The Joy of Sales Meetings

The air is brisk. The holiday chocolate is all gone. And, at last, the gluttonous end-of-year feast of discounted software licenses is complete.

It must be that time of year. Time for the Annual Worldwide Sales Meeting.

And what would a monstrous sales meeting be without...

Over-the-top parties, complete with ice sculptures, minor celebrities-for-hire, free-flowing booze, cigars, cigars, and more cigars.  Where else can you get the free show of the Sales Gods and Goddesses groping each other?  Or see that gaggle of 20-something Marketing Blondes throwing themselves at the married, yet playboy-esque, CEO?  Where else can the Cranky Product Manager be  essentially forced to dance with two to five male Sales Engineers and Product Managers at once, all because -- as geeks -- they are too intimidated to ask the Marketing Blondes or Sales Goddesses?

The Endless Awards Ceremony. It seems that everyone in Sales and Professional Services - even the spreadsheet jockeying Sales Ops guys -- gets some kind award: "Rookie of the Year for the Western Chicagoland region", "MVP for the Southern Florida region", "The Billability King/Queen", "Best Proposal Award," "The Cold Caller Award", "The Leading Lead Qualifier," "Best Forecasting Spreadsheet," and on and on and on.... and on and on...

And then, the real awards. Real awards with real prizes for all the Sales Droids that managed to actually do their jobs and achieve their quota. Congratulations -- you did what DysfunctoSoft hired you to do! Here's your all-expenses-paid trip to Aspen! Bring your spouse and go skiing for an entire week!  And no need to deduct it from your vacation time!

Ugh. Boring. 

But more importantly, where's the award for the Cranky Product Manager, beeyotches? Why are the only people ever formally recognized at DysfunctoSoft, in any fashion, all in Sales and Professional Services?  Why no awards for Engineering, Marketing, or Customer Support -- or, more importantly, for Product Management?  The Cranky Product Manager wants HER tiny freakin' statuette to display in her cubicle, goddammit.  She wants HER one-week trip, with her SPOUSE, during the WORKING WEEK, to the most luxurious resort in the Bahamas.  Why is she perpetually denied?

The Networking - A unique opportunity to meet all those brand spankin' new sales reps, the ones that replaced all the fired sales reps with whom you loving cultivated relationships at last year's annual sales meeting. Make it fun! Randomly populate a 5x5 matrix with the names of the new reps. In addition to helping you remember their names, when the Sales Rep firing-fest begins you can play "Bye Bye Bingo" with your fellow PMs!

The Training - Ah, yes. Training. Your raison d'être. The only reason why you, as a Product Manager, are even present at Sales's celebration of itself: to train the account reps, sales engineers and consultants on your products.  Too bad they are all too drunk or hung over to remember a single thing you say.  And for the more technical sessions, too bad that no matter how many times you and your boss and their bosses remind them ahead of time, 70% of them will not even have your product installed on their laptops.  And if you correctly predict and allow for this reality by designing a lecture-style class, then 80% of them will complain that the class was not hands-on. Fan-effing-tastic.

The Roommates - OK, the Cranky Product Manager needs to know. Is her cheap-ass company the only one that will not spring for single-occupancy hotel rooms at sales meetings? Every year, the CPM ends up rooming with Hilda the Professional Services Barbarian.  Why? Because although Hilda's snoring can shake paint off the walls, at least she does not watch TV, make loud phone calls, or hog the bathroom for hours at a time. But most importantly, she does not try to engage the CPM in conversation of any kind.

Comments

[Another cranky PM]

ROOM SHARING: Please for the love of God just shoot the person who came up with this horrible policy. Two of the 4 companies I've worked for as a PM have the dreaded room-sharing policy. Over the years I have learned a trick: if you go to HR and spring for the extra $90 (out of pocket, of course) you can get your own room. Of course, it makes you look like an anti-social bitch but hey, you're not the one who later has to trade bathroom time with a sales person. (Aw yee-ah, who's the bitch now, huh?) :-)

[CrankedToo]

Wow - this is so dead-on. I had to share rooms at my DisfunctoInc until we finally got a real VP who simply told Sales and Marketing that we weren't showing up until we got single rooms. They were quick to oblige when they realized that no one else know how to train or demo the latest product.

[Mike Honcho]

1. I worked for SUPER DUPER DYSFUNCTO company. I'll bet mine was more f*'d up. But that is for another debate. However, that said, yes, I had to share a room with a sales person many times. The one I was most often paired up with talked and walked in their sleep. Imagine my surprise when I woke up once with my "roomy" standing over me saying "whajaba moto comma dubahala" Not a single coherent word, but scary as hell just the same. At least I didn't spot a sharp object being brandished about.

2. Sales kick-offs are almost as useless as MBOs for product managers. I always felt it would be more productive to take a pile of cash, put it in the center of my desk and say, you can have this if you a) sell the product b) stop asking me the same questions over and over and 3) read the sales training manual when you have a question.

[Yo Yo Ma]

Hey Cranks....

1. You want to go to an all expenses paid company vacay as an award? If you are PM, the only way to do it is to go "as the SPOUSE" of one of the sales-weasels that gets the award for doing what they were hired to do. You'll need to leave your own spuse at home regretfully.... (not acceptable, I know....)

2. Sharing rooms during business trips? Yikes! I never had to share a room - nor would I. Let me have a guess, Dysfuncto's clueless travel organizer probably set you up with one of the *male* sales super stars?

[Nigel]

Waddya mean, engineers never get appreciated? A few years ago I was the (deserving!) engineering recipient of the MVP award at our international kick off.

Only slightly devalued by the fact that the kick off was in California and I was in London at the time. Oh, and the first I knew about it was when the award (3 kilos of plastic) arrived mysteriously on my desk a couple of weeks later, as the sales crew trickled back to work).

Ah well...

[Hank, Product Manager Extraordinaire]

Hey! That guy is stealing my world famous Kickoff dance moves. How DARE he!

About the room-sharing... My company does not make me, nor anyone else, share a hotel room. Cranky PM, do you work for a startup or something?

[praveena]

Do you work at my company? Seriously, do you? Because you are description is spot-on!

I'm leaving for kickoff on Monday. See you there? (Don't suppose you're going to be in Vegas?)