Week #2: Viva La Revolucion

           Starting a new job is difficult everywhere you go. Maybe some people hit the ground running, but I tend to hit the ground stumbling and trudging. The first few weeks are like starting a new jigsaw puzzle: Everything you need is right in front of you, but it takes a long time to figure out how all the pieces fit. Right now, I feel like I just opened up a new puzzle box, and out poured 2,000 little pieces. A daunting task lies ahead.

I glided around the office in Week 1 with supreme confidence. I had the National Sales Center under my belt, the ace up my sleeve. At that point, I was completely free of responsibility and expectation, and somehow had a sense of entitlement to the sales world. But now the higher ups want me to perform, and I feel like I’m running around the place with my head dangling by a flap of skin on my neck. I jumped straight from the minors to the big leagues, and completely underestimated the size of the leap.

As for the office itself, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater collection of mid-20’s dudes in one office. Even my boss is 25 years old. Luckily, at least as far as I’ve seen, these aren’t the guys that make the freshmen prove themselves in bizarre, unappealing ways, but instead have proven to be helpful and accommodating, although I still can’t remember half of their names and a lot of their advice. I think it would be absolutely perfect if the Patriots, whose offices are a short walk and an elevator ride away, were the classic mix of jocks and sorority girls that everyone expects sports employees to be. It would be the meat-heads in football versus the nerdy, alternative kids in soccer. Alas, I still don’t have my Stadium pass that allows access to every door, so I’ll have to wait a little bit longer to let you know if the picture I’ve painted is real or not.  

Which brings me to another point: Why do The Patriots work on the Suite level while we are on the ground floor? Oh yea, it’s because they have a Hummer-sized waiting list for their 60,000 season tickets. Okay, fine, so people are waiting upwards of 5 years to buy tickets to Patriots football games, but why should that make our $20 tickets insignificant? What’s that? Because they are? Well, screw you America. Soccer’s coming around, as it has been since the 1970’s. Just give it some more time…

As anticipated, the worlds of soccer and sales have collided to consume virtually every hour of my waking life (disclaimer: Exaggeration). If you do get a chance to talk with me, I apologize in advance for the salesmanesque approach to conversation that I can’t seem to shut off anymore. Hopefully it won't be too noticeable. And that's the point ;-)

Day 1 - New England Revs

                This might be my first “first day” in which I wasn’t pouring sweat from my hands. I think the combination of a “been here, done this” attitude and a swagger that stemmed from completion of a successful training program allowed me to relax a little. I pulled up to the stadium at 8 AM after getting lost a few times on the commute (I allowed time for that) and parked near the Revolution administrative offices. I was one of the first ones there. I sat for a second and stared at the gigantic stadium that lay in front of me, awestruck by the massive silence all around it. It was my first time at a stadium without an event going on, and it felt like I’d imagine the Coliseum feels like on an average, touristy day. Gillette Stadium was all very crisp and new, each seat colored in blue, the field a pristine green, and the grey slabs of concrete all serving some purpose.  I was at a gargantuan structure of contemporary mankind. It rose out of the earth like some enormous salad bowl. It felt like home.

                I went through orientation. I met 3 other orienters who I will never see again in my life. The Revolution are owned by The Kraft Group, which own the Revolution alongside the Patriots, some kind of paper company, an event security company and probably others that I’m not even aware of. The first people I met were destined for other parts of the Kraft’s far-reaching empire, and although we made small talk and embraced company policies and white and black PowerPoints, they won’t be who I work with regularly. It took about 25 stifled yawns, one Nalgene of water, and two pee breaks before orientation was deemed complete and I was finally able to stake my claim to a desk in the Revolution’s sales office.

                I had barely shrugged off orientation before I arrived at the front door of my new workplace. To summarize, it was a heavily tinted piece of glass and metal, like a huge pair of sunglasses. Since my grounds pass had yet to be created, I was instructed to press the buzzer to have someone let me in. Five buzzer pushes later, I was stuck outside. Granted, it was 70 and sunny, but it still felt cold to be stranded outside of a door you know you’re supposed to go through. All sorts of thoughts crept into my mind. Should I wander out to midfield? Should I stake out the club seats? Should I just drive home? Eventually, a gentleman opened the pair of sunglasses, I struck up a conversation, and he led me to my new home.

