Don’t You Just Hate Monday Morning Sales Meetings

Author: Sir Rants-A-Lot

Monday mornings SUCK!

Welcome to my weekly blog. My name is Sir Rants-A-Lot and I have over 20 years of professional sales and marketing experience; have worked for multiple companies from small start-ups to Fortune 500’s in almost every capacity imaginable. I’m currently the Executive Vice President for a direct marketing company and over the years, I have made many fascinating and some not so fascinating observations about the unique environment created within a sales organization that are worth “ranting” and “raving” about!

For example, why does Monday morning always feel like I’m a first time substitute teacher for a 9^th grade class of emotionally handicapped misfits?

For the past 5 years I have held a Monday morning sales meeting at 8:00 AM sharp. My 60 sales people pile into our conference room and wait for the show to begin. They are groggy from the massive amounts of alcohol consumption and weekend partying. If only they could take their caffeine in colossal amounts intravenously instead of the slow ingestion of a Grande triple shot latte from Starbucks the effects might actually be measurable.

The meetings always start with the obligatory small talk about the weekend…their favorite football team lost, Johnny was one win away from the 7 team parlay that would have paid 5 grand, Ricky had too many shots and threw up all over his girlfriend, Bobby got another DUI and will be “out” tomorrow…blah blah blah. Just once, I would love to hear “Hey boss, I re-read the Little Red Book of Sales, it really inspired me and I would love to share my favorite quote.” But then I quickly remember, this is a group of salespeople; money hungry, fast living, egomaniacs that are one small genetic link away from Homo erectus who used fire, cooked meat and made hand axes. My attempts to motivate, stimulate and educate are so mildly received it makes me feel like I am speaking Swahili to a bunch of rabbinical students in Israel. It can be extremely frustrating!  However, I think I finally have a solution to this ongoing problem!

I know this may not sound politically correct and may need approval from my HR department but I would like to bring back the ancient art of Caning that is used widely as a legal form of corporal punishment in Singapore and be allowed to administer shock therapy with battery cables to sleepy-eyed salespeople who just cant get going on Monday mornings…I’m pretty sure that would get their attention and it might make me feel pretty good too!