What’s the dumbest thing your sales manager or CEO ever said?
Really baffling to me when a CEO or founder doesn't realize that employees will never have commitment to the company as they do - because we don't have the same upside as they do! That's not being selfish or a lack of commitment - it's just human nature and common sense.
Well, he is not wrong in saying that if someone is not willing to "hustle like him", then that's not a place for them. It would definitely not be a place for me.
It was nuts to hear that tone deaf comment in an All Hands, because I actually did often log back on to work til 10/11pm out of commitment/loyalty to the company. But when he came out with that comment, I was like, nah, not anymore.
"We’re not just selling software; we’re selling a revolution—Salesforce is the light that will guide the world to a better future!"
I had a VP who had not been involved much in a deal, but was dictating actions I should take to close it. The prospect company had just signed a major, public deal with AWS. My boss wanted me to go find the Google Cloud install at said company and work on leveraging that. Except it didn't exist. There was literally no evidence from Google (a close partner at the time) or anyone at the company that one ever existed. All evidence pointed towards them using AWS only, and yet, the boss persisted that I find the GCP install. It struck me as really stupid because of this, and yet the command was the same. See Einstein's definition of insanity.
This is the worst
"just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player."
"Your kid just needs to understand that you travel for a living". A Territory Manager said this to a single foster mother of a 6 year old foster child with severe abandonment issues. The mother was asking if she could focus on traveling to meet prospects from deals that were in flight that needed a nudge to cross the finish line, but the territory manager said no and gave that answer instead. The company had started a program where all sales reps were required to "personally deliver cookies to leads" and they wanted the mom to go deliver cookies to a lead in her territory one state over that opted out of all emails and phone calls.
Trust and believe. Words of a CEO when they were making big org and GTM changes. Ended flopping and was right not to trust or believe.
We had a CEO recommend folks log back on in the evenings after putting the kids to sleep “like he did”. He explicitly said if they can’t be bothered to do that and “hustle” then the company may not be the right place for them anymore