Victory via VHS
From keynote speech to laser lights technique and technology fuse to propel a re-motivated, re-dedicated and re-energized sales force out of the ballroom into a bright, shining world where never is heard a discouraging word and everybody is a winner all the time. How could it be otherwise? The rented videotape, featuring a famous football star, promised it would be: "Keep up that can-do attitude, team! Charge that line! Flatten your competition. Go for the goal and win, win, win!" (Regrettably, inspirational credibility was later compromised when this world-class muscle was arrested for beating his mistress while enjoying a controlled substance.) Sales meeting insertion of coaches and quarterbacks has been done so long, and so often, it's running on automatic. And nothing -- be it steroid loading, gambling raps, rape, AIDS, public urinalysis or felony assault -- seems to suppress our urgent need to move the locker room into the meeting room.

Sales meetings (and those who write them) are never permitted to consider the possibility that sales people ever get tired, discouraged, anxious or uncertain. All reps are admonished to become relentless reservoirs of enthusiasm, commitment, and triumph. To support this directive billions of dollars have gone (are going) into films, videotapes, websites, speeches and speakers designed to immunize sales people from such tedious concerns as doubt, hesitation, or fear.

Citius, Altius, Not-So-Fortius
A case in point: Every few years, Go For the Gold! is robotically resuscitated as a meeting theme. Millions of dollars are then hurled at presentations designed to convince sales people to emulate the qualities shown by Olympic medalists.

A grand idea, were it not for the fact that most of the Olympic performances we admire are produced by insular mavericks: Dissident loners who sweat it out for years under conditions of fiscal deprivation and personal sacrifice no sales rep in the world would tolerate for 30 seconds! Hardly credible examples to support those consecrated doctrines of teamwork and togetherness so fervently invoked during executive keynotes.

Celebrity Central Casting

Superstar invocations are not limited to the locker room. Presidents, statesmen, generals, admirals and astronauts have been stuffed into meeting presentations for decades. Often creating absurd juxtapositions as product references and employee photos are jammed in alongside super-celebrities; requiring writers to employ exquisitely convoluted syntax in attempts to relate the unrelatable. You haven't encountered great writing until you've experienced a seamless transition from General George Patton to a new laundry detergent or underarm deodorant.

Win or Else!
Myopic obsession with winning exacts a price: It atrophies the psychic muscle required to sustain self-worth during the rejection episodes all sales people must deal with. When winning is the only option sales reps are permitted to consider, failure becomes an abhorrent personal malignancy -- often perceived as a form of corporate sedition.

The transgressor is branded unclean, unworthy, and unpromotable. Year-end bonus dollars and company paid Disneyland trips vanish. The convicted party's family slinks into seclusion as a scarlet F is sewn on their clothing. Decontamination and status restoration can take years.

An Idea Whose Time Should Never Have Survived
During the 70's and 80's superstar scenarios gave sales reps a voyeuristic view of the individuality that mass marketing denied them. But today's market fragmentation and lifestyle diversity no longer justify the need for sales people to be force-fed surrogate achievement stories.

If the only way you can exemplify winning qualities is to employ paid testimonials -- transparently alien to selling and patently impossible (dangerous?) for your audience to attempt -- then you've got a problem. Instead, try for something your sales force can identify with.

If you can't find a good internal achievement story to build on, try this one: "I'm going to tell you how I lost one of the best accounts I ever had, and what it took to get it back!" In the minds of your sales force this will qualify you for beatification; above and beyond even that given unto Lou Holtz and Joe Montana. Amen.

John K. Mackenzie is a self-employed business communications writer living in NYC. A 30-year veteran of corporate conference room combat, he put two kids through college while underwriting dozens of Prozac prescriptions. IBM once honored his work by destroying 1,200 prints of a film he wrote and directed: the same film that later received a gold medal at the New York Film & TV Festival. Time and seniority now permit telling it like it was, instead of the way it should have been. More can be learned by visiting his website at http://www.thewritingworks.com or e-mailing him at info@thewritingworks.com