It was twenty-five years ago this spring.
The dot-com bubble was bursting, but nobody knew it yet.
After a successful run at SAP in the late 1990s, I, along with a few of my SAP buds, all chased money, taking wildly overpaid sales jobs at an overfunded procurement technology start-up.
We spent our first few weeks together at the Jenkintown, Pennsylvania headquarters…a second-floor office directly over an Outback Steakhouse.
The “Bloomin’ Onion” smell permeated the vents into the corridors – not something you’d enjoy at 7:30 am – (especially after maybe being a touch “overserved” the night before).
I was sent to Virginia to work on a significant opportunity with a major financial services firm. We conducted a procurement assessment that lasted over a week, identifying opportunities to optimize their spend. However, what they really wanted was our technology, which wasn’t yet ready.
Leaving their offices, I called my boss and told him the story. He praised me for my approach, which was fully transparent. It built trust. It kept the door open. It set proper expectations.
The next day, we had an “all-sales-hands” conference call. My boss asked me to share the story. I did.
My boss’s boss, who was also on the call, didn’t enjoy my story quite as much and decided to make an example of me publicly.
He chastised me for being honest while all my peers got to listen.
His message was essentially this: Overpromising would be the core of our sales strategy. Sign customers now. We would then get really good at apologizing while attempting to catch up to our promises.
Otherwise, in his opinion, we’d burn all our funding before anyone would sign.
It was the only time in my career that I quit without another job lined up.
Forbes Lindsay – Author of The Psychology of a Sale
As Forbes Lindsay said in his 1914 book, The Psychology of a Sale:
“Make a clean sale or nothing. Better fail in an honest endeavor than succeed in a tricky transaction.”
Your career will thank you!
I’m a sales keynote speaker who also teaches revenue organizations how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, well…entire revenue organizations how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations, and revenue leadership. I wrote a book Book Authority had listed as the 6th best sales book of all time (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and a second award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳).
Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.
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