Witnessing Rudeness

In today’s Indy a finding that will annoy many a sales manager. Not only those who suffer, but also those whom witness rudeness experience levels of under-performance in its aftermath. One deliberate, yet said in normal and un-angered speech, example of rudeness caused those who heard it perform badly afterwards:

“What is it with you? You arrive late, you are irresponsible, look at you, how do you expect to hold down a job in the real world?”

Now compare this statement with the rantings of sales management to which you may have been party recently. I’ve been inside several sales cultures where testosterone fuelled Boiler Room meets Wall Street publicly metered verbal batterings are commonplace.

Seems like such an approach is counter-productive. Nothing I’m sure that we didn’t already suspect. After all in my earliest of days, a mentor of mine once dismissively commented on another’s sales ‘motivation’,

“when have you ever responded positively to a bollocking?”