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Rock Bottom, Top-Down Sales

Rock Bottom, Top-Down Sales

(Originally published August 11, 2010)

WHEN I MOVED back to LA after college, I slept on a floor.

My living arrangement was temporary by necessity. The building manager charged per occupant and would have raised the rent if I officially moved in, so we told him I had an abusive girlfriend and was only staying a couple of days, for my safety. “We” was myself and two friends, Nick and Quinn, who let me live there as long as I pitched in for groceries, washed dishes, and didn’t masturbate with them in the room.

The only downside was that I technically wasn’t allowed to exist.

I didn’t have my own building key and couldn’t receive mail at that address. I solved the first problem by talking on my cell phone by the door until someone exited and I could sneak in behind them. I solved the second by having all my mail sent to the apartment of the girlfriend who was supposed to be beating me.

The third problem was that I had no money. I didn’t want to ask my family for help, so I lived off my previous apartment’s refunded security deposit and ate nothing but spaghetti, oatmeal, McDonalds double cheeseburgers, and the breakfast special at the hot dog place down the street. To avoid paying for parking, I left my car in a cul-de-sac near USC three miles away, and only drove if I could get a ride to it.

Let me repeat: I only drove if I could get a ride to my car.

Clearly I needed a change. First I needed a job.

I got an email from USC about a job fair on campus and decided to go. I dug up my one dress shirt, which had accumulated more wrinkles than a Depression era sharecropper’s face, and tried using a “European cordless steam iron" on it with the back of a chair as an ironing board. When this inevitably failed, I figured I could hide the wrinkles behind a full suit and garish red tie I purchased from a peddler on Broadway. (Broadway in LA, not New York. Big difference.)

It was a hot day to walk three miles in a suit.

Despite the fine parchment it was printed on, my resume’s content was dubious. “It’s cool that you interned at Letterman,” said the guy from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, “But I’m not sold on you being committed to our 2-year managerial training program.” (Really? How come? Haven't you seen my sweaty suit?) I handed out resumes and took a few business cards, but nothing seemed promising. The walk back was long and unpleasant. I called home to tell my parents I was finally looking for a job, but mostly to be conspicuously on the phone so I could sneak back into the building where I "didn't live." Then I registered for both Monster.com and Careerbuilder.

A week later, I got a call:

“Hey, is this Mike Critelli?! I saw your resume on Monster.com! Looked pretty good! I’m calling to see what you’re about!”

A lot of energy, this guy. He went by his initials, “MXB.” He said his company sold high-end network security software and needed inside salespeople. “You don’t need to know shit about technology to sell it over the phone. I need people who want to make money. People who aren’t afraid to compete. People with balls.”

I had balls. Two weeks later I was working for MXB.

Right after the banks went under, Wall Street crashed, and the average American was panicked about just putting food on the table, my job was to cold call companies and tell them they needed to buy our $30,000 software. MXB was a hotshot sales consultant from Boston who the company brought in to train the sales staff. By “train,” I mean give us a script to memorize, then yell into the phone:

“I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR NETWORK SECURITY PLEASE THANK YOU!”

Literally yell. If our voices couldn’t be heard clearly from across the room, we got yelled at.

MXB took a shine to me right off the bat because we both grew up in Connecticut. Then he learned I was from a nice area with a good family, whereas he was from a lousy area with parents who were poor and drunk. So actually, he grew up hating me, or people like me, but especially me after I slept through my alarm on my second day, rushed to the office for our 7:30 start time, and almost sideswiped his Porsche in the parking lot.

The day before – my first day – MXB wrote on a whiteboard the list of problems new trainees might encounter, plus how to solve them:

“Nervousness about calling strangers… you’ll get over it.”
“Having to yell constantly… your throat will become calloused and numb.”
“MXB… I will always be a problem to you.”

True to his word, he was.

“Inside sales” is sales done entirely over the phone, but beyond that I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules. MXB made his own. First, you had to stand up literally all day, 8AM to 5PM. You couldn't hang up the phone, just place it on your shoulder and dial the next number. You were encouraged, if not required, to drink four cups of Earl Grey tea a day. And there was loud music playing behind us constantly, to “get us in the groove.” Monday through Thursday was bad house music and bad ‘80s music. Fridays were strictly reggae. “Reggae Fridays.”

