I remember when I was a green pea salesperson (literally my first job in car sales.) Didn’t know squat. The sales managers kept pushing me to close a deal with a particular set of customers… and gave me a ridiculous pencil. That being said, I kept at it. I didn’t know sh@t from Shinola.
After 2 hours, I inevitably was able to close them at the last pencil that they gave me. I went into the sales office full of the feeling of victory. Then, the sales manager said that they couldn’t do the deal at that price because the payment was too high and they couldn’t get it financed. I asked them “Then why did you send me out there to beat up the customers for 2 hours to get it?”
I was so pissed off, I left the sales office. Left the building. And went on to the lot to cool off. To this day, I don’t even know if the customers ever ended up buying the car. I just needed a moment to breathe.
The next day, I was came in to the manager’s office and was fired for insubordination for questioning my managers. My reply? “I did what you asked me to do and then you told me that you couldn’t deliver.”
Long story short, at the point I knew that they couldn’t send the deal into finance at that payment yet pushed me to close the deal anyways, I felt like they made me play a game that I couldn’t win. Yeah, I could have went back and looked like a hero telling the customer that I/we were able to reduce their payment by $200/mo.
But I didn’t.
I was outside thinking about why a boss would tell me to dig a 20-foot ditch then get mad at me because I accomplished it when they really only needed a 10-foot ditch… so fill it back up.
