5 Ways You Can Tell If Your Sales Manager has Become Alan Partridge?
Aha! Knowing me Simon Lunt, knowing you……..errrr reader.
I was on a business trip in Singapore a few years ago (when foreign business trips were still a thing) and got into a hotel lift (when hotels and lifts were still a thing) at the end of a particularly gruelling day of meetings. I’d battled through the most intense bout of jet lag I’d ever had. “Ooohh, it hits me hard going East! West? Ooooh no, it hits me going East”. During a late afternoon meeting with a subsea contractor I started hallucinating that my reflection in his office mirror was an angry potato. I’m not a doctor but I think that was my body suggesting that I needed a rest and perhaps a hint that I didn’t need to eat every complimentary bag of crisps on every connecting flight I boarded.
Anyway, I struggled on through the stifling tropical humidity to make my way back to the Hilton Hotel I was staying in. Later that evening I was meeting another customer for dinner and I commented to him that everyone was very friendly in Singapore. I told him that when arriving at the hotel and when leaving there were always very friendly women smiling and enquiring about where I was from and if I was there “for a good time”. As he looked at me with a bemused expression I reassured him that I’d told the ladies that it was purely a business trip and I had to stay focussed on the hyperbaric gas detection presentation I was preparing for an international marine contractor’s seminar. (Is Uber-Naive a thing?).
So I got into the lift, sweaty, tired, a bit potato-like and frankly grumpy. And then a man got in just as the doors were closing. He was British (when British was a th…..) and must have clocked my sweat rings, pasty-white jet-lagged face and said “Morning” and laughed at his own time travel quip. Little did this happy, time zone adjusted countryman know, but he’d become my numero uno enemy. He’d delayed my lift departure by important seconds, had the audacity to be more adjusted to the climate than me and tried to break the ice in an always socially awkward situation - that of an elevator. What. A. Bastard.
And then came the second round. Firstly, he wanted to get off before me. Yes, he’d pressed floor 4. Surely easily walkable for someone who had enough energy to smile to himself? And he was going to delay my strategic, pre dinner nap by more valuable seconds. I tried to tune him out and then he started whistling. Who does that?!? Who whistles in a ruddy lift?! Perhaps he’d spent a wonderful time with one of the friendly local ladies? Who knows, but he wasn’t even whistling a popular tune. It was freestyle whistling. Freestyle whistling in a lift with a stranger - a contender for a new sport at the Annoying Olympics. A housekeeper got in the lift on floor 2 and got off at floor 3. I cut her some slack as at least she had a trolley full of complimentary hair conditioners and soaps to deliver and a short lift trip was no doubt much more logistically efficient than several trips with some kind of cosmetics satchel. But I didn’t have time for this - I had to focus my efforts on being annoyed at the whistling guy.
And then his final blow. We reached floor 4, which must have taken us at least 6 hours and as the lift sounded a bell he said “Seconds Out, floor 4” and shadow boxed his way out of the lift, grinning at me, desperately seeking an approving chuckle he was never going to get. As the doors closed and I was to continue my journey up to floor 17 I stood alone and said out loud to myself (completely forgetting I was in Singapore) “This country!”. I had become Alan Gordon Partridge.
For fellow Partridge aficionados there are at least 6 tributes to Alan in that story. A remarkably true story only slightly embellished in the way that a lumber-supporting seat cover in your Lexus not only adds comfort for long drives but also increases fuel efficiency as you’re less likely to need to pull over for a stop-and-stretch at a BP Garage. (There’s a couple more for free). But I can’t stop it. Whilst I travelled as a Sales Manager I embodied my comic hero. Here are 5 other ways to tell if your Sales Manager has become Alan Partridge.
He (or she, might be a lady) talks about “Bouncing Back”
2. When you go to them with a detailed explanation about why you didn’t manage to get a deal over the line and you get this response
3. They get dressed at work for a run or the gym in shorts that almost certainly have a perished inner lining.
4. They become chained to their desks with the exception of 1 trade show a year, send you on their sales visits and can’t move on from “that meeting” 8 years ago.
5. They refuse to embrace social media as part of the Sales & Marketing strategy and refer to everything social as “Twittergram”.
If you want me to help your business “bounce back” I’d be delighted to deliver some sales training without Sue Cook and can guarantee I will not teach you how to extract yourself out of a hostage situation. Unfortunately there won’t be any blazer badge and tie sets but there will abso-bloody-exactly be some first class engaging sessions on negotiation, cold calling and channel management.