Looking back, I remember being interviewed on a Wednesday. As I sat in the lobby waiting to be called in, I heard the opening of “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, then people cheering and giving high-fives. When I had my one-on-one interview (as opposed to the “information session,” with MXB and another guy, where one would ask me a question and the other would answer it for me), I asked, “Do you ever find it difficult to talk with clients while, say, Bono is screaming into your ear?”

The guy reluctantly said, “Yes.” Then he said, “But it’s MXB’s philosophy. Keeps it fun. Keeps the energy up.”

I got called back for a second interview. Had it been Monday through Thursday, I might’ve gone someplace else. But it was Friday – “Reggae Friday” – and since I don’t hate reggae, they got me.

Although our job was to be on the phone all day, the list of numbers we were given to call was very small. Like, ten. Ten phone numbers. The second week we got to use search engines and databases to compile our own list, but throughout Week 1 I called the same ten numbers again and again from 8 AM to 5 PM. I talked to the same two people at the Kansas Board of Ed and the same receptionist at a private hospital in Reno, Nevada more than forty times each. They suggested I stop calling, that the head of the IT department was impossible to reach and never at the office. I told them I wasn’t allowed to stop calling.

One of my colleagues, knowing he’d talk to the same people forty times a day, came up with goofy voices to break up the monotony. There was the standard (“Good morning”), the obnoxious (“Hellllllllloooooooooo”), and the Midwestern (“Oh hey dere”). Eventually MXB took him aside and said, “Listen, we know you can open a call with a stupid voice, because we can hear you across the room -- good job, by the way -- but now we need you to close deals.”

That was the tricky part.

A little more background: the purpose of network security software is to keep hackers out of networks that house important information like credit card and social security numbers. This is arguably even more important during a recession, because people start doing crazy things for money, like computer hacking and fraud and theft. But no one was buying, no matter what. Here’s a conversation I had with the IT Manager at a casino in Oregon:

“Hey, so it sounds like you have a lot of confidential information on your computers, given how much money you handle day-to-day. What are you doing to protect it?”
“…Praying.”

We practiced what’s known as “top-down sales.” The goal is to get the top decision-maker on the phone and pitch him directly. You don’t want to talk to a secretary, you want to talk to the IT Manager and make him to transfer you to the CIO. They called this a “Boy Boy Conversation,” and if you knew you were about to have one, they made you get drunk. Loosen you up a little. Might be a coincidence, might not, that MXB and the other head guy, “DJ PJ” - we played music all day, and he was the DJ, and his initials were “PJ” - were always complaining about how easy it is to get DUIs in Los Angeles.

“You’re guaranteed to get at least one,” MXB said. Maybe because you get drunk at work, I wanted to say.
Maybe because you go to bars until 3 AM on a Thursday and are still drunk for Friday’s commute.

Thursday nights, as a bonding experience, we’d hang out in the back of a bar in Manhattan Beach. “Bonding” meant watching fellow rookie salesmen plan to hit on girls and chain-smoke cigarettes. One particular Thursday, after a round of tequila shots I was hazed into buying, MXB, good and wasted, stumbled over and slurred in my ear, “Hey. You’re a smart kid with a good education, great resume, and a bright future… what are you doing here?

Good question.

This was Week 3. Most employees never got past Day 3. Assorted highlights from my first three weeks on the job suddenly flashed before my eyes:

1. You may recall, in the movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas’s character “Gordon Gecko” is a cautionary tale of corporate greed. Because of the number of people in our office and the room’s layout – two long tables with phones and computers, parallel to one another – the sales staff was split into two teams of 6-10 people, and the teams were in competition. DJ PJ named his team “The Gekkos” with no irony, and would frequently pound on the table and yell, “GEKKOS, WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?” a nod to the movie 300.

The team I was on was called “The Regulators” and our motto was “Regulators, saddle up!” from the movie Young Guns. The '80s were very big in 2008.

