Casualties of change
I just got back from someone’s leaving drinks. Not mine, I hasten to add, but a sales guy from an advertising network I buy from who’s packing it in and taking a major life changing step with his GF, moving out of London and completely changing sector. Great guy, great company. In fact, they’re one of the best I’ve worked with and totally deserve the above well-anchored link (and even a similar link on a better ranking blog). I’ve been working with this guy since my very first days of doing online marketing and he was one of those rare people who made me realise not all sales people are slimy, greedy bastards who only look at short-term gain. I’m really happy for him for pursuing his dream, but the whole thing got me a bit introspective (in a 2 double vodkas sort of way).
Are scummy sales people chauvinistic as well as slimy?
Over the past 2 years, I’ve had the misfortune of having to deal with lots of sales people. I can count on one hand (and a bit) the amount of sales people I’ve dealt with I would consider to be pleasant, well-adjusted individuals. The majority of people who ring up to speak to me are pretty lizard-like. I really hate it when people use scummy sales techniques of pretending they know me to get our CRM team to pass me the call.
Some of them are also pertty rude to the person who takes the call and then all smiles when they get through to me. I’ve asked our CRM team to let me know if someone’s been particularly curt with them on the phone, because I am generally mistrustful of fake and greedy people who put down those they think are unimportant so they can make a quick buck. As far as I’m concerned, a company that employs such people to promote itself is not likely to be a dependable, ethical company and I would need a pretty good reason to deal with a company I don’t feel I can trust. Sadly, lots of companies use nice salespeople but are still pretty unethical, but hey, if you’re lucky enough to get an eyeful of nature’s warning signs (think black and yellow spiders), you may as well take a step back if you can.
The good life
Sometimes I do love my job. Although most of my work involves sitting in front of the computer answering emails and looking at reports, occasionally I get to do stuff that is far more spiritually rewarding. Like being bribed. Today, for example, one of our major advertisers took me out to lunch at Ping pong which is pretty damn cool by any standard. I’d never been there before but had heard a lot about it. It’s wicked. The food actually had that elusive bit of X-factor that most food in this country lacks. I had the special jasmine tea with the flower that opens up in the water. How cool is that? I had to help it along with a chopstick cause it didn’t want to turn over and sink to the bottom like it should, but that’s besides the point. It was still pretty special. One of the advertisers confessed to always getting a round of those for newbies like me for street-cred value. I can see why.
As an extra clever achievement, I brought along our head of dev for the free lunch, thus ensuring I’m in his good books without any actual effort on my part. Years of working in clubs taught me how to spot the people you need to keep sweet if you want an easy life. If you want an easy life at a club, you get pally with security. If you want an easy life doing online marketing, you get pally with the techies. Unless, of course, you want to do all your own technical dirty work, which I am not particularly inclined to do.