Is sales number more important than life?

A sales person life is usually very attractive & dynamic from outside but inside the individual goes through various turmoil’s. Challenges faced by a sales person are not unique than any other job but as its the cockpit that drives business the pressure on a sales person is much higher for the performance.

Sometimes i feel that if sales person mind was a house with many rooms, what all will those rooms hold behind those doors : Targets, Fluctuating Income , Competition , Updating Product Information’s , Customer expectations & behaviours, Rejections, Long & irregular hours of work, Distorted work life balance, Constant travel, Pressure from Management and various emotional tolls etc.

I recently experienced two incidences which I would like to share with you all :

Story 1: A sales person got a booking of car from a customer after lots of efforts of 2 months, the pitch that made the customer agree to purchase was that his father needs a separate transport and his father was excited to see new technology electric car, so they booked the car. Second hurdle was to get the finance approved for this customer which again took 1 month of time, on the month end, of July the customer loan got approved and disbursed and customer was all happy to take the car delivery by making the balance payment the next day. But early morning 4am the customers father expired, the sales guy when called the customer to make the arrangements of delivery, the customers family broke the news. The sales person was in a state of extreme stress as he was only bothered on getting connected with the customer and ask for balance payment and close his retail for the month.

Thoughts of the Sales Person at this juncture were:

1. How will my number happen now?
2. How will I explain this to my management, they will think it as an excuse?
3. Will this impact my monthly performance?

For almost an hour or so the Sales Person was juggling in this and so were his immediate managers, after an hour they realised that they have not even thought of giving condolences to the customer. Have we all forgotten to value human life and emotions, in this race of numbers?

Story 2: A sales person was to get married on a month end, he tried his level best to postpone the date but couldn’t due to family pressure, thus he was in a rush to finish his targets 2 days before the marriage date. He had a house full of guest but as his boss called he had to leave for an urgent client meeting, after having a heated debate with family he left for office. As he reached office the customer was already waiting and thus the meeting and discussions kept on, on the other side the family was non stop calling and to avoid distraction he switched off his phone . After several hours when he opened his phone and was about to go home, he saw 100’s of missed calls from everyone in his family. He called back his father to inform that he is starting and will reach in an hour.

On the other side of the phone his sister picked the call and said that rather coming home, reach near by hospital, he was shocked and he drove frantically towards the given address. By the time he reached hospital his mother has passed away due to heart-attack.

We often ignore our family calls as we feel they are nagging and bothering us, without even attending the calls we assume. Don’t we need to be more Humanistic than Practical or goal oriented.