| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A+ |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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BAD LEADS or BAD STRATEGY ?
by BIG TRUCK SERIES (movies profile)
Oct 1, 2006
1
of
1 people found this review helpful
"Glengarry Glenross" is a film about the life, psychology and pathology of a salesman on its surface. We are introduced to 5 salesmen (Pacino, Harris, Baldwin, Lemmon and Spacey) who are working to sell land (parcels) for mitch and Murry, the bosses of this company. Everything is going well until the bosses start demanding more production and then all hell breaks loose.
The problem is, that all the salesmen are commission based. If they don't close deals, they don't eat - its as simple as that.
This basic design structure causes jealousy, envy, and even hatred between the salesmen but it also causes stress and enmity between the salesmen and their clients. The clients control the flow of business and unless they sign their closing fee checks, the salesmen get nothing.
Essentially, all commission based jobs work this way. I found "GG" to be a perfect 2 hour presentation which fully encompasses everything you would ever need to know about working a commission based job. The movie at one point was used as a training video for salesmen but I believe it should be required material for High School and College students. Despite the over the top, yet realistic, profanity used, "GG" tells the truth about a career in sales with unrelenting accuracy.
"ALWAYS BE CLOSING" means that you'd better be getting payed continuously. If not, you are not doing you're job.
"COLD CALLING" is still being used by telemarketers and so called "mortgage brokers" to turn a simple list of phone book names into a list of closing clients. Cold Callers call your house knowing nothing more than your name and address but, are trained to convince you you need their services and then coax your information out of you.
I in fact worked for a mortgage broker before and basically, it was my job to call as many people as possible from a phone book and atempt to find those who needed their mortgage refinanced. Once I found them, my entire purpose was to get their SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER so we could run a credit check and find out how we could offer them a refinancing they would agree to.
Most of the time the job was boring but every now and then I'd get a hot client who really needed my services and thus I "pulled an APPLICATION".
Unless you pull apps in this job, the bosses will just fire you and get a new cold caller to work harder than you. This type of job requires some psychology skills and excellent conversational abilities.
The upside to a job as a commissioned salesman is that it is possible for you to see more than $10,000 a month (10 closings for $1000 commission each).
The downside of this job is that YOU ARE EXPENDABLE and if you aren't producing enough you may either stay broke or be fired and replaced.
The "LEADS" represent the lists of possible clients or, possibly, every person who walks in the door and is thinking of buying. Salesmen who see nothing but success believe that their is no "bad leads" and that every single lead is a possible client either now or in the future.
However, the pessimistic salesman may believe that closing clients is all luck and random as some people don't have the money to spend and others just aren't interested.
BOTH OF THESE VIEWS ARE TRUE.
believe me, there is nothing more random and tedious thatn dialing randomly through a phonebook attempting to sell something to a person you've never met.
It is not easy to force people to trust you and dispell the resentment they have towards pesky telemarketers.
Glengarry Glenross exposes the secrets of Cold Callers and commissioned salesmen so accurately, It should be their Bible. |
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