Death of a Sales Career (or "Retirement Is For Closers")

"The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." – Willy Loman, “Death of a Salesman”

Willy Loman was 63 when he was fired. After 36 years in the sales game, his failures caught up with him.

I am Willy Loman’s age now. But unlike Willy, I am three years removed from that profession. Where Willy at 63 was desperate to re-create his (real or imagined) past glories, I am spending my mornings with a pot of coffee, doing word puzzles in my robe and slippers.

Even though working in sales was the only connection I felt with Willy, it is hard to deny that seeing “Death of a Salesman” didn’t have an impact on my decision to get out before I got old. A bigger influence, however, was the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross.” The character of Shelly Levene, skillfully played on the screen by Jack Lemmon, was something I never wanted to see myself become. His character was once a giant, a star, but had fallen on hard times in his old age and was reduced to begging and even bribing his management for leads.

When “Glengarry Glen Ross” came out, it was divisive among my friends and acquaintances. This is a generalization, obviously, but what I found was that if you were in sales, you loved the film, and if you weren’t, you hated it. I think the people who were not in that world of leads, prospects and high pressure just couldn’t relate to these characters. On the other hand, the corporate sales VP at my last job loved the movie and often showed or referred to the iconic Alec Baldwin speech (“Coffee is for closers!”) in all its uncensored glory.

Like Willy Loman and Shelly Levene, I was in sales for more than three decades. Did I love it? No. Was I good at it? Yes. At least, good enough to have a successful career. No other job would have paid me as much, so I toiled at it for almost my entire working life.

I tried to leave it behind once, working communications for a business organization for a few years. But the income potential of sales pulled me back into it. I didn’t go looking for it, but the opportunity found me. And with two kids approaching college age, an immediate $20,000-plus raise was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Although it sent my stress level through the roof, returning to outside sales was the best financial decision I ever made.

The only way to keep my sanity was to have other interests outside the office. One was community theater. I often joked that I worked in sales to support my theatrical career. To me, being in sales was like Max Bialystock from “The Producers” sleeping with little old ladies to finance his Broadway shows. I sold ads so I could pretend to be Orson Welles.

As a salesperson, I liked to stay in the middle of the pack. If we were a sales team of seven, my goal was to be number three. Why? Because I found that being comfortably in the middle drew the least attention. If you were a high achiever, you received a lot of notice and a lot of pressure to stay there. If you were in the bottom half, you were the subject of relentless prodding to get better or lose your job. When you were in the middle, nobody bothered you. And that’s what I wanted, just to be left alone to do my job.

It's not that I didn’t have pride in achieving or hitting goals. I’d win the occasional sales contest or award. But I didn’t seek it and wasn’t driven by it. I simply wanted to make a decent living and go home.

Outside sales changed a lot during my three-plus decades. I started with a Rolodex and a desk phone, ended with Salesforce and email. Polo shirts eventually became acceptable in a profession that once required a business suit. Where every contract was once signed face-to-face, eventually faxes and later e-sign took over. At the end, I closed deals without ever meeting the prospect in person or even speaking on the phone, an unthinkable possibility when I was a rookie.

So why did I decide to retire at 60? The final straw was seeing the unceremonious dismissal of one of my co-workers. He was only a year from retirement and his sales figures, though a fraction of his past numbers, were not terrible enough to warrant termination.

We were the only company where he had ever worked full-time. He logged 42 years with us, rising to the top with big sales numbers. Although far from a demonstrative braggart – on the contrary, his personal demeanor was calm and gentle - he loved his success, loved his big houses and fast sports cars. He even negotiated a fancy title for his business cards. But the 2008 recession dealt him a blow from which he never recovered.

He had built a huge client base of housing developers. When the Great Recession arrived, half of his annual sales disappeared, never to return. In the blink of an eye, he went from the top of the list to the bottom.

Try as he might, he could never make up for the losses. One problem was that as sales was evolving, he wasn’t. He was old school and too set in his ways to really change. The rules of prospecting and following up were changing, and he couldn’t keep up.

