And this one time...

on the sales floor....

A boss told ME to get out of sales

This guy was a jerk. The worst human I know. We referred to him behind his back as "El Diablo."

Why did he tell me to get out of sales? (He actually told me that I should "go be some sort of analyst")

Two reasons:

1️⃣ I wouldn't lie to customers about what they were buying from me.

2️⃣ I was tracking my own numbers and evaluating conversion rates in my own pipeline funnel ( still have a PAPER COPY of what it looked like if you want to see it....it's janky ).

Very shortly thereafter, I quit to go work for someone else and my career leading sales teams at early stage startups accelerated.

💡 Sales Leadership Learning Lesson: This isn't "old school sales" any longer.

✅ Don't criticize your salespeople for being data-driven themselves. Encourage it. Learn from it. You might be looking at your next rock-star sales leader and

✅ Don't encourage them to "stretch the truth." They'll leave you. And frankly, if you need to lie to sell the product, how good is that product in the first place?

Anybody else have any "horrible bosses" experiences to share? This is a safe space.

Drop it in the comments