Sales Numbers and the Great Deceptor! part 5

I can feel the oxygen slowly being depleted from my brain. Humiliation has a funny way of depriving the life right out of someone. I have just remembered I have a 5pm conference call starting in 15 minutes and I KNOW someone in upper management is going to read through the sales rankings. How will it feel to be outed as a complete and total failure? Moron? Loser? Maybe I'm not the only one with a big goose egg this quarter? Hey, maybe that woman in Texas has a big fat zero too? How much could a pregnant woman really sell? Or that guy in Reno whose dog bit him in the face last month. It would be hard to sell with your face covered in a bandage. Wouldn't it? For a moment, my thoughts comfort me. It's a fleeting moment though. Besides, this thinking does not pay my bills. I look down at my day planner and read, "What the mind can believe, it can achieve." That comforts me more but seems tragically difficult at the moment.

I decide to quickly check in with my friend in Portland whose has consistently ranked one or two since I started with the company. He'll know the lay of the land.

"Hey Tom, it's Jenna, how are things going?

"Oh I hear YOUR sales suck this month," Tom chuckles. I'm certain I can feel a sharp knife penetrate my stomach. "Or, should I say this year," he adds. Ouch, the knife nicks my spinal cord and shoots right through my back. I'm so glad I called.

"Really, how are your sales this month?" I ask, ignoring the urge to hang up the phone, fly to Portland and spit on him.

"Well, I'm number 1," he says.

Of course you are. And then he tells me he's at 48% of his quota. I'm all out of knives so instead I begin to laugh.

"Tom, you've basically sold two more systems than me and your gloating?"

"Yes," he answers "but I'm number one."

We hang up the phone as our conference call is about to begin.

But before I dial in, I sit back in my chair feeling, well puzzled. It's strange to me anyone would gloat over numbers so below average. Yet what amazes me even more is how the ego can find ways to adopt and adapt without being, well... drunk. Forget feeling good about exceeding sales goals. Now we'll just look at others and feel good because we are doing better them. Even if "better" is relative to well, nothing.

"What the mind can believe, it can achieve." I look at my sales goals again and decide to put together a real plan of action. A real plan - not the kind they make us invent at our yearly sales meetings. I'm certain I've never done a "real" one but today seems like a good day to begin.

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