Just as the title states, the entire sales team of my old company quit yesterday. I wish things had been different, but this was a long time coming and it had to happen.
Let me start with the good things. When I first started working there, I immediately took a liking to the entire team. It was a pretty small remote company and we were all very nice and helpful to each other. The work was right up my alley and I became very good at it. The customers were also very nice people and my teammates and I developed a genuine appreciation for a lot of them. Things were great for a while.
There was only one problem. Our boss was a young rich guy whose entire personality consisted of little manipulative techniques he had read about in his little sales books. In his mind, he was like Jordan Belfort; an absolute master of sales. In reality, he was an incredibly rude, highly unlikeable individual who somehow thought he was better than everybody else. He had so few redeeming qualities that one day my sister asked me “What TV character would you compare him to?” and my response was “Even villains have good traits like charisma or coolness. They would never put such an unlikeable character on TV.” Yeah…
He was extremely rude to prospects and customers alike, cutting them off, criticizing them, and insulting their methods. There wasn't a single call in which the customer wouldn't raise issues with his personality and lack of professionalism. My teammates and I got Emailed 30+ times saying that they liked our product but refused to work with us if our boss was involved. In the worst case scenarios, when our prospective customers were from a certain part of the world, they would be treated as international spies who wanted to steal our designs. And, oh yeah, in my short time there, he fired the very few women left and there was not a single woman in the entire team. So aside from being racist, he was sexist, too!
Furthermore, he would only hire employees in lower income countries so he could get away with underpaying and manipulating them financially, me being one of them. He would give you completely unattainable goals that had you working like a dog for 4 years before you reached the goal he promised within the first 6 months. He would also tell us to trust his “word” that we would get a raise and that we should “just keep working”. Well, his word was that of a snake motherfucker and not to be trusted.
The final straw for me came last week. Even though I had been exceeding this month's sales quota by the second week, he insisted that he be in all my meetings so that he could “teach” me and that he wanted to be “on top of me” and the rest of the sales team. In the very first meeting that happened, the customer told him he was being extremely rude and we lost the sale. That coupled with the fact that my path to a raise was entirely dependent upon getting these sales, and now I would have this rude ass bitch boy sitting in on all of them and likely taking my commissions was enough for me to get the hell out of there. It was also incredibly hard to get paid to start with, each month being a whole new battle for your salary and commissions for the whole team.
I honestly would've loved working there had it not been for him. And a part of me thinks that if I had just stuck it out, things would have gotten better. But that's the thing about master manipulators. They make you feel as if you will be OK if you just let them abuse you a little more. “One more punch and you'll be alright” or “Beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Well FUCK THAT. And fuck Mi..yyy old boss!
TL;DR Treat your employees like children and your customers like shit, lose your entire sales team.