Eventually, he settled in one house and stayed there. The sports cars were replaced by a Prius.

Like Shelly Levene, he was scrambling at the end. Not to the point of doing anything unscrupulous, because that wasn’t what he was about. But he was definitely trying too hard. Prospects can sense when you’re desperate for a sale, and his could tell.

Although his sales were below average and his style was dated, he worked hard and worked honestly. He wasn’t hurting us. There was, in my mind, no reason to not let him work one more year and go out with dignity, even if it meant prodding him out the door at 65 and calling it a retirement.

The sight of this man, once a giant for the company, being sadly walked out the door with his box of possessions, had a stirring effect on my co-workers and I.

For me, that was all I needed to see. I resolved that what happened to him was never going to happen to me. I would leave on my own terms when I was ready. I decided that I couldn’t see myself selling in my 60s, and so age 60 became my goal – to retire from outside sales and walk away.

Fortunately, my wife was on board with the plan. I had done well enough in my career that she hadn’t had to work full-time since our first child was born in 1992. Although part-time, we could get health insurance through her employer.

But the bigger issue was having enough stashed away in investments and retirement funds that we could afford an early exit. Again, we were very fortunate. At some point, we had found an independent fee-based financial advisor whose advice paid immediate dividends, and we had her formulate a plan and investment schedule to make retirement at age 60 a possibility.

The best day of my professional life was early in 2022, when I had my annual budget meeting with my general manager and sales manager.

GM: So what are your goals for this year?

Me: To retire.

(GM and SM laugh. I smile. Then a few seconds of silence.)

GM: Are you serious?

Nine months later, I logged out of Salesforce for the last time.

And a few months after I retired, I had my annual physical. The nurse took my blood pressure, and I expected to hear the usual lecture about how it’s a little high and I might need to go on medication. Instead, I nearly fell out of my chair when she said “120 over 80.” I asked her to repeat that, and she did, adding that it was “normal.” Those were words I hadn’t heard in a very long time, if ever. And I’ve heard them several times since.

Coincidence?

Ruth Joan (Jacobson) Lyke, 2/22/1927 - 10/16/2021

In 1927, Babe Ruth dominated baseball. But we are here to celebrate another babe named Ruth that arrived safely at home that year. A baby Ruth that was born with two strikes against her, and spent much of her life that way, but she never stopped swinging and never struck out.

Mom was born in an old hotel on Main Street in Edgerton, a temporary home for her family after her father died in a car accident three months before she was born. Her pregnant mother was also in the car, but somehow survived without injury to herself or her unborn child. Mom was christened Ruth Joan Jacobson, with her middle name pronounced Jo-ANN. She never knew – or at least, she couldn't remember - why she was always called by her middle name, or why her middle name was spelled in a way that led to constant mispronunciation.

She was the seventh child of a widow, growing up during the Depression. Let that sink in for a moment and think about the challenges that presented for all of them. Mom often said that Grandma would tell her and her siblings that “you kids have to behave or the county will take you away from me.” That threat was effective because Mom and her siblings knew it was true.

Life wasn't easy, and money was always scarce. Mom recalled a time that a teacher kept her after school, and Mom was afraid she had done something wrong, but instead the teacher took her to the shoe store and bought Mom some winter boots to replace the ragged ones she was wearing. Grandma did the best she could, working multiple jobs and making many sacrifices, and she managed to keep the family together. Grandma was loving but firm. There is a great photo of Mom as a young woman posing for the camera in a two-piece bathing suit, with Grandma in the background scowling. Mom kept a photo of Grandma on her living room wall at Milton Senior Living and joked that Grandma was still watching her to make sure she behaved. The lessons she learned from her mother about persistence, strength, dignity and respect stayed with her for the rest of her life. And stubbornness, too.

Like Babe Ruth, Mom was a lefty, a condition that her elementary school teachers unsuccessfully tried to correct. Her left-handedness lives on in me every time I do things she taught me to do, like deal cards or tie my shoes. It was something I wasn’t even cognizant of until a friend once remarked that I “tie my shoes backward.”

