Dateline: 2008. Writing for a couple reasons. 1) this involves one of my top 5 shithead bosses. 2) this involves one of my top 5 nicest customer prospects in my career. Big contrast with this blurb. I was recruited out of the blue by a sales manager named Todd. He was himself a new hire. Todd was building a new team for a survey software firm to take over the world. He was hiring 8 guys. My name came up somewhere. HQ was in VA, he was in CA, I was in MN. It was a good offer, I joined up. By the end of the year most of us would be gone.
Flew to DC for training. Met the new team. Met the CEO 1 on 1 because I had previously worked at a small MN startup he tried to buy 4 years earlier. I recall when he visited there actually. I'll write about that place someday. Killer software with an egomaniac owner who didn't understand the power of licensing it out to others. Anyhoots. Over in DC, became friends immediately with David, who's now a nationally known fitness photographer. Before this stop David was with another software firm & Todd was his manager there. That firm went IPO. David told me he sold all his stock on day 1 over objections from the CFO (still a legal move). David told me the price he sold at & how many shares. I looked at him & said 'dude you made millions. Why are you still working?' He replied, '3 kids & I live in bay area.' Ah.
Two of the 8 left after the initial DC onboarding visit. Guess they didn't dig the scene. Actually 1 guy didn't even go to DC & here's why. They asked us to bunk up in the nearby hotel. Share a room. Saves a buncha cabbage. I didn't care, I lived in animal house in college, this was nothing. Five left. One of the remaining 5, John, had, we thought, early onset dementia. We'll circle back on him.
Being in MN I was naturally the Midwest sales rep. Harley-Davidson HQ is in Milwaukee. Via cold calling or whatnot I connected with James who ran customer analytics, loyalty, etc. Super nice guy, let me talk about what our software did. Did a remote demo. Went well enough he invited me to come pitch in person to him & his team. Oh and got tour of factory floor, as well as their onsite museum. Cool stuff! It was like a history of America in the 20th century.
Sidebar: we used Webex back then for remote demos. Everyone did. Here's a pisser security flaw I discovered. Webex customers had their own TLD portal like companyname.webex.com. Everyone did. Here's the rub. Unless the customer admin toggled a global public setting, the entire calendar was publicly viewable. Not just viewable but joinable. Which is what happened for about 10 of my demos until I dug into this. I would have an 'unknown' participant on mute for every one of my demos. Prolly every demo given by my employer for that matter. Ergo they knew who our client prospect was, their name, all our software features. Fucking unreal. I brought this to someone's attention internally & they fixed it. Cannot believe webex allowed that feature at all.
I brought Todd with me to that first visit. James told me prior, in very clear language: no suits, no ties, no sport coats. I relayed to Todd who of course showed up in a sport coat. Also, in brand new HD branded boots he bought for the occasion. Visit went dandy, heads were nodding, they could smell what we were cooking. Great, right?
Turns out, Todd's boss, the VP of sales, wasn't digging him. Major personality clash. Ergo Todd was moved to 'head of the Asia region.' Um, what Asia region. Not a good sign. Then we met our new boss, Ryan, hired by the VP, they knew each other from prior stops. Ryan was interested in 2 things: water polo & being an asshole. Oh wait, 1 more thing: bringing Tony with him from stop to stop. Tony was his fully trained sales guy / pet project. Tony was all right actually, he was a normal, nice guy. Good at what he did. Smart, not pushy. I liked Tony. Both of them had been successful at a major analytics software firm. A product I bought for the 3 years when I built up my own team years prior, will address that separately.
Ryan didn't like me & I didn't like Ryan. He talked about playing college water polo at UCLA or someplace way too much. It would be like talking about lacrosse incessantly. His first swing through MN w/me was a tour of all my existing clients. Specifically, him telling them their annual $10k license was now going to be $50k. Same product. Guess how that went over.
Then we met up again, in Milwaukee. To visit, you guessed it, HD. Again I stressed James' rule: no suits, etc. Ryan wore a full suit, no tie. I told him it's not my rule it's James. He said 'I don't care this is what I'm wearing.' The meeting went fine enough. A couple weeks later Ryan called, he was nice about it at least, said time to say goodbye. Tony would be inheriting all my customers. Shocker. And that was that. I was there 7 months total.
1. A couple months before I was chopped, we were in DC having a sales meeting. John, remember him? Late 50s? 60? Not sure. Something definitely not right with him. Couldn't follow conversations, etc. Anyhoots us 5 remaining, sitting around a table. Out of the blue, John reaches into his pocket and puts a Viagra pill on the table. Doesn't say a word. No context, no nothing. Just does it. Someone leans over & says 'is that Viagra?' John just cackles. We're looking around at each other, wtf? Ryan gets up & leaves. Apparently, he told HR and/or his boss. Meeting took a long break. The VP told Todd, who was running on fumes by then but also in DC. Todd was told to chop his buddy John, who he hired. Which he did. Official reason? Promoting a controlled substance, or something like that. Rumor was that Todd walked John outside the building and John got near violent, which sounds like John. Yelling, clenched fists, etc.
So John gets fired over Viagra; Todd chopped a few weeks later. They both landed at the big global survey firm Confirmit. Todd first then, wait for it, Todd hired John. Damn Todd, what were you thinking? So, here's the story there, which I heard later from David who split shortly after me (also loathed Ryan). Confirmit has offices all over the globe. Big shop. John gets there and during his 1st week, sends an email to the entire company ranting about politics. John is, wait for it, chopped on the spot.
2. Speaking of Todd's judgement, here's what he did after being chopped from our firm. He downloaded the entire customer & prospect list, hundreds of people, and starts reaching out to them. This is a big no no. Todd lived in CA where non-compete laws don't apply. He mistakenly believed this covered that. However! Stealing customer lists isn't a non-compete issue, it's a stealing company info issue. Quite different. How different? The DC firm sued him. How do I know? He told me a few months later, we kept in touch. Told me it cost him $25k to hire a lawyer to appear with him. don't know what happened after that as it was my last call with Todd. Why? Because I flat out said to him 'dude you can't steal customer lists.' Never talked to him again, he actually thought I would be sympathetic to him. I wasn't.
4. Finally, and now for the capper. A full year later I called Tony to say hi and network. He was cool, we chatted. He was still there. I asked about HD at some point. He said after I left, he inked the deal. My deal that I worked months to secure. For $150k. He actually said & I quote 'thanks man you made my quarter.'
Sure. Anytime. Happy to help.
