Triumph of the Annoying Sales Guy

Have you ever interacted with a sales person so annoying that you wanted to storm out and deny him your business? Not just deny him your business, but also make sure he knew the only reason you were not buying was because of him? I did, and I learned some things from it…

A few years ago I was looking for a new gym. There is an LA Fitness not to far from me, and it happens to be halfway between my place and where my friend lives. Since we wanted to work out together, this seemed like a great fit.

(yes, this is another gym post I must have “gym on the brain”)

The two of us head over to the gym and, as you might expect, get assigned one of their “sales-reps.” This is where things got interesting. And by interesting, I mean really annoying.

This guy was your classic “clueless but I think I am awesome” sales guys.

First, he started off by launching into monolgue extolling the virtues of his awesome gym. What’s wrong with that you ask? What’s wrong is that he never bothered to ask either of us what was important to us in a gym!

He ends up droning on about how awesome their machines were, and how they were state of the art and how no other gym in the area had them. Guess what? I didn’t care! I stick to free weights and rarely use machines. Had he asked, he would have known that and he could have extolled the virtues of the free weight area. Also, if he had asked, he would have known that I wanted a basketball court. This gym didn’t have one, and he could have addressed that objection. But he never asked, so he never knew.

Lesson #1 – If you are in sales, ask lots of questions!

I think what really bothered me about him wasn’t just that he didn’t ask question, but that he was so smarmy and self-assure as he explained to me us all the things we should care about. Then he made the next mistake…

He asked me what gym I used to belong to, so I told him. He then started couching all the great stuff LA Fitness had relative to Bally’s (my previous gym), but he did it in a way that was essentially trashing Bally’s. Now I was leaving Bally’s for a specific reason (he of course never bothered to ask what that reason was) but I found that the more he trashed them the more irritated I got. I just don’t like that much negativity, and I think most others don’t either.

Lesson #2 – Don’t trash the competition. It makes you look small and will make people not like you.

Next up was the locker rooms. He gave us a tour, all the while telling us how awesome they were. In fact, he said, “I guarantee you these are the nicest locker rooms around.”

That right there is where his credibility went right out the window. You see, I used to belong to a gym in the area that was a true health club, and it had the most fantastic amazing locker rooms anywhere. Those absolutely blew away the LA Fitness locker rooms. So now Mr. Cocksure is bragging about something without any ability to back it up.

Lesson #3 – If you’re gonna brag and make big bold claims, be right. Otherwise, shut up.

You may be wondering if I said anything at this point. I did not. I was really irritated and felt if I opened my mouth I would start ranting. Besides, I just wanted to get this over with and sign up so I could get away from him and start working out.

What’s that you say? “But Avish, if he was so bad, why did you join??”

That brings me to my last point. Honestly, I was sold when I walked in. (he has me at “Hello”) As long as the price was right, I was gonna join this gym simply because it was in the right location and had the basics I was looking for. It may not have had the bonuses, but it had my baseline.

I will say I was extremely tempted on principle to just walk out and not join because he annoyed me so much. If there was another nice gym in a similarly convenient location for around the same price, I may very have left.

But no, this was my best option, regardless of the sales dumbass. So I signed up. Which brings me to the final point”

Lesson #4: Just because you are successful doesn’t mean you are any good!

You know this is true. Terrible dot.com’s made money in the late nineties and plenty of bad real estate agents made fortunes in the mid 2000’s. When the timing and circumstance is right, any old jackass can be successful. But most dot.com’s collapsed when the bubble burst, and tons of real estate people got screwed when the market turned. In the aftermath, the ones who were really good and had sound fundamentals emerged ok; the rest went bye-bye.

Are you successful because of your skills or in spite of them? LA Fitness dude happened to work at a gym that was going to sell itself. If he had to get a sales job somewhere else, he would probably go bye-bye too.

It’s worth taking a look. Even if you are doing well now, develop your skills and build a solid foundation to make sure that no matter what happens, you will rise to the top.