How Your Shoe Selection Can Change Your Career

Mrs. fromthebachrow.com encourages me to tell stories in my blog to plug my message in a more entertaining way. She’s also a good editor for me.
I came across the FB page of the person that I worked with at one time. She was one of my peers when I was carrying the sales bag. Laure was a West Coast sales rep and by far the most colorful, expressive and flamboyant person I ever had to sit through within training and meetings. She also dressed professionally and to the nines, so to say, and had some wild designer eyeglasses as well.  She was fun and entertaining to be around especially when we had some product issues that affected “Her Customers”. The way she would carry on sometimes with her thick French accent would bring a smile to anyone. 

I learned how an expressive French woman living in Southern California could be so consistent in her sales performance.  She had a passion for her customers, and a knowledge of the products, and knew when to pull the right resource in to solve a customer problem. This put her on par with the rest of the sales team. What set her apart was the way she interacted with her customers and more importantly, command of her questioning skills. She effectively probed to get a better understanding of what her customers were doing and in order to “tell” them how they could do it better with her products. She was a top performing sales rep, with the occasional icy patches during a buying cycle that does not align with the selling cycle, which we all have at times. Besides talking too much about her customers at times during training, Laure had one major weakness, she was an awful driver.

As Field Sales Reps, we all had company cars.  It was terrific company benefit to get a “free car”, which included gas, maintenance, and insurance, all covered as a benefit. Back then, we merely had to track our personal mileage use for tax purposes. There were a few conditions that had to be fulfilled. A valid driver’s license is one of them. Of course, moving violations and accidents added a certain level of complexity to this benefit as well. In fact, a job loss could be the result of too many company car incidents. Laure had issues with the latter. The best story I heard was when she nearly took off the driver’s side door while backing out of her garage. Classic Laure!  While my memory is fading, I think she did the same thing again at a gas station.  Back then, no one carried a camera, but it would have been fun to see those pictures. She had a few other fender bender incidents over the years