Five years running, I’ve been given the distinction of being the company’s best worst salesman. It’s a kind of recognition that most people would be afraid of, but I consider it an honor. At the beginning of every fiscal year, the department hires a new gaggle of salesmen. And at the end of the year, they fire the lowest earners, no matter what. We could all sell very well, but they would still trim the fat. I’ve always kept my name on the black side of the leaderboard. Why do I do this? Why would I work so hard to succeed so little? I dunno, probably because I don’t care about the organization I work for, or the products we sell. There are tons of other companies who sell the same thing, and I honestly can’t tell the difference. They’re just windows, dude. Just windows. Do I earn lower commissions than the other people on the sales team? I sure do, but not by that much. Ya see, one day some bigwig was reading about how detrimental the commission sales model was to productivity. He decided to make a change, but instead of going all the way, he just capped commission earnings. His reasoning was that he wanted to meet in the middle of two extremes. He figured it would lower labor costs while maintaining just enough incentive for us to do a good job. But of course that doesn’t work, because once anyone reaches the cap, they just sort of check out. The only reason anyone works hard is to stay out of the red side of the leaderboard and keep their jobs. Has this contributed to Analion’s recent scandal with deadly defective products? I don’t know about that. In fact, I imagine the death toll would have been higher if more people had bought our crap. So, ya know what? I’m actually a hero, aren’t I? That’s right, I saved lives by preventing people from buying things that could kill them. They should make me president of the whole company. I’m sure there will be a spot opening. Word is that the current president is about to fall from grace.
No comments :
Post a Comment