PARTYING ON A SINKING SHIP

New York Post ^ | 8/02/02 | JESSICA SOMMAR

[kattracks]

August 2, 2002 -- Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.

Bankrupt service provider WorldCom is planning an all-expenses-paid booze cruise for its New York employees - and was struggling to keep the party under wraps yesterday as its disgraced financial officers were arrested, The Post has learned.

[petuniasevan]

Bet they're going to see some serious party-crashing.

[Republican Babe]

If they are smart, the ship will not sail. Freeper notice should be enough to appropriately man the gangplank.

[mewzilla]

Get the guillotine.

[mountaineer]

fyi

[ArneFufkin]

Worldcom will not go away, their top producers deserve recognition and Worldcom needs to retain their best playmakers. $6,000 is no big deal. The guy who "sniffed" should hit the street.

[mewzilla]

Fine, let them be recognized in a way that doesn't spit in the faces of the remaining employees and investors. And frankly, any employee who would allow this amount of money to be spent on him/her under these circumstances is a selfish, thoughtless human being. I know of employees in one company (not this one obviously) who agreed to give up their annual bonuses inorder to keep more people on the payroll.

[ArneFufkin]

Sales professionals are gold. Period. Worldcom needs to retain these people. When he rest of the employees go on a commission plan paying only for what they produce in excess of their budgeted revenue and goals, they can bitch about sales recognition trips.

[Taliesan]

Bankrupt service provider WorldCom is planning an all-expenses-paid booze cruise for its New York employees - and was struggling to keep the party under wraps yesterday as its disgraced financial officers were arrested, The Post has learned.

Good for them.

[dtel]

Spoken like a true sales manager, without us the company is nothing.
It looks from their balance sheet, that they should sh!tcan the current sales staffers, instead of reward them.

[ArneFufkin]

If it came down to picking between my best 10 salesmen, who I feel are the best in the industry - or the 1000, 5000, 20,000 other employees ... I'd keep the 10. They make the other jobs possible.

[Kerensky]

I'll provide the iceberg.

[steve in DC]

Wait a minuet!

That's just the tip of the iceberg!

[dtel]

Having worked with sales folks and been involved with implementation of said sales, it would behoove management to ensure the implementation team is as well qualified as the sales team.
Getting them to sign on the dotted line is the easiest part of the equation.
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
If you can sell it, but they can't implement it, what have you created?
Worldcon

[mewzilla]

Fine. The employees didn't have to accept it.

[ArneFufkin]

Yep. See ya.

[ArneFufkin]

You have no clue. Put you ass on the line and come back to me. Get paid for what you measurably produce.

The best sales pros are the best businessmen on Earth. The Worldcom rep who partners with GE or Chase Manhattan ... he knows EVERYTHING about their business units, operational objectives, forward looking strategies and financial constraints.

That guy is Jason Giambi in his profession. He drives the German car and lives on a lake.

[hopespringseternal]

If it came down to picking between my best 10 salesmen, who I feel are the best in the industry - or the 1000, 5000, 20,000 other employees ... I'd keep the 10. They make the other jobs possible.

Depends. If you are selling crap and that is all you can get out of your remaining employes, then keep the salesman.

Not that it will do you much good. Eventually people wise up that you are just scamming them.

The funny way business people think guarantees a face full of dirt occasionally. Joe Engineer can kickout one heck of a design and earn $100,000 a year doing it. Top Salesman earn $500,000 for selling it. Joe Engineer gets tired of what he is doing and goes to work for another company for $110,000. He takes all the working knowledge of your product with him.

I have seen this happen time after time. The best quarterback in the world is dogmeat without a good offensive line. The salesman continues making the promises (and the sales for a while). But the infrastructure to back up those promises is gone. Just as much as Top Salesman makes Joe Engineer's job possible, Joe Engineer makes Top Salesman's job possible.

Guess you should have invited him to the party.

[dtel]

Did I knock your golden boy salesman?
Sure HE knows everything about the account, but the man who implements it and the back office that supports it SUCK.
As I said, my ass has been on the line, I have worked with sales professionals?, I have helped close the deal.
I promise I won't say anything more about your german car driving golden boy.

[ArneFufkin]

Somebody is paying for that "crap". There's a little world out there that transcends your long distance provider.

By the way, you have your little R&D scenario backwards. The salesman comes back with his customer needs, growth projections, network capacity and money reality ... and the boys in the lab tweak the existing technology toward satisfying those business objectives. Then, you extrapolate THAT solution out into the greater world. That's the way it works. This isn't a BioTech startup.