“I am a creative,” Jack told the interviewer. “I’m interviewing for your opening for a sales person, but I am a creative.”
“How do you see that being a benefit in this position?”
“Creatively.”
They both laughed.
“Now that we clarified that point,” Robin looked at the tablet in front of her. “I am prepared to make you an offer.”
The following week, Jack arrived for his first day as an inside sales representative. It was a simple and practical product. The greatest reason for not buying the product was the argument of “I can do that myself.”
The onboarding process consisted of being assigned a password on the sales system and the instruction, “Just ask if you have questions. I’m in the next cube.”
Jack put on the headset, signed on to the system. Unsure of what he was doing, Jack said, “Bring it on baby.” He said it a bit too loud for the sales farm around him. A few others chuckled.
Several smiles spread across the faces of those who heard his enthusiasm. As his first call arrived, a pre-scripted sales message appeared on his screen, “Thank you for calling.”
Before he answered the call, Jack said, “Oh hell no.”
His trainer who sat in the next cube looked around the wall of the cube. Staring at him, the trainer asked, “Is everything okay?”
Jack hit the answer button as the trainer checked in with him. Jack gave the trainer a thumbs up and launched into his own idea for a sales script. “Wow. I can’t believe you called in for this wonderful product.”
Enthusiasm and joy dripped from his voice as he spoke. He listened to the caller and reacted spontaneously to their questions. Mostly truthful and always comedic in his responses, Jack sold his very first customer.
At the first morning break, his trainer took him to the conference room before introducing him to the break room.
“We have a script for a reason,” the dour lead spoke flatly. “We need to stick to the script. It is proven to sell.”
“Oh?” Jack gave a slight smile, but the trainer didn’t react. “Great talk.” Jack slapped the table and stood, “looks like I still have twelve minutes left on my fifteen-minute break.”
“Yes. I can show you where the break room is.”
“No worries. Robin showed me around last week. She was worried that I would find this environment too confining.”
The trainer sat still as Jack left the conference room. After break, Jack continued to use his spontaneous greetings and responses to answer the inbound sales calls.
“Hell of a morning to you!”
Jack’s greeting drew a tap on his shoulder from the trainer who pointed at the screen in front of Jack and mouthed the words, “The script.”
At the lunch break, Jack drew a crowd of people around him. Stories of his adventures seemed to get more outrageous as more of his co-workers were drawn in.
Robin saw the employees gathered around Jack and noted the positive vibrations his presence added to the break room. The trainer walked upright beside Robin with a serious expression on his face. He would be glad to rid the team of this joker who didn’t follow the rules.
The trainer approached Jack’s table with Robin. Jack wouldn’t be the first employee let go on the first day on the job.
“Excuse me,” Robin broke into the group. “Jack, are you enjoying your first day?”
“Exceptional.”
“I’ve heard you have been approaching the calls, creatively,” Robin looked at the trainer. She lifted a small printout and read it. “For the first time in the five years since I have been here, you have sold every single call during your initial four hours. One hundred fifty-one calls and one hundred fifty-one sales.”
The trainer’s mouth fell open. He wasn’t sure of his numbers, but he never converted one hundred percent of the inbound queries in any period. The goal was to achieve eighty-five percent sales. He became the lead trainer because he consistently achieved sales in the low eighties.
“If it won’t throw off your approach, I’d love to sit with you this afternoon. Perhaps there are ways we can improve the scripting for everyone.”
“But,” the trainer stammered.
“Your training is complete,” Robin nodded at the trainer as she spoke. “Your observation begins.”
“Thank God,” the trainer acted vindicated. He was still unsure if this was a new, kinder way to fire Jack or if Robin was serious about the benefits of his techniques. “His approach is outlandish.”
“And very successful,” Robin added with a nod.
Robin spent the entire week squeezed into the cube beside Jack. She wore her own headset to monitor Jack’s calls. He was smooth. By Wednesday, she was taking more notes than the number of words Jack spoke.
When Jack felt Robin was distracted, he brought her into the sales call. “My supervisor is monitoring me as I speak to you. If you buy ten of these, one for each friend you have mentioned, I am prepared to offer you free shipping.”
The caller immediately agreed and added their payment and shipping information electronically.
Robin was flabbergasted. No one had ever sold more than five products on a single call. Jack just doubled that number and set a new record in her presence.
By the following Monday, the business owners were aware that they had a new sales star. They bought lunch for the entire team as an excuse to visit and to meet Jack. When the owners arrived, Robin proudly announced that she had just updated the system with new scripting. She played the owners a short video that showed Jack closing sales in his own creative manner.
By the end of Jack’s second week, the original trainer left the company. For the first time in years, the inside sales team looked forward to coming to work and to selling their bland product. Jack’s enthusiasm was contagious. Team morale improved. The stuffy cube farm became relaxed. Without being forced to follow the official script, sales increased across the all the staff. The number of complaints and returns decreased. Buyers appreciated the authentic approach the sales team had taken.
At the end of the month, the owners promoted Jack. Regional Sales Manager was a new title to the company. The owners asked him to assess and suggest improvements to five separate businesses. Jack’s creativity, shunned by those who resisted change, had turned their mature product into a rising star. Before Jack, revenues had flatlined. After Jack, growth returned to the numbers only achieved during the initial launch. They hoped he could revive and increase sales across their other organizations.
As Jack took each of their five different products to new heights of consistent growth, competitors became curious. One highly driven owner sent a spy into the cube farm to learn the secret of their competitor’s new found success. After two weeks of achieving the greatest volume of sales in his lifetime, the spy returned to his devious employer.
The spy resigned from his original job.
“I can triple my income at the cube farm.”
“I hired you to figure out their sales secret.”
The spy looked at his former employer and stated without a flinch, “You don’t know Jack.”