“There are two kinds of people in sales. The ones who grab the bull by the horns, pick up that phone and make call after call. And then there are the timid ones, the lazy ones, the silver spooners, those without work ethic. The question is, which one are you going to be?”
Stanley “Butch” Blahnik looked like a runner who went to bed dreaming of his morning runner’s high, thought Ruby as he lectured animatedly. That or an average college freshman who’d naively accepted cocaine from a more worldly fraternity brother.
“How much money do you want to make?” asked Blahnik to a sea of blank stares. “No really, think about what it will take to make you happy. And don’t forget about that piece of arm candy you met during undergrad. And those 2.5 children. Throw in a pet or two and suddenly you’re up to half a mil a year, easy.”
“Now divide that amount by 48 weeks. That’s the amount you need to bring in each week to hit your goal. Why not 52? No one takes calls between Christmas and New Years. Plus, there’s the spring break trip for your kids and the resort trip you’ll owe your wife for working too much.”
“Now divide your weekly amount by each day, each hour, each minute. Think about how many calls you need to make to get one yes. How many prospects do you need to wine and dine, golf with, shoot the shit with, console, and tolerate before they sign on the line. You can forget handshake deals and verbal commitments too.”
“We tell recruits you can make $100,000 starting. What we really mean is that most people won’t have the drive, the stamina, to make more than $50,000. They’ll hit up their friends and neighbors, but they’ll stop there. They won’t have the balls to take it to the next level.”
“In this industry, everyone is a prospect. That lady in front of you in the morning coffee line—is she wearing lululemon and dripping in diamonds? She’s got money you want to manage. Your father-in-law’s business partner? Add him to the list.”
“You, yes you, have the power to decide your fate. You determine your destiny. Your capacity is in your hands. Over the next six weeks we’ll give you the technical knowledge you need to manage complex portfolios. We’ll help you generate a list of could-be clients. From there, it’s up to you.”
“In closing, I want you to ask yourselves: Do you have what it takes? Do you want to chart your own course? Or do you want to move back in with mommy. The choice is yours.”
And with that he sat down, clutched his hand over his left arm, and died of a heart attack.
Later, when Ruby thought about the event, it wasn’t the heart attack that stuck in her mind—the speed at which one minute they were alone with Mr. Blahnik, and the next, the room was a flurry of activity. It wasn’t even the fact that someone Ruby knew was dead—after all, she’d been to enough funeral lunches in the basement of the Methodist church to know this was sometimes the way things, and people, went. Life, and death, were random. People died from car crashes and house fires, rare but aggressive cancers, and for the chosen few, natural causes. What bothered Ruby was how convinced Blahnik had been of his own immortality. As if money were the only thing that mattered.
Then again, Ruby was the one paying a monthly subscription for his sales technique training. A monthly subscription that was now worth nothing. She added canceling it to her list of to-dos. Would asking for a refund seem insensitive? She may not have believed that money was the only thing that mattered but having it sure did make life easier.