2. Halloween, one of the geeky software guys came as a Simpsons character and somebody said his costume was “cool.” DJ PJ whispered, “You should get your ideas about cool from someone other than the guy who hacked up his prom date and left her in the trunk” (implying that all heavyset guys with glasses are serial killers; glad DJ PJ didn’t meet me in Middle School). DJ PJ, meanwhile, was Tony Montana from Scarface.

MXB and my team leader each dressed as hockey players, and spent the day checking each other into tables during calls. Then, for one ten minute stretch, MXB shot pucks at the wall clocks (New York – 3:07, Chicago – 2:07, Denver – 1:07, Los Angeles – 12:07) and knocked all but New York down. They were never put back up.

As for me, I hate Halloween. I stopped by KFC the night before and ordered a crispy strip meal and an empty bucket. I wore the bucket around and told people I was Buckethead from New Guns ‘N Roses. No one knew what the hell I was talking about. They called me either “Colonel Sanders” or “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

3. All my fellow employees were “interesting.” MXB once said, “We’re not the guys who stayed in on Friday nights and studied. Nobody here got a 4.0, except maybe on an 8.0 scale.” (I got a 3.73 but kept my mouth shut.) MXB often wore a tan suit with sandals. He’d be on the phone swiveling his hips to Pat Benetar and selling prospects by saying things like, “Our product can do anything. It can wash your dishes and give you a blowjob,” or sometimes simply, “Come on, Guy. You know you want to buy from me. Yeah you do…”

Everyone else seemed to have done time as a bartender in places like Papua New Guinea or Guam. The guy across from me, Nick V., was part Native American and spoke in a calm, friendly monotone. He’d backpacked all over the world, including four months in the Australian outback. I knew this because he’d come in on Mondays complaining about the six Australian girls bunking at his place by the beach, keeping him up all night.

Then there was Jeff, the smooth operator from Texas, who responded “Great” to all potential clients, no matter what:

“I understand you’re responsible for network security over there, sir.”
“I’ve been hassled all day by you guys. Fuck you! Don’t call me again!”
“Great! Let me tell you what’s unique about our product…” And it worked.

But back to the bar…

MXB was very drunk. I knew this because I’d paid for his shots. “What are you doing here?” he repeated. I still didn’t know, but I told him – and believed it at the time – that he’d have to fire me before I’d even think about quitting, because I was too proud to quit.

The following day I quit. Here’s what happened:

After fifty or so tries, I still couldn’t get past one particular receptionist to speak to the CIO, so I treated her like an actual human being and explained what our product did and why the CIO might want to hear about it. MXB came over and icily said, “Hang up the phone.” I did. Then he screamed, “DID YOU JUST PITCH AN ADMIN?!” (In other words, have a conversation with a non-decision-maker.) I didn’t have the heart to correct him and say, “Actually, it was a secretary,” so I said nothing.

MXB sent me to the Gekkos table. There, DJ PJ made sure I screamed at every person I called for the rest of the day. That afternoon it turned out to be a string of sweet old ladies:

“Hello?”
“I NEED TO SPEAK WITH THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR NETWORK SECURITY PLEASE THANK YOU!”
“Excuse me? You’ll have to slow down. My hearing isn’t so good.”
“THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR NETWORK SECURITY PLEASE THANK YOU!”
“No need to shout, young man. I’ll put you through.”
“PLEASE THANK YOU!”

Then I’d get someone’s voice mail, hang up – we weren’t allowed to leave messages – and repeat the process, again and again and again, for three hours. MXB was off conducting interviews. He wouldn’t even look at me after I’d dared pitch an admin, but his words from the previous night rang in my head:

“What are you doing here?”

Finally I took my team leader aside and told him I was done.

Remember how I said we were expected to drink four cups of Earl Grey a day? They made us bring our own mugs from home, and I left in such haste that I forgot mine. The “bring your own mug rule” was yet another of MXB’s philosophies, to keep disposable Styrofoam cups from being tossed out by the even-more-disposable employees. I was shocked at first to go, but when the time came, I was ready.

Something you learn from sleeping on a floor: you can never get too comfortable.