The resilience and tenacity of the Sales Manager who had to get creative on behalf of his team and organization in order to adapt and survive in these turbulent times has to be celebrated.

When I sat down to pen a note for the resilient Sales Manager, prose seemed insufficient. I turned to poetry. This is my attempt to showcase camaraderie to demonstrate that I am also part of this profession. 

An Ode to the Sales Manager

When I was young, I wished I could be a manager
To impress everybody else with my swagger

Fate pushed me into the profession of sales
When everybody’s perception was that we told fairy tales

I bit the dust almost every day
Strangely enough, it made me stronger every day

From my vantage point, I envied my sales manager
Who would have thought that I did well enough to become a manager

All of a sudden, my neck was on the block
If I missed my forecast, I would be the first one to be docked

My first mistake was the expert’s curse
Believing that my brilliance was the best way to set the course

Slowly I understood that people came before problems
Investing in people solved many a problem

I realized that I needed to lead by example
To empower my team to start without my preamble

Boy, was every person different on my team
I even needed a vocabulary to describe what they mean

Every fiscal brought about a step change
It made me discover that even I could change

Sales models, compensation and performance management
If I am not careful, it is so easy to go off-tangent

Management taught me power and politics
Making them both positive was my heuristic

How did I feel in the middle of the sandwich?
All that pressure helped me positively enrich

The joys of making my team greater
Is what takes me towards my purpose faster

Boy, did I discover the power of coaching
Unleashing my team’s potential is so energizing

Now my focus is to make my team better than me
So that my legacy can be much more than me