Mom had her own vocabulary, too. For example, until I was in high school, I thought your teeth were surrounded by “gooms.” And she loved practicing the sewing skill she called “embordery.”

Mom could have married almost anybody and improved her financial standing. Instead, she married my dad. The Depression had hit Dad and his parents hard, and they had struggled for years farming on shares after losing their homestead. But what Mom and Dad lacked in their pocketbook, they more than made up for in love.

They were married at the pastor's house in Edgerton, and spent their wedding night near Evansville in a cold, unheated cabin that lacked indoor plumbing. To her last days, Mom still marveled that Grandpa and Grandma Lyke gave them a week off to take a honeymoon because it ended up being the only vacation they ever took during their 37 years of marriage. They took advantage of it, driving into Iowa, Missouri and Illinois and seeing sights like Harry Truman's house, the Lake of the Ozarks, Lincoln's home in Springfield and of course, the Bagnell Dam. The Bagnell Dam normally wouldn't merit inclusion on a list like this, but it is significant because on October 3, 1948, it was the reason Mom had the only beer she ever drank in her life. Mom didn't like heights and was very nervous about going over the dam. So Dad gave her a beer. It worked. Nine months later, my sister Nancy was born. (Just kidding – it was actually 13 months later.)

A few months after that, when they went to celebrate their first Christmas together, they realized they couldn't afford a tree. Then as luck would have it, a truck carrying Christmas trees ran off the road near their farm. Dad was able to pull the driver out of the ditch and get him back on the road. As a thank you, the driver gave Mom and Dad one of his trees. Mom always said it was the nicest tree they ever had. And if you saw any of the trees my Dad picked out after that, you could see how that would be true. After the driver gave them the tree, Mom and Dad went out and bought ornaments, which she continued to use for the rest of her life.

Mom said she never intended to marry a farmer. But once she was on the farm, she was the consummate farm wife. Mom and Dad truly were a team. Every morning for all of those years, you could find her in the milk house scrubbing the milking machines. She took care of the home, raised us kids and took care of the meals. And oh, those meals! My friends loved helping us bale hay, because they knew that the lunch and dinner Mom provided would be delicious and huge. Mom always made the Mount Everest of mashed potato mountains, enough to feed an army, let alone the two or three of us on the hay wagon. My friends would have worked for us for meals alone. And when all of us kids had grown up and left the farm, Mom, even though she had never driven a car and never had a driver's license, learned how to drive tractor so she could help Dad in the hay field. Being new to driving at her age was not without its challenges, however. One day when she was driving the hay baler downhill, she couldn’t get the tractor to stop, and in a panic, simply abandoned ship and jumped off the tractor. Fortunately, Dad was able to catch up to it and bring it to a stop.

As we all grew up and got married, Mom accepted all of our spouses with open arms and an open heart. In her mind, there was no such thing as an in-law. If you married into the family, you were her adopted child. She loved you as much as if she had raised you herself. She emphasized that point every birthday by buying greeting cards that said, “To a great daughter-in-law” and then Xing out the words “in law.”

When Dad passed away, Mom was 58 and at that point in her life, she had never lived alone, not for a single day. She hadn’t worked a job off the farm in decades. Because she was so dependent on Dad, I’m ashamed to say we didn’t have a lot of confidence in her ability to carry on. I remember the four of us huddling up to discuss who was going to have to take in Mom. But she taught us a lesson, that we should never underestimate her.

Faced with her new reality, Mom completely reinvented herself, becoming strong, independent, and confident in her own decisions. Still without a drivers license, she quickly found and bought the perfect house in town, walking distance to church and to all of the stores, and close to two of her sisters. She threw herself into volunteering at church, even taking leadership roles. And she became the toast of her Doty Street neighborhood. Everyone loved Mom, watched over her and cared for her. They brought her their children, their dogs, and even their motorcycles to store in her garage.

Once Mom moved to town, the men came calling. But Mom wanted no part of dating. Dad was her one and only, and it remained that way to the end of her life.

