"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?