                I’m pretty sure people imagine offices in sports stadiums to be equipped with hot tubs, massage tables and loads of athletic tape, but actually they are just normal cubicles. The main difference, of course, is that instead of pictures of random artwork on the walls there are team logos and pictures of past players. After grabbing lunch with my boss and super-boss, I spent the afternoon going over the sales process. It served as a great refresher of what I had been doing for the past two months, with a bunch of added insights. Although my computer never showed up (damn you IT!), I felt comfortable in the environment, and spent the last 30 minutes of the day going from cubicle to cubicle introducing myself, something I would never have done prior to the Minnesota training and this job. 

Sales isn’t generally the most respected of occupations, but it DOES require a lack of shyness, and in situations like starting a new job I feel more comfortable than I’ve ever felt before. Most people assume that the best salespeople are the ones who are most naturally outgoing, but I’m starting to think that it’s the ones who are introverted but willing to force themselves to be extraverted that have wind up the most successful. Hopefully, I fall in that category.

On The Road Again...

                When “the plan” starts to go astray, a dark, murky question mark begins to creep into the vulnerable parts of your brain, and doubt creeps in. It was Monday, March 12^th, and I was at home waiting for the phone to ring, but it continued to lay next to my computer, motionless. I wasn’t totally sure what would be said when it finally did start buzzing, but any knowledgeable voice on the other end at that point would have been better than silence. I had heard promises and guarantees from afar, but no utterances directed at me. With little to do, no mode of transportation, and only those far off hopes to dwell on, a stationary cell phone can become very bad for your mental health. I needed to hear from a team, the program directors, other trainees, or anyone else, if only to boost my morale. Yet Monday crept by without a peep, and I went to bed wondering what would happen to me.

                The actions I took next were simple. I made phone calls and wrote e-mails. A fidgety day of waiting had finally caught up to me, so I took matters into my own hand. Waiting for others can only last so long, a lesson I think I’ve finally learned. People are busy, people forget, people can be lousy. In the end, I can only control what I do and, in this case, I made the calls and wrote the e-mails to the people that mattered, and got a result.

                On Tuesday, I got in touch with the New England Revolution, and they offered me a position with the sales team. I had heard of their offer over the weekend, but had not officially been sent anything. Seeing as the Revolution were one of my top choices, it was a very straightforward decision. I accepted their offer.

                My first day is tomorrow. Today, I’m loading up my stuff and driving out to Boston to temporarily live with a friend while I look for an apartment. The Revolution play in Gillette Stadium, a 45 minute drive from downtown Boston. The commute is heavy, the stadium is tricky, and the team has lost their first two games of the season, yet I couldn’t be more excited about it all. The Revolution present a challenge that I want to overcome by any means necessary. The situation is not ideal, but that’s the whole point. How can I become better at what I’m doing if everything is served to me on a silver platter? 

                I don’t know what comes next. But I’ll let you know when I have an idea. Stay tuned.

This Is My Dissertation, Welcome To Graduation

I graduated from the National Sales Center along with 3 others this past Friday. Writing has not been a priority for the past few weeks, partly because I’ve been busy and partly because I’m too stunned to think it all through. I’m in the process of interviewing for positions with 6 different MLS teams, but I can’t say which until I’ve picked one, just in case they find out about this exciting and fun writing tool I have called a blog. Man, even blogs are passé now. Anyways, the interviews will be conducted primarily by phone, although one will be in person. They will last for about 30 minutes each, and follow standard interview procedure. My decision will, in all likelihood, be made by Wednesday evening.

