April 8th, 2009 @ 5:30 am
The Addict
Check This Out: 10 Easy Tweaks to Double Your Sales |
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E. L. Sullivan
Wow! you nailed it on the head. It is no wonder sales people flop from job to job a little more than everyone else, We are just looking for a boss that does not make us miserable doing what we love.
BCNNetwork
Excellent. I think I've seen each one of these guys throughout my career---well maybe the "Addict" would currently be an exception. More and more salespeople 'hurt' by the inability to view these personality types/species objectively instead of taking it personally---and eventually walking away as Amrk has stated. Talk about a retention killer!
Tom Schaber
Geoffrey: What an absolutely hysterical article and oh so true! Seems like you managed to catalogue almost every manager I ever had. The sad part about these morons is that they will do their very best to project their own inadequacies onto the salespeople. Well done!
tom schaber
mek2466@...
This was humorously fantastic!! Everyone PLEASE read and enjoy!
Dannydire
Nice tips on how to manage Bosses and I recommend everybody to read it.
Q N Q
Hey Geoffrey, this is wonderful nomenclature; everybody would agree with it n enjoy it. Thanks !!!
t2bdriver
Had 3 of these...spot on!
dmsilva1
A gem in the usual fare, good job.
spettis
A great article - however why is the hero a heroine? The others (bad ones) were all male....
Geoffrey James, Sales Machine
The Robot was female. Shame on you for thinking that the person behind the screen was a worker!! 
andrew.zappavigna@...
Let's leave sex out of it please.
Sales is what sales is.
If you're looking for self satisfaction, reach out for family and friends. I am a 'passionate' sales 'rep' and get stunning resutls, but I realise it for what it is. It's not always the manager fault.
Money, money, money. Creative selling does not fulfil our need real world creativity and passion.
Andrew - SYD - Australia.
twefer
Great article! As a marketing person, I see too many marketeers amongst my peers! I view my job as working closely with the sales team, enabling them and helping them win deals, unlike many of my peers.
zulothman
Sales... it's the ultimate frontier. Where else would you have a compendium of dysfunctional managers in a single line from the individual contributors up to the stakeholders? I could 'tag' at least 4 in a straight line... ha ha!
keithstephenson
You forgot the 'seagull' manager,
Flies in, makes a lot of noise, sh*ts on everyone & flies out.
Apart from that yep, been there, seen that (you get that after 25yrs of doing it!)
john johnny
Hate it when you have a boss that is running a company his father started,doesn't no the importance of communicating with customer,doesn't really listen to sale's reps opinions and always has a little ***** to look over his sholder when the whole time your trying to prove yourself by innovationg your own ideas while there being shot down by his *****,the bottom line is these type of situations are bad because your usually not replaceable but just miserable
raz.paracha
Dear All,
i think we all missed the one kind of boss who has all the good
things but always driven by the boss and the moment he come
out of boss's office you can easily understand that now its your
turn and get ready for the abasement and all charisma of his
personality and any personal repute will ruined within no time
and you don't have any choice except the head down and deaf.
Geoffrey James
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and (of course) BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite (translated into seven languages and selected by four book clubs), and The Tao of Programming (widely quoted on the Web as a "canonical book of... more »
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