/Sales/

I got laid off from a sales job recently OP. In an opticians, no less. I was having to justify why I hadn't sold any pairs of designer prescription sunglasses on a rainy Thursday afternoon. In November. The diary for eye tests could have two people in it and me and the other two guys would get scolded for not meeting targets. And this would be a day with ONE browser.

It's mostly bullshit. I'm glad, really, I fucking hated it. In my mind we were there to care for people's eye health and recommend the best thing for them. If I sent my grandma in to get a cheap pair of reading glasses and she walked out having spent close to £900 on a pair of Tom Ford top-of-the-range varifocals I'd be absolutely livid.

I was getting consistent 10/10 reviews from customers for my service but because I wasn't meeting targets - which had barely changed from summer to winter - I got laid off. Fuck it. Sales is shit.

Why do you say that? Sales are shit but they make you ton of money with those sweet sweet commissions. That's the only reason i haven't given up on sales up until now, i just need the god damn money to prove to myself that i can achieve something in this worthless post-grad life

Why don't you form your own company around optometry? You have that important aspect of customer service and experience with glasses. You would go further than shilling raybans or whatever.

That sounds like a tough sell. What’s the elevator pitch?

The thing with sales is, you think you can make good money when you get into it, but it actually extremely challenging to get to that level. If you are at the level where you can sell ice to eskimos and sell enough to make good money you almost certainly will just get picked up to be a sales manager and oversee a team, which pays more.

The other thing about the nature of sales offices is that you can basically get away with basically anything including mild sexual harassment and working under the influence if you are actually selling as much or more as anyone else in the office. You can get away with murder if you are delivering. So unless you were grabbing bitches and smoking meth on your break, you got let go because you were taking up a seat that could be used more efficiently. Because you just sucked.

That’s fine though. Everyone sucks when they start even if they are more “talented” than other sales people. If you take ownership of that and accept that you just sucked, then that’s your first step to improving. So why did you suck?

WHAT did he mean by slow? slow compared to WHO? WHY were you slower than them? WHAT were they doing that you weren’t doing? HOW can you get to their level of success?

It is a cliche but the most important question in sales in why. Why why why. Ask why, then when you get your answer, ask why that is the answer. Keep drilling down to find a need, a want, a pain to solve, a pleasure to fulfill, etc. But you should also apply that thinking to yourself to constantly fly try to improve, even when you are being successful.

Being successful in sales is not so much a matter of talent or “having the gift of the gab,” it’s about learning and hard work honing your craft, at least to start with. Maybe people ITT can point you in the direction of some good you tubers to learn from, there’s a lot of them out there.

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The initial thing that popped in my head right when i went through the door was that i simply sucked at selling, but i knew that wasn't the god damn case. You really wanna know why i got laid off? Well yeah let's say that i didn't manage to meet ALL of the targets, the reason they gave me was that
>"I know a guy who's been here for a week and he's done more progress than you"

But what they didn't know was that said guy (The entire team was like 8 people) was friends with some cunt at the office working there half a year, who always gave him tips and even warm leads from her to make the impression on the managers that he's good at the job.

That's the only reason he still stuck around longer than i did. I didn't make any scene, obviously because i couldn't prove it, but the thing that pissed me off the most was that in the day i was laid off, he just magically didn't show up to work.

So my question now is, why did he help him with warm leads and not me? I made a good impression on her, not at the level of sucking her cunt of course, but friendly enough. I just feel so fucking frustrated, man.

True, the commission was pretty good, but only respectively to the salary - which itself was shit. Barely above minimum wage but with commission was effectively an extra 10% of what my salaried wage was.

I'd thought about this a lot. I just lack the capital, really. There's also a LOT of competition in my city.

The thing is with private healthcare - especially optometry - is that it's such a delicate balance between clinical service and sales. You can give amazing service, but your eye test is only £25. If you have a fully booked appointment diary and if your dispenses/sales suck then you've made a huge loss for the day. NHS contracts boost cash flow, but you see freaks and weirdos all day which is grating.

