elms, aus der Vogelwarte (Twitter)
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It reminds me of when I worked in a warehouse consolidating orders for a sales team. When I was hired, they did not know I was autistic, and there were two teams — basically the „regular people“ and „business“ teams. The regular people team just sold to the public and shipped orders, whereas the business team produced „quotes“ for salesmen. And the business team worked very hard to inflate their sales to „look busy,“ because the quotes were dollar-based. So they could tell their business sales manager how many quotes they were pursuing at any given moment. Since the business salespeople were judged on productivity, a big quote book created the illusion of progress even as sales didn’t exist.
I was brought in to collect product and store it with quote information attached, and to follow up to make sure orders were shipped. Part of my job description was to maintain the correct handling of this log of quotes, making sure they were shipped or deleted. My job was to review the quotes each day, collect new ones, and then contact the company to let them know the order was ready. The way the system was set up was for credit card info to accompany quotes, so that when t came time to ship they could charge the cards. You’ll be shocked to know that the credit card data was very rarely present. I know, you’re shocked. So part of my job was also to contact the customer, collect billing data and bill customers appropriately. Now, I’m autistic. And anyone autistic probably knows where this story is going already, as do neurotypcial people who know just how savagely predatory salesmen are.
So on my first day of reviewing the quote log, the first thing I did was call -every single person- on it to confirm them. I called every single company and spoke to every single person and confirmed we could or could not ship the order. Now, nobody in the company’s history had ever done this. Ever. It was usually a „floating“ figure. There were so many thousands of orders that nobody they’d hired previous had done anything but „puttin‘ out fires“. But, as an autistic person, I undertook the challenge. I spent the first week in my office alone counting orders and making call after call.
When I started working the log, the total quote value was $3,666,027. I remember that number. You’ll be shocked to know that for every valid order, there were roughly 50-100 phony ones. Disconnected phone lines (that will be important later) played a large role. For the bad phone line ones, I would use the internet to look up info on the company doing the ordering and contact the person whose name was listed on the order, and corrected the phone info and address etc for every order. And — again, shocking, I know — most of the companies scoffed and explained how „their“ rep had called with sweaty palms & coffee voice and how they’d usually just agreed to accept a quote in order to get the dude off the phone or to get him to stop calling. When I learned that was the case, I would delete the order and tuck a print out with the reason for the cancellation into a notebook I had. It ended up that I did this obsessively for 2 MONTHS nonstop, determined to hack away at the phony orders and get the number down to reality.
The salesmen, meanwhile… displayed a fury I had never seen nor experienced in my entire life. Blazing Red Lantern rage. They held private business-side only meetings I wasn’t invited to with the business manager about how they could fire me. They couldn’t, because I was the employee of the general manager, not the business manager. They wrote complaint after complaint, trying to get me in trouble. I had concrete factual evidence I had stored in order to disprove them. They demanded a Sunday meeting with the general manager as a group to try to get me fired. The GM said „Dee’s doing the job Dee was hired for.“ (The GM Related this story to me).
It got so bad that even though I’m awkward, autistic and trans, the business sales team took me out to an expensive lunch in order to try to woo me into joining the business side as a salesperson (in reality,they wanted this so they could fire me). So I ordered the most expensive things I could find on the menu and then as the food arrived told them I had no intention of accepting. They tried to convince me otherwise for a minute and I said „I’m going to stop acknowledging anyone who discusses me joining the sales team“. And they sat there — all 11 of them — eating in silence as I chowed down. Their fury grew as their quote log shrank. By the time I was finished, two months later, the total quote value was: $18,327.
They lashed out in absolute debilitating anger. Two of them lost their shit and tried to hit me in the break room on two occasions. Their last ditch effort was to claim I had lied and canceled orders without directive from the customer just to spite the salesmen. Which is when I pulled out the detailed notebook where I had written out all the corrected phone numbers, names and cancellation reasons with times and dates and other details. Whether coincidentally or synergistically or as a result, the business side folded completely three months later. These men had given me absolute hell for months, so I was not sad to see them go. One of them had explained to me I didn’t understand that business was about greasing wheels, subjective reality, dealmaking. Being autistic, I of course argued that an honest, direct approach HAD to better in the long term. He called me a fool. He gave me this horrible book:
Basically, the premise of the book is that reality is rubber and that the rules of doing business should vary by person. That you should wheel and deal with everyone and not apply rules to and the whim of people should determine your business ethics. If someone 1) demands something for free, the book argues, 2) promise it to them and then they’ll come back and — uh, do it again. 3) PROFIT
He gave me the book and I looked at the cover as the salesman told me „you need to have an attitude like this guy to win in business“. I replied „I thought business was about mutuality of purpose and not winning and losing.“ That’s when he called me a fool and told me to read it and I’d know. „Ah,“ I said. „Bob Farrell wrote this.“ The salesman beamed „Yes! You know him?“ „Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors“ I said. „YES!“ he beamed. „The company that’s currently liquidating its assets due to multiple bankruptcies.“ “ …I don’t know that that’s true,“ the salesman said. „He’s very successful and-“ I pulled up the then-current liquidation info on how Farrell’s was looking for protection from creditors due to liquidation.
I handed him back the book and said „thanks, but that’s ok.“ I’ve since read it in order to try to understand how people think like this. As I exited, this man said „DAMN IT! YOU JUST DONT KNOW HOW BUSINESS IS DONE!“ in a shriek. Two people poked their heads into the break room and blinked. I shrugged and went back to handling quotes.
The next day, there was a secret pink slip on my desk. Along with all the other salespeople. Except my letter inside was from my general manager. It said „We don’t want the salespeople to become angry today because they’re fired. Don’t make a fuss today, just go home and come back tomorrow — you’re still hired.“
I took joyful advantage of the free extra day off, and came back to work the following Monday“ (the letter said tomorrow but my next working day was Monday). As luck would have it, when I got back to work on Monday and sat behind my desk, the vicious salesman who had berated me was there. He was yelling at the general manger about how nobody understood the value of men like him any more, salesmen who knew how to MAKE DEALS! As he exited, he stared at me, walking past with his box of stuff off his desk. And, as flatly as I could, I said to him:
„Looks like they gave you the pickle.“
Now, you know that scene in BATMAN 89 when The Joker kills the gangster with the arrow pen and Bruce freezes? And Bruce starts trudging toward The Joker in Batman body language? The salesman began walking toward me with exactly that same body language. I legit became frightened. Fortunately, another of the salesmen came out of nowhere and pushed the man gently to the side and they left.
Now here’s the point of this. To me, this is precisely what needs to be done to every single bigot on Twitter. It’s not possible to actually address the false reality in which they live. We have to slide PAST that direct engagement. We need to acquire the tools to close their quote book. Advertisers — revenue streams — forums. Force them into reality. Provide facts to media that show the severe limits of their reach. Shrink their platforms. Expose, expose, expose. Arm yourself with VERIFIABLE FACT. Stuff they can’t „heh kek“ out of. They’re salesmen selling trash and wheeliedealing it. Let’s not let them.
Expose their reality. Confront them on controllable facts instead of debate. They want the fight to be out there in the „marketplace of ideas,“ but they’re salesmen and you’re (hopefully) not. Don’t be a salesman.
(Quelle)
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Das kommt mir alles so bekannt vor. Eine Wutrede über fehlende Integrität und der Schiffbruch. Ich bin auf der Seite der Guten, auf der Seite der Autisten.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
