You Know What Your Problem Is Lipton?

"You know what your problem is Lipton? You just can't close"

I don't think I've ever shared this widely, but hearing those words in my first "real" sales job is the reason I wanted to get into sales leadership. I didn't know it at the time, but those words would inspire my entire career.

Here's the context.

I needed money. That's why I had taken this particular job. Things were going great on the music "career" but it was becoming increasingly apparent that that wasn't going to cut it.

Example? I had finally landed our first national licensing deal with a spot on Sons Of Anarchy and... $6k payout?

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

I was struggling to pay even the most basic bills and had reached the point where I was literally selling personal possessions to get my family from month to month.

Wrong kind of sales!

So there I was, coming in early and staying late. Hustling the phones 7am to 7pm and building massive amounts of pipeline but getting nowhere. Closing nothing.

My optimism never waned. I could do this! I just needed to keep at it, the deals will come...

Then one day I got called into an unscheduled meeting with our VP of Sales. Not good. But who knows? Maybe he wants to say how much he admires my work ethic.

Stranger things have happened, right?

And then those words.

"You know what your problem is Lipton? You just can't close."

My heart sunk. Something about the finality of the statement just sucked it all out of me. There's no chance. You stink. You can't be taught. Just give up.

I now know that I was experiencing a tactic that is called "being managed out." But at the time, I didn't know I was caught in the crosshairs of a heartless management trend. All I knew was that this was probably my last chance to make it work and the person who I thought could help me had just told me I was beyond helping.

Even at the time, there was a part of me that wanted to say "hang on, isn't that your job to teach me?" But I didn't say that. I just waited to see what was next.

"It seems like you're not a good fit here."

If you've ever been told to "manage someone out" or, worse, if you've ever been on the receiving end of someone who wants to fire you but is instead trying to get you to quit... you can probably fill in the rest of the conversation. You can also probably guess that I didn't quit (I didn't have that choice!) and also that I was fired a few days later.

I knew it was over for me. Time to give up and accept that I was a 30 year old man with no way to support my family and zero opportunity to change that. I would say I was like George Bailey from It's A Wonderful Life, worth more dead than alive. Except I didn't even have a life insurance policy like ole' George so I was just pretty much... worthless.

I had only ever been paid to do three things at that point in my professional life. Play music, be a bad server at restaurants, or be bad at sales.

The only thing I was good at other than music was job interviews. So after I eliminated the "jump off a bridge" option, I hatched a plan to just keep getting hired in sales jobs knowing I would be fired in three months to at least buy some time while I learned to do something marketable.

Hey, it could work!!

But then something changed.

Thanks to referral from my older brother, I got an interview at a startup called OutboundEngine. I was able to convince them that I was capable of selling their product and a few months later I found myself working for Scott Leese.

And you wanna know what he never said? "You can't close Lipton."

Instead, he said "I can see that you're hanging on every word that I'm saying. If you keep paying attention, I'll teach you how to do this." And he was right, by my third month at OE I was the top seller in the entire company and the rest, well it's another story.

This story is about what drives me today.

Because of a bad leader, I nearly gave up. Not just on sales, but on life. That's the dark impact that a leader who refuses to lead can have.

Because of a good leader, my life changed and my world today is unrecognizable compared to what it looked like 13 years ago.

My mission as a sales manager started out as a determination to make sure that no AE was ever left behind like I was. You wanna quit? Fine. But I'm not going to quit on you.

And now, as a senior leader, I'm even more driven to develop managers and trainers who think the same way. I have a passion to drive out the charlatan sales leaders who think leadership begins and ends with a Salesforce Dashboard. And I have a passion to replace them with true leaders who understand that leadership is more than just hitting a number and taking credit for it.

Leadership is knowing that even though you lead a team, your team is made up of individual human beings and you bear a huge responsibility for their lives. How you handle that responsibility is what determines whether you deserve your title.

And most importantly, a leader never says "you can't do it", instead they say the four magic words that every sales leader should live by.

How can I help?

So... how can I help? If you recognize yourself in this story, send me a message and let's talk.