As Mom got older, she learned a lot more about surgery and medical rehab than most of us want to know. Over the last twenty years, she went under the knife several times – a new hip, a new knee, breast cancer. And, characteristic of her, she overcame them all. And she was able to live alone in her beloved little home until she was 94 years old.

When the time finally came earlier this year that she was no longer able to live alone, it wasn’t much different than when she made the snap decision to move into town. She chose Milton Senior Living quickly and firmly. And if you ever visited her in her new home, she would proudly declare to you that moving there was HER DECISION.

And just like on Doty Street, Mom quickly made friends at Senior Living and became everyone’s favorite. She was happy there, and absolutely thrilled when her long-time neighbor Barb moved in across the hall.

It had dawned on Mom recently had she had lived alone almost as long as she had been married to Dad. She often talked about how much she still thought about him. The last few weeks, she had been repeatedly playing a CD of Dad's favorite music that her granddaughter Kelly had made for her. She said that when she listened to it, she would talk to the picture of Dad that she kept on her dresser, and she swore the picture would smile at her. Perhaps she wasn’t imagining it. Perhaps they were conspiring for their impending reunion.

Not long after Dad died, granddaughter Jenny wrote a poem that referred to Dad as the “brightest star in the sky.” It was a visual that we all embraced and hung on to, and one that Mom cherished every time she observed the night sky.

When Mom moved off the farm to Edgerton all those years ago, she put an envelope on her dresser that was labeled “My Funeral Arrangements.” She was determined to make it as easy as possible for us when her time came. The envelope sat there for decades, and from what we saw when we opened it last week, she had added to the envelope and revised the pages several times over the years. With each great-grandchild that got added to the list, her handwriting got a little shakier. There were two versions of the poem that’s printed in the bulletin, each clipped from a newspaper so long ago the paper had turned a dirty brown. There was a thank you note she had written to us in 1996, thanking us for indulging a “silly old lady” who wanted to go on a sleigh ride. There were instructions about what she wanted to wear in the casket, what to put in the obituary, who to give donations to, what songs she wanted in this service and a bevy of other details.

But the thing that stood out was a personal note addressed to her “seven kids.” In it, she expressed, one last time, her love and devotion to all of us, and to reassure us that she was in a good place. “Do not grieve,” she wrote. “I am finally with my love again whom I have missed so very much.”

Mom came back from that two-strike count she faced all her life, and hit a walk-off home run. And presumably, she and Dad are in Heaven’s locker room right now, celebrating their victory. And maybe even having her second beer.

Saturday Morning, Appalachia

 

It's sunrise in the countryside of central Ohio. The light peeks over the trees and into the window of our upstairs rental unit, softly illuminating the room with a glow that gently wakes us to the new day.

Morning frost covers the lawn, highlighting the cross-hatched mowing pattern that looks infinitely more interesting than anything I've attempted in my own yard.

A fenced field abuts the driveway, and four long-maned ponies are already frolicking, playing like children expending pent-up energy after a long day in a school room.

Fog sits atop the trees in the distance, but where the sun has reached the trees nearer to us, the gold, red and green colors of their leaves are astonishingly bright. A fox, sleek and nimble, darts into the yard and quickly passes through on its way to the woods on the other side of our unit.

Over in the field, the playful ponies are now being pursued by a herd of goats, running to join the party. Behind them, a contrast in speed and movement, two cows lumber down the fenceline, in no hurry to see what all of the fuss is about.

My insatiable need for morning coffee consumes me, so I make a small pot, pour myself a cup and then return to the view from my window. The animal party has quieted down and the frost is disappearing except in the shadow of a lone tree in the yard. All of the leaves, already an amazing show of color, somehow seem impossibly brighter as the sun continues its upward journey.

A hint of fog still is visible further off on the horizon, on the high hills that call out and issue an invitation. “Come. See what's here. It's a Saturday in central Ohio on the edge of the Great Appalachian Valley, and you need to explore.”

Indeed, I will heed its call.