I thought I was going to get fired, or at least reprimanded.
I heard my boss yell for me from their office. Automatically, I clenched everything in my body (yep, I squeezed it all like a big extended kegel, bracing for impact).
At my first training sales job, we had metrics we were supposed to follow, “measures of success” that were supposed to help us get better results. The formula was this: 125 dials a day, five days a week to achieve the goal of 10 appointments a week. That’s right, my job was to set 10 appointments a week for outside sales reps.
Although I had zero interest in “dialing for dollars,” as they called phone sales, it was a rite of passage—and the better you were at it, the faster you got promoted.
Focusing on the End Goal, Not the Formula
Here’s where the problem lay. I NEVER made 125 dials a day (just…why?). In fact, I barely averaged that total number in a week. And at this job, it was a regular occurrence for people to be publicly humiliated and then fired on the spot.
*Insert the boss yelling for me and my clenched, sweaty palms.*
They wanted to scold me for not hitting the required number of “dials”. The whole time, I couldn’t help but think how silly it was; I was already the #1 person on the floor of 100-150 other sales associates. That’s because I knew the ultimate goal was the number of appointments secured, not the attempted dials. And my way was getting better results.
How did I do it? I spent time researching my call list deeply and thoroughly. Before I got on the phone, I knew where every person I called went to college, what they cared about, and sincerely connected with them before asking them to secure the appointment. In other words, I used my innate “female traits” of listening, connecting, and building relationships—even if it all took place in only one phone call. So even though I only averaged 20-30 calls a day, my close rate was insanely high.
How Does She Do It?
The baseline time for promotion of that job was 18 months, I earned mine in four.
Management didn’t know what to do with me. I was overachieving, going above and beyond everything they asked me to do, but it didn’t fit nicely into their predetermined formula. So they begged me to dial more, and even asked me to lie and change my recorded number of dials (which they tracked). But why lie about how I was succeeding? Why pretend to follow their formula when mine was getting better results?
My success also infuriated others (mostly men), who wondered, “How does she do it?!”
The moral of the story? Know yourself, learn their rules, and then make those rules work for you by playing to your strengths.