Heroes and Zeros

Last night I was remembering my first week in sales. I had joined an incredibly toxic company -- the sickness there would only be revealed slowly over the next two years. During my week-long sales training, I ended up working closely with another new hire, a seasoned sales professional in his 60s. Cliff was charming and witty -- almost entirely without guile. One day, the trainer had us paired together for role-play, leaving it up to each of us to build challenging sales scenarios. One of the scenarios I built for him was not really that realistic. He rolled his eyes, earning some mild scolding from the trainer for not fully investing in it. In retrospect, I think I had been instinctively sucking up to the trainer, becoming a bit of a "teacher's pet" all week without even realizing it. It wasn't fair to Cliff at all but he didn't hold it against me.

About a month into my new job, I decided to call him up, taking the best advice of one of our trainers, which was to bounce situations off of our peers. I don't remember what scenario prompted the call, but Cliff picked up the phone right away and chuckled when I asked how he was doing.

"I'm retired," he said. He had decided after a very short time in that company that he was done! Done with that job, done with sales, and done with the grind in general. In fact, he had answered the phone from the golf course and was going to get married soon. He was a different man than the one I had met earlier in the year. Almost without prompting, he started giving me a checklist of general advice. I don't remember all of it, bit one part stuck with me:

"Don't get too caught up in the ups and downs. Some days everything is going to be your fault then the next minute you are going to be the hero."

The "hero-zero" story has repeated itself many times since then. It truly never gets easier to deal with, especially when you hate disappointing people. Staying emotionally even no matter the circumstance requires a lot of discipline and empathy.

Just to put a fine point on it, the last time I talked to the trainer who was working with Cliff and I at the beginning of that job, she was busy mystery shopping me with an impossible-lead scenario in order to purposely humiliate me in front of the company's senior staff. 

Nice-guy Cliff had the last laugh.