                As a sales team at the National Sales Center, we finished up our second LA Galaxy campaign last Friday, half an hour before the final decision on who would graduate was to be made. In total, we had four weeks with the Galaxy, which is three weeks longer than we’d had with any other team over the course of the first month. This was our first taste of full-time sales work, mainly because we had time to work with people who weren’t able to buy in one week. Many of our biggest sales throughout the campaign were started in the first week and only finalized in the last. With the extra time, we were able to give buyers more time to make decisions, and better tailor our options to their interests and needs. It was a more realistic sales experience than the first month.      

The last week of the LA Galaxy campaign was tense. Nobody in the group was a lock to graduate, and because some of the biggest sales were still in the making up until the last hour, nobody knew who would end up with the most revenue. One big sale had the potential to move anyone from worst to first. We worked, on average, 12 hour days to ensure that all leads were contacted and all interested Galaxy fans were connected with the seats of their choice. To be honest, it felt like I didn’t know myself during that week. Days consisted of 3 things: Work, food and sleep. We threw in a few athletic endeavors just so we didn’t go completely crazy, but for the most part, it was all work, all the time. It sounds worse from where you’re probably sitting, but that’s what the job was, and sometimes that’s how it will be. There are days in MLS ticket sales where you work 9 to 5 and leave the office, but there are also days when you prepare all day and night for a big phone call coming up, and do it alongside your daily work. It’s the nature of the beast, and although it gets grueling at times, it adds variety and excitement to each day. 

                When the announcement of my graduation was made, I took off the invisible 50-pound suit of armor that I had on for the first eight weeks and chucked it aside. I was both stunned and exhilarated. I was excited that the work I had put into studying and learning the sales process had paid off. Moreover, I was relieved to know that working hard really could lead to success. But then I thought about the seven people that didn’t graduate, and who I have become incredibly close with over the past 8 weeks, and who, for the most part, had put in more time and effort at the office than I had. It was very difficult to assess why I was any different from them, and although obviously something set me apart in the eyes of the program directors, the thought that I wasn’t any better than anyone else continued to linger.

                Living in a dorm room in Minnesota with cafeteria food and limited mobility is not easy. As uplifting as it is to be reminded that this is an awesome opportunity, the feeling doesn’t last for long. The lifestyle of the place, however, remains consistently in focus and on the mind. It takes a certain strength and resolve to keep reminding yourself of this program’s long-run benefits. I’d be lying if I said that I never contemplated packing my bags, letting the directors know that I wasn’t cut out for this, and leaving in the middle of the night. Of course it was never really an option, but the point is that this program was, and is, tough. The first 35 days were new and fresh, and I think many of us felt that we were not ready to leave the program at that point. But now, after 60 days, I know for sure that the trainees remaining feel like they are ready to leave. As awesome as it immediately felt to be singled out as ready to go, the feeling only lasted as long as it took for the other trainees to start congratulating me. It’s not like it was their fault for wishing me well, it was just that if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have graduated. Somehow putting me above them isn’t fair because we learned and achieved so much together. Aren’t we taught the importance of a team mentality in MLS sales? Everyone here will be hired full-time, because they are completely capable and have a ton of potential. And I know that. But it doesn’t stop the feeling that somehow me being chosen over them is unfair. In a way, everyone who will remain here for another month deserves more congratulations for their toughness and grit than I deserve for being selected.

                So I got picked. I’m elated, but a little unsettled. I’ve already had 3 interviews today, and I have 3 more tomorrow. I make my decision on Wednesday night, and fly to Albany on Thursday. There’s still a lot more to be decided. Stay tuned.

The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful and The Ugly of Sales

                When did I arrive here? January 2^nd. Just like anything new, I showed up in Minnesota without the slightest clue as to how the coming days would play out. I pretended to. I read each of the 6 or so recommended books, but it felt like trying to memorize a string of numbers. Without any examples to compare the topics to in my life and work, the words on each page felt like they were written in another language. Not until I staggered out of my first sales call did any trainings or readings kick in, and even then it was as if I had digested only the first paragraph of the first book. Like any skill or occupation, sales has a learning curve that I’m just getting started on. Now seven weeks into it, the steepness of my curve has begun to lessen. I’m beginning to learn what I like about sales and what I could live without.

