By Tibor Shanto – email@example.com
As of the time of me writing this piece, America was still rushing head-long towards the “Fiscal Cliff”, by the time you read this, they may have even gone over. A pretty stupid thing for a bunch of guys who every two years spend a lot of time telling how smart they are; some of them will even try to convince you that it is indeed an accomplishment. But many sales people we have seen and lived the “cliff” scenario at times over and over, throughout their career.
The root cause for both is the same, a lack of execution; in both instances there is a lot of talk, but there is no action; there are a lot of excuses, but no action; there is plenty of blame to go around, but there is no action. In both cases you have a group of self-professed professionals, well paid, pampered and tolerated, who take the goodwill of others, and turn that goodwill and trust into a sham.
It is hard for some of us to understand why this is, and why these two groups of professionals seem to expend more energy not doing things, things they are paid to do, especially since they would have to actually expend less energy if in fact they did execute. Both have demonstrated, much of the excess output is consumed by vile smelling rhetoric generated in the process of achieving nothing. Often less than nothing, because they stand in the way of those who could deliver given the chance; but of course the current incumbents – the reps in the territories and those in the legislator – make sure that nothing gets done by anyone.
Let’s be clear these people are not lazy, each will go the extra mile, go to the matt, to take their company or country down to prove their “principled” point. No my friends, conviction is not their issue, they will go down fighting for your right not to have something other than what they see as the right thing. “Hey, if my solution is not the right one for you, no other solution will do.”
What is odd, is that with both groups their employers do have a choice, a choice each oddly refuses to exercise, which begs the question, why the employers refuse to execute the obvious course of action – firing the non-performers. I guess in each case one gets what one pays for. So even if congress does pull something off, it is likely to be a Band-Aid, too little too late, just like a reps who rationalizes his missed targets by talking about how bad things could have been; each group “earning the right” to give it another go, another chance to fail to execute.
In the end, I doubt many in congress are reading this, but I suspect some sellers are; for those that are, I simply ask, why? Why not take action to achieve, rather than complete inaction to fail?
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