How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Salesforce In 10 Easy Steps -- Step 1: Focus Group

Bryce was just about the worst combination of tall, handsome, blond, charming and married you could imagine. But he was also a killer salesman and our manager knew how to send him in for the kill. He'd been salesman of the year about five years running here in the LA territory and there wasn't any chance of that letting up any time soon. As long as our manager left him alone to use the Santa Anita racetrack as his conference room, the most expensive LA restaurants as his closing dens and every other man's wife as his "network" it seemed the sky was the limit. His boyish charm was in full throttle still at 39, but there was a feeling the playing field was about to change. We'd all heard the rumors about this new marketing manager being brought in from Europe to HQ in New York to shake things up.

When I got there in the fall, there was a motley assortment of sales talent we called "the team" but there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of teamwork going on that I was witnessing. I'd been a saleswomen for about 10 years by then and they brought me in as a senior salesperson -- a woman -- to bridge the gap betweeen Bryce Bennington's high octane testosterone selling style and the quiet, extremely elegant mild-manner rock-solid-technical knowledge sales strategies of William (never Bill) Sanders. At 45, William had been through it all, was unflappable, the classic 42 Long, and had deep and respected industry contacts that were unassailable and a multimillion dollar deal gravitas any salesperson would envy. When this man handed you a Mont Blanc, you signed on the dotted line without missing a beat and you knew he was giving you the pen for keeps and you wanted it.

I'd been there about four months when we all got called into a Monday morning meeting by our manager. Mary Carpenter. Mary was a great manager, a perky blond in her late thirties, still very pretty, but wonderfully momish now. Lately I got the feeling she seemed ready to throw in the towel -- just stray remarks about her kids, husband, laundry got me thinking that. As a mom of three boys, there was nothing Bryce could throw at her that she couldn't throw right back at him. And she and William were a terrific team, they'd worked together at IBM before this current salesforce, so they were like two ice skating champs, ice dancing their way across the rink to a peppy waltz, never missing a step.

I should have known that third kid at home, now only about 9 months old and her husband's promotion to a new position in his law firm would spell disaster. It was a rainy January day in LA that all Los Angelenos dread. Two weeks after Christmas -- my tree was still up complete with little surfboard ornaments. A cold (45 degree) slanting, pummelling rain was hitting the beach as I drove in from Redondo. There's no coat in your closet that would keep you warm and dry enough. Your suede shoes are in grave danger. Everyone's cranky.

"Okay, first of all, big news our of New York. The new marketing manager, Francois Granger, has a plan you'll all want to hear. Conference call in about 15 minutes," Mary said.

"I'm not calling anybody Francois. What kind of frigging name is that anyway?" Bryce jumped in.

"Down, Bryce, down," Mary said. "And one other important piece of news, I'm leaving."

"Holy Guachamole!" Bryce was up in a flash, grabbing his blond locks, with a big "oh my aching head" gesture of intense pain.

I could tell by his reaction he really hadn't seen it coming, but with the slight shift of William in his chair next to me, I sensed that he had known for a while.

"Mary, tell us the story," William said in his Easy Listening Radio Station voice. He was really a very attractive guy, but solidly married in the opposite way Bryce was -- you never even considered flirting with him, but instead went to him for fatherly advice and were always glad you had.

The rest of the room knew what was really going on -- Mary leaving meant a battle royale of the Alpha Males about to take place. Bryce and William would be up for the slot and it would not be pretty to watch what happened to the guy who lost. I was too new to be considered and the other three were too junior.

She explained her husband wasn't just being promoted, but being asked to go to HQ in New York and they were moving by end of February.

The conference call time was approaching so there wasn't much time to talk about who would be taking Mary's place. There was six weeks to worry about that, but I got the sense from her switch to the topic of Marketing that there was bigger smoke going down in that area, with this announcement from Francois Granger.

We dialed in and Mary went about the diplomatic stuff, welcoming the French guy, introducing us, making the usual stupid jokes about LA and the beach and the rain.

Granger began a long, almost incomprehensible presentation about the new direction marketing was taking. To say he had a heavy French accent was an understatement.

Bryce was clowning around from the beginning and Mary made sure the MUTE button was ON, so as to avoid any embarrassments.

He was saying something about "Focus Groups" and the way he pronounced "Focus" sounded a bit like something rude.

At the end of the call, we all made happy horse shit noises (as Bryce liked to call them) of "thanks, welcome, we're eager to be working with you" and hung up.

Bryce launched into a mildly hysterical white board parody of the speech drawing out a diagram and labeling all the internet boxes "ZXTML" and pronouncing it with a phoney French accent.

"Since you lousy lazy-assed salesmen know nothing about Zee XTML, I shall demonstrate zee way zee French do it. Zee XTML is more fun zan a barrel of Maginot Lines! And zee Marketing guys here in zee headquarters know better than you silly salespeople who actually spend zee time visiting zee customers. We don't need to talk to zee customers! We do not need to talk to zee salesmen! What we need is a good FUC-US GROUP! "

"Bryce, cut it out, " Mary tried to stop him, but had no energy for it.

He went on "Yes, boys and girls, if there's any thing Marketing knows how to do to salespeople, it's how to FUC-US!"

This made the room instantly erupt in laughter and I remember thinking it would be a classic moment for all of us. It was a moment in time we'd all refer back to as things began to change. There was no doubt things were about to evolve. If you asked me that day, I would have put money on William being our new manager by March and Bryce having a lot of trouble with that. But it was still January and I was no tarot card reader. Mary managed to calm the room and get us back into the work day and on our way out to see clients, or even off to some dreaded paperwork, whether it be the loathsome wrangling of expense reports, or worse, some form of reporting our sales activity.

By four we were all in the bar downstairs at the Chinese restaurant, drinking stronger than usual drinks, playing with our little pastel drink parasols, flirting a little, whining a lot and wondering what was headed our way. The subject of conversation was an old standard. How marketing sat up in the war room making maps, sticking little pins into the different quadrants, making decisions for salespeople who had to do the real dirty work. They poked a little pin in a map of LA with a red paper flag attached to it but salespeople were in the trenches doing the real heavy lifting -- not weilding a push pin but rather thrusting a bayonet in the belly of the prospect, to bring in the bacon. Bryce was explaining why this was the reason marketing people didn't know Jack and salespeople couldn't help hating them. It was another of his "real men are in sales and everyone else is a wimp" storylines.

On the drive home I found myself laughing out loud at his great pantomime of Francois's speech on focus groups and wondering if there ever was a simple way to get sales and marketing -- oil and water -- to mix. There might be something really valuable about getting a conversation going between the two. We might all make some money out of the deal. Nah, I thought as I turned into my rainy driveway, too good to be true.

[This is a fictional account of a fictional salesteam. What's that thing they say, "any ressemblance between real live people and these people is no good reason to sue my ass" ... you know what I mean.]