                Making a sale feels like a mix of riding the Superman roller coaster straight downwards, getting a perfect 100 on a difficult test, and watching Landon Donovan score the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup to advance the USA. Oh, and also being high on every drug ever created. I spend 99% of my work time not making a sale, so when the euphoric moment does finally arrive, I do everything I can to embrace it. I crunch the pen in between my thumb and forefinger and listen intently as the credit card numbers slip through the lips of my new customer. When the final touches have been made, I straighten up in my chair and pour over that glorious piece of paper to ensure that I haven’t made a potentially fatal mistake. All the hard work and worry has culminated in just a name, an address, and a few numbers, but how utterly fantastic they are!

                There is a specific point in some sales calls in which both parties loosen up. It’s another part of sales that I really love. Each call starts with the typical formalities, in which I introduce myself and, most of the time, they hang up. Every once in a while, however, they listen to what I have to say. Once they realize that I’m a human being with thoughts and feelings, and I in turn loosen up, sales becomes extremely fun. These moments are great energy drivers for the day. It’s the little things, ya know?

                There are other aspects of sales that I really appreciate. Working on a sales team is an awesome way to progress through work hours, as each day brings about a new set of hilarious phrases and funny stories that liven up the place. Also, although customers can be fickle, when I get one that is happy to talk and interested in the product, it’s extremely rewarding. In the same way, having someone kindly tell me “no” instead of leading me on for two weeks is similarly enjoyable. Maybe the most important thing to know about sales is how immensely challenging it is, both mentally and tactically. Even though it wears on everyone at different points, the challenge of it all is probably what brings people like me back to my cubicle every day. I dig that. 

                The flip side of sales is the dreaded drought. It’s at these times that I really start to question what the hell I’m doing. It’s as if someone has attached a device to my vocal chords that emits a frequency that scares anyone who hears me away. Confidence falters. Is it me? Why is everyone around me making sale after sale? What am I doing wrong? Unlike other occupations, there is never an obvious answer to what’s going wrong, no error to pinpoint and correct. It can also turn into a vicious cycle if I start to strain too hard and put too much pressure on myself and the customer. 

As touched on earlier, a big part of being on a sales team is seeing other people be successful all around me. Hearing a teammate tell me a story of how they just nailed down a huge sale can damage my confidence, ego, mood and outlook. I don’t believe that the “last sale story” is ever told maliciously, but it does sometimes leave me wondering why I haven’t done made that HUGE sale. This is just one example of the serious incentive issues on sales teams. On one hand, everyone on the team is working towards filling up the stands of a sports team, but on the other hand, everyone is competing with everyone else to put the most people in those seats. My teammates are also my competition. It’s totally weird. 

                Every 20 calls or so, I get someone who doesn’t appreciate my call, and are not afraid to let me know about it. Perhaps skin can grow thicker, but, for me at least, I don’t know if it will ever grow thick enough to shield me from not feeling something when the disembodied voice gets angry. And as many times as I try to tell myself that I’m not here to piss anyone off, in a way I am. I’m here to do my job and, every so often, that means infuriating someone else. Sometimes even worse than being yelled at and hung up on is being completely hung out to dry. Often the disembodied voice will respond as minimally as possible to my questions, leaving me feeling like less of a human and more of a robot. It’s like they haven’t spoken a word in 50 years and are still getting used to the concept. When this happens, I have to pry little words like “a” and “the” and “yea” out of their mouths like I’m trying to open up a clamshell. So, to summarize, never being able to predict or trust the person on the other line is really discomforting. It creates a “you vs. the world” mentality. This contrarian ideology is not easy to embrace, and when I leave my desk to reengage as a normal member of society I tend to realize how much easier acting naturally is and pine for more time as myself.

