Introduction

This blog shouldn’t be necessary.

Unfortunately it us, because most salespeople are MAD. For all its insanity, crazy conduct not only persists, but remains widespread in the world of Selling - which, by my reckoning, is a parallel universe where the the Golden Rule doesn’t apply.

Which prompts the question: What, exactly, is MAD sales behavior?

Derived from the acronym MAD (short for Manipulative, Aggressive, and Deceptive), MAD behavior is salesperson behavior that creates resistance in prospects.

Though the concept of sales resistance seems obvious, the term warrants clarification since it has a special meaning in this blog. Commonly understood to mean, "opposition to being sold," I define sales resistance as follows:

Sales resistance is an aversion to buying or selling.

This definition includes sellers as well as buyers, because tactics that compel prospects to oppose salespeople, are the very same behaviors that make salespeople want to avoid prospects.

Can you say, “call reluctance?”

Since it creates resistance without and within, MAD conduct makes selling doubly difficult. It also fosters a dynamic that Robert Fritz calls oscillation, which is a tendency to seesaw between conflicting goals.

According to Fritz, people who oscillate are like rocking chairs: They do not advance because they waffle between opposing objectives. Since oscillators are at constantly working at cross purposes, every gain is offset by a loss. Alternately advancing and retreating, they shuffle in place doing a dance I call The Pendulum.

I know its rhythms well. As a salesperson, I spent most of my career trying to get prospects to buy, which clashed with my desire to gain their trust and respect. What success I had, I credit to my avoidance of traditional sales techniques, which I could never use with conviction.

In selling as in life, oscillation is a recipe for mediocrity. Which is why every top producer I have met has either been a person of stellar integrity, or a professional actor with an M.A. in B.S. from Screw U. Thankfully the former outnumber the latter, for while no cakewalk, it is easier to succeed in sales being honorable than it is by manipulating, pressuring, and deceiving people.

And if you're wondering who I am to write about this stuff, let me first tell you who I am not, and that is a superstar. If a pedigree is what you seek, you had best keep looking, because what I am, is a Sales Mutt.

I call myself as a Sales Mutt because my background in selling is motley: Diverse, and checkered with ups and downs. The son of a salesman, I have been a retail salesperson (three years), a telemarketer (one year), and a traveling sales and marketing rep (sixteen years on the road).

Furthermore, I have both "scratched the pad" and generated pull-through sales for which I never wrote an order (if you are not familiar with Pull-Through selling, the goal is to create demand with an end customer, and shepherd the sale through a host of middlemen, any of whom can squash the deal).

So much for the diversity.

As for the ups and downs, I have:

• Been promoted five times, and canned once.
  
  
• Resigned after a takeover by an arch rival, and lost my job in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
  
  
• Been a top salesperson, a middle-of-the-packer, and (for a brief time) a bottom-dweller.
  
  
• Successfully revived four ailing sales territories, and failed to resuscitate another. I also pioneered a new territory in hostile surroundings, an achievement for which my chief reward was arrows.
  

In short: Mine has pretty much been your typical sales and marketing career in corporate America.

It is also worth noting that, out of compulsion and curiosity, I have been exposed to most sales methodologies. Plus, I have worked for a company as keen on branding its salespeople, as it was on branding its products. Such was that firm’s reputation for teaching reps to sell "their way," that, upon learning of my graduation from training, a jaded buyer once directed me to a local laundromat, implying that, since I just had my brain washed, I ought to have it dried as well.

Besides having been a salesman, I am also a consumer, a target for manipulation, aggressiveness, and deception. I know as only a salesperson knows, what it is like to be in a prospect’s shoes, when the shoe is on the other foot.

None of this qualifies me to publish a How-To blog on selling. It does, however, qualify me to speak to the subject of how not to sell, by mistreating prospective customers.

Publishing a How-Not-To blog might seem like an odd choice, and reading one, even odder. It is not as strange as it seems, though, because I am sure you will become a better salesperson by avoiding the conduct detailed on this site. What’s more, those behaviors will, by way of negative example, suggest ways to help you improve further.


WHY I AM PUBLISHING THIS BLOG

Now that you know who I am - and more importantly, who I am not - let me share my reasons for publishing this blog, which are:

1. I aspire to change the lives of salespeople for the better. Abraham Lincoln said, “He has a heart to criticize, who has a heart to help.” I have a heart to help folks who sell for a living, and by casting a critical eye on traditional sales methods, I hope to improve their lot.
   
   
2. I want to drive slimy operators out of selling. If you'll pardon the pun, my goal is nothing less than the Ethic Cleansing of the sales profession. Since sunlight is the best disinfectant, I aim to expose the sleaze in all of its squalor.
   
   
3. Proponents of integrity-based selling tend to address bad salesperson behavior superficially in their articles and training materials. Given its ubiquity, I thought a publication dedicated solely to sales misconduct was warranted.
   
   
4. Without being able to pinpoint exactly what, I have long felt there is something fundamentally wrong with the way most salespeople are taught to sell. This blog is my attempt to explain what that "something" is.
   
   
5. I wish someone had cautioned me about MADness before I decided to go into selling. Had I known how ingrained manipulation, aggressiveness, and deception were in sales orthodoxy, I might have chosen a different profession. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sold differently, and been more resolute in my rejection of traditional methods. It may be too late for me, but it’s not too late for you.
   

Having decided to publish this blog, my goals are to:

• Persuade you that manipulative, aggressive, and deceptive sales tactics are self-defeating.
  
  
• Identify MAD sales behaviors, so you can avoid them.
  
  
• Explain why, for all its insanity, MAD sales behavior persists.
  
  
• Suggest ways to transition from MADness to sanity in selling.
  

Finally, I need to make an important disclosure. Two individuals transformed my views about the way salespeople comport themselves: Jacques Werth and Gill Wagner. Each has been so influential that I can scarecely tell where their thoughts end and mine begin. My aim is not to pawn off their ideas as my own, but rather to expand upon them, and weave their insights into a case against behavior that is just plain nutty.

I hope you find that case compelling.

© Bradley P. Simpson 2009. All rights reserved.