INSPIRATION FOR SALESPEOPLE: A COLLECTION OF HEARTWARMING QUOTATIONS TO MOVE THE SOUL
10/09
Muah... now I'm really up the river for quotes. The last remaining manager from our initial triumvirate quit yesterday, so I have absolutely no hope of getting any fresh lame quotes from work. Oh, well. I can make them up myself. That's one of the perqs of running this place.
Inspiration from the Past
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1. "Always ask questions.."
To Which I Say:
Good call, 20 Tips for Effective Selling. Who would have guessed that you could better determine somebody's needs by asking about them? It boggles the mind, all right.
Later, if you're erasing people's memories.
2. "The customer is ALWAYS right."
To which I EMPHATICALLY say:
Aim No. The customer is NOT always right. The customer, in fact, is seldom right, and should be made aware of this fact at every opportunity. The customer is a whiney old bag who THINKS she knows everything, including a) how to do your job better than you b) how the world works c) allllllll about why she doesn't have to pay for things everyone else does, and d) allllll about the evil international conspiracy, naturally involving your place of work, that is intent on ripping her(and her alone) off, be it through poor accounting, diabolic retrieval and storage of her personal information such as driver's license numbers, and of course with prices that aren't really deals. Well of course they're not deals!
Companies ARE in business to make money, after all. That said, however, we're also not out to screw them over; that's just not conducive to making money.
The stars, needless to say, did not take well to being shot.
To Which I Reply:
WThis was what my old stonecutter manager said to me after I accidentally left money lying around on a desk one night (this was the second time). Fortunately, I remained unfired, but I got this delightful assessment of my situation, quite possibly one of the strangest metaphors I've ever encountered in an attempt to inspire me. Combat medic? Oh, that's real glorious... And so what if my freaking troops are getting taken out by artillery? I can't do anything about it until after the fact anyway, so it's a pretty stupid metaphor. Then again, the stonecutter manager wasn't the brightest person around.
3. "You're like a combat medic in charge of his troops... and they're getting SHOT left and right..."
This combat medic went AWOL on the beaches of Greece and now sells flippers. Don't buy from him.
4. "He who fails to plan plans to fail."
To Which I Say:
This isn't anything that you can really say to salespeople, which is sort of why I've shifted the emphasis of this page away from that. It's now concerned with all manner of stupid quotes, and the inspiring shlock that generations of corporate geniuses have managed to come up with. This is one of my favourites. Some things you just can't plan for; say, for example, you get hit by a bus. That's a failure, be it of judgment, eyesight, or luck, that no amount of planning could account for. It's really the same with a lot of things, so this quote is largely irrelevant.
Plan for this!
This page deserves a giant ugly button! Go back home now!
Thanks to Corbis.com for most images on this page. They have really nifty pictures!