                Sales comes with a lot of pressure. When I’m not selling, I have a tendency to freak out and question my own worth in the job. This is true with almost any position, but I’ve felt like it’s magnified in sales. Because sales is so tremendously stats driven, life becomes a fight to drive up your revenue as high as possible. We all put a ton of pressure on ourselves to keep this little number in our heads continuously ticking upwards. At the same time, we all know that everyone else on the team is doing the same thing. The competition is extremely direct. The pressure drives long hours, which can become a drag at times, and the only way to overcome it is to work more hours. Not an ideal concept for pursuing other projects.

                When is my time in Blaine, MN up? Option #1 is I “graduate” in 1 week and get hired by an MLS team the following week. Option #2 is I stay on until the end of March, and get hired by an MLS team in early April. Option #3 is that I stay on until the end of April, at which point I go home or get hired. There’s a lot riding on each alternative, a perfect example of sales’ cutthroat culture. Here’s how I look at it: If I succeed, I’ll be able to enjoy the aspects of sales that I love, and, if I fail, I won’t have to deal with the parts of sales that I’m not fond of. Who says the glass is half empty? 

Major League Soccer's 17th season kicks off two weeks from today...

Sales “Skill”

The National Sales Center has moved on to Phase 2, aptly named NSC II. The difference between this session and the last, aside from the fact that four trainees have left, is that we do less actual training and more calling. For this entire month, we will be back selling for the Los Angeles Galaxy, last year’s MLS Cup champions. We are already two weeks in, so in another two weeks, some number of people will again graduate from the program.

16 trainees started at Major League Soccer’s National Sales Center on January 2^nd. We are now down to 12. After having been deemed ready for full-time employment by the program’s directors, four initial program members were hired by three different MLS teams last week. The decision to graduate them was based on a few objective criteria, namely how much they sold and how well they scored on the learned techniques, as well as a few smaller factors. This is how we are graded, so this is what we shoot to score high in. Yet I still find myself asking the same question: What is sales skill?

                Everything at the National Sales Center is a contest. Our first item of business when we arrived in Blaine, MN was to pick our cubicles. To determine the pecking order, we played a memory game where any ties were settled via a rock, paper, scissor tournament. Throughout the session, contests have varied from Jeopardy style trivia games to sales revenue challenges, and the prizes have varied from extra cash to MLS gear to pride.  The games incentivize us, keep the job fun and keep us motivated through sales’ low points. The biggest game of all is the big board of stats that the directors keep track of and that we as trainees are always attuned to.  It charts our sales revenue and our “selling technique” grade. These marks form the foundation for choosing who leaves and stays throughout the course of the program, so high scores on the big board are the best indicators of who is next to graduate. In this program, they measure how good of a salesperson you are.

                In sports, it is easy to pick out the best players. They are the ones that run the fastest, jump the highest, throw the hardest, make highlight reel plays, etc. At the National Sales Center, we try to translate these skills into sales, and it sort of works. The idea of comparing people’s stats is nice and tidy, but does it fully indicate sales success? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but we need something to judge us on, and since there are very few concrete numbers in sales, they more or less have to be used. But it does create a few problems. For instance, any salesperson can call a lead that was already set on buying 2 luxury boxes, jot down a credit card number, and have way more revenue than anyone else for the whole program, and that would just be luck. In terms of selling technique grades, we could all be drones with monotone voices and potentially produce a very good score in technique, but would we be experimenting with clients, figuring out on our own what works best and what doesn’t? As much as we try to dissect what makes good and bad salespeople here, it seems like no amount of factors would ever be able to pinpoint very accurately the best from the rest. So we make do with what we can.

                Getting away from the National Sales Center for a second, it’s just a fact of business that certain salespeople are better than others. Over the course of time, statistics generally don’t lie. A salesperson that brings in more revenue over the course of five years is almost certainly better than one who brings in less. So what separates them? Even having been in the sales world for only 6 weeks, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what that is: The winner has a greater passion for sales and competition. Simply put, the most important part of sales is working the most hours in the sales process. You have to love, more than anything else, the brief high you feel after making a sale, have absolute fear of letting someone else beat you, and also have extremely thick skin to ignore those who don’t appreciate your persistence and intrusiveness, and aren’t afraid to say it. If you think this sounds easy, sales is right for you.

