My Top 4 Office Sales Traditions

There was a recent Print Audit thread on linkedin that asked "What are your Office Traditions"? 

I responded with one that we have a sales genie, in fact we just started the sales genie thing when I came back from the Photizo Transform Conference in May of this year.  While at the airport waiting on another delayed flight, I visited one of the Southwest themed gift shops at Sky Harbor.  I was able to pick up something for the wife and then I caught size of a neat looking handcrafted Native Indian Hopi Doll.

I bought the doll and brought it back to the office, and not one to believe in superstitions I'm named it our Sales Genie. 

We have it sitting on the front counter and for the last few weeks we would give it a rub or two before we went on appointments.  When I get into the office on Monday I'm going to burn the son of bitch because sales have been horrible for the last 30 days or since I got back from Phoenix. 

Another tradition around the office centers on some of the new hires for sales.  In our office we have eight cubicles, but doesn't it always seem like there is one of two cubicles that just can't seem to hold onto a salesperson.  With any new hire we'll make sure they don't take up residence in that cubicle.  

I've been told by others that some offices will actually have a cash pool for how long the new sales person will last.  Every one picks out how many weeks the new rep will last, if the new rep goes beyond the weeks that were picked the cash pool stays in effect for the next sales person hired and then the pool doubles. Dang, I wish I could in on some of that action.

We have another tradition to break in the new reps, we'll make up a phoney lead, but not just any lead.  We'll make up a legit lead sheet and give the phone number and address of the local zoo. From there we'll have them call for Mr. Gee Raft or Mrs. Ele Phant. 

I tell you, if you haven't done this you've got to do it.  We do it when we're all in the office, and it's a riot, on one occasion we had the rep ask for Mr. Gee Raft (Giraffe), you can here the person on the other end (cause they don't get it either) state, there is no Gee Raft that works here, and then our rep stated, "well Mr. Gee Raft called our office and left a message that he was interested in a copier and to call", with that the secretary gets it and blurts out "very funny", our rep went with, "I'm not trying to be funny but just asking to speak to Mr. Gee Raft", the secretary then states to the rep, "do you realize who you are calling, it's a zoo"  and "don't you get it"?  With that the rep finally got it and hung up.  We had a great laugh all afternoon that day!  Who says you can't make work fun!

-=Good Selling=-