But the ultimate fuck-you would be to build a successful practice, sell the brand to Luxottica and retire.

Nepotism is everywhere, it's just something you have to deal with. Forget about it, sounds like you had a shitty workplace more than anything else. It probably wasn't your own attitude.

Place I used to work, a high street retailer, was full of the same family. Director, director's husband, director's stepbrother, director's stepbrother's girlfriend, director's niece, director's cousin. Second cousin too. There was probably more. And guess what? They were all earning at LEAST 25% more than everyone else in the business who were doing similar jobs and meeting targets.

>So my question now is, why did he help him with warm leads and not me?

That is the wrong question to ask, because even if you or I could answer it, it doesn’t change the outcome, it’s out of your control. If what you’re saying is true then it may not be “fair” but “fair” is irrelevant, and you can’t influence it. You need to focus on the the things you can influence.

So the main things you can influence are how much you are dialing, and your state of mind; controlling the controllable, and letting the uncontrollable go because it’s a waste of energy to obsess over it.

If you have an unsuccessful call, you can try to learn from it, but if you just fucked it up and you already know what you did wrong then there’s really nothing to learn, you just have to forget about it otherwise dwelling on it will fuck up your mental state and create doubt on your next call. This getting fired is much the same situation. Try to learn from what happened, but if it was truly out of your control because of some office politics that you couldn’t even influence, then there’s nothing to be learned, so you can dwell on it and be angry about it or whatever but it will just make you frustrated and fuck up your mental state for your next sales job.

Is nepotism the case for small companies or is it a widespread phenomenon in the UK? Because before coming here i'd imagined the UK was like a laissez faire free market capitalist's wet dream where everyone can make it provided you work hard as opposed to the shithole i came from.

I understand that perfectly but i still can't get it out of my mind because of how the laying off speech went, and how it was all tied to me under performing by comparing me to this one fucking guy. If it was 100% related to how i worked maybe i could've managed it differently, but it was just because of this one fucking guy.

Just one day before, for some reason management bought us all tickets to a movie so yeah i went with like 4 other co-workers, along with that guy. When it was time to part ways, he had to take a right and i had to take a left, and when we shook hands the fucker said to me "See you tomorrow ya" and winked at me. I simply cannot take out of my head how he, and everyone knew it.

Honestly mate you're bitter as fuck about this, and I'd also hazard a guess that you're young. Just let it go.

It sounds like it was a small team and you weren't a good fit, socially, so they were looking for any excuse to fuck you off. He was in the clique and you weren't, and this is why they're using him as an example. The bigger picture is that you're selfishly motivated and are looking to personally achieve rather than contribute to the larger vision of the business and the team, and find success that way. Small places are like this and they will punish anything that threatens that dynamic.

Whatever. You will never make it if you take office politics personally, and also seriously. Especially in a shitty cell phone shop. I think you've got the spirit of an entrepreneur but are trying to apply it to the wrong context.

>wagie thinks something
Your job is to lie cheat and steal to make sales. if you ever get in trouble for doing your job, refer to your pretend job and it will be thus demonstrated that you are the one solely responsible for any desceptive tactics used. If you think you can get by doing just your pretend job then you are not fit for your wages, uniform, and the space you occupy in the business establishment.

Actually now that you mention it, a larger company where i could fuck with competition and be selfishly motivated by my goals would definitely make a better fit than small companies

Don't worry bro, I have some anger issues I think. About a year ago I finally got a job in my field (after 2 years of applying) only to be let go about 2 weeks before my probation was up. Cited reason was, "you're not a good fit for the team". I honestly wanted to burn the whole factory to the ground. Ended up getting a better paying job with that experience though. Also just lie on your resume bro. Nobody gives a fuck. srsly

Bahaha hahahah you Fucking retard

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easy on the sips , grug. you sound like cookoo shaman