                Effort and long hours on the phones aside, I continue to vacillate between believing that sales is a skill-less occupation and believing that some people really know what they’re doing while others really do not. When athletes compete, it is easy to see who was better and why. Maybe the red team had a quarterback who hit every receiver he played with right in the numbers, or maybe the blue team had a pitcher who dominated every hitter he faced. In sales, there is nothing as tangible as that. There isn’t even necessarily a way to tell whether you are doing poorly or doing well because there are times in which nobody is interested in buying, plain and simple. Without being able to measure much of what a salesperson does, we can’t ever be sure of what we are doing “right” and what we are doing “wrong”, leaving a terribly vague notion of what it takes to get better. But like I said before, success seems to be directly linked to high numbers and effort. The salespeople that put the most hours into the sales process and meet the most people have the best chance of meeting someone interested in their product. That’s sales skill.

Sales attracts highly competitive people, which leads me to another topic I hope to tackle next: The Negative Perception of Sales. Before then, I’ll try to fill you in on more details of the sales action in Blaine, MN. 

The MLS season kicks off in 3 weeks...

The Phone Dance

                Sales calls remind me of a dance. There’s a rhythm to every exchange that varies from call to call. Sometimes we waltz, sometimes we salsa, sometimes we foxtrot. Sometimes I end up dancing the arms-crossed, legs-flailing Russian jig all by myself (see Figure 1) (I can also whip up a solid Electric Slide when I need to.) Whichever dance it becomes, my goal is always to get the disembodied voice on the other end whirling around the dance floor (but not grinding.) I need to have every conceivable dance move available in my arsenal, ready to be busted out when the situation calls.

Figure 1

               
                Here’s how a typical phone call at the National Sales Center starts:

               

                Brenda: “Hello?”

                Me: (sweetly) “Hi, is this Brenda?”

                Brenda: (suspiciously) “Yes.”

                Me: (oozing with enthusiasm) “Hi Brenda, my name’s Dan, I’m calling from *Team*! How are ya today!?”

                Brenda: (somewhat disappointedly) “Oh. Good.”

                Me: (reassuringly) “That’s great Brenda! The reason for my call today is…”

The above exchange is trivial, but enthusiasm expressed early in any call is truly important. They say people decide whether to buy or not in the first 30 seconds. I don’t know who “they” are or whether “they” are right, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. This is the part of the dance process in which I gently escort my partner out to the middle of the floor and gracefully lead them in the dance of their choice. Unfortunately, right now, I’m dragging them out to the dance floor by their feet and flailing my arms and legs around wildly. I’ll get there.

Once we have established that we’d like to dance, the tension leaves, and we settle into a basic two-step. Our voices rise and fall to match each other’s intonations and speeds. Questions fly around like swarms of gnats, while answers eliminate them like hungry bats. As we pick up speed, the conversation starts to crescendo. The barriers to human emotional connection are breaking. The speed and daring of the dance continues to pick up until you hit the turn.

The turn occurs right when someone breaks the basic question and answer chain. Here’s when the conversation “turns” to the business at hand. It is usually initiated with a somewhat hesitant “let me tell you about…” from myself, but on occasion my dance partner takes the lead. We both know that the song we are dancing to is nearing completion, and we have to figure out how it to end it. 

                Sometimes we finish the dance with gusto, and the voice buys. Sometimes we get tangled up clumsily, and the voice doesn’t buy. Either way, we thank each other for the entire opportunity and part ways. We stay on each other’s minds for only a few moments more before we start looking for other opportunities to feel the rhythm in our feet. May I have this dance?

Some Major League Soccer teams have eliminated their nicknames and switched over to a more European style club name. For instance, the Dallas Burn switched their club name to FC Dallas in 2005. The 5 teams without nicknames in Major League Soccer are FC Dallas, Toronto FC, Chivas USA, Sporting Kansas City and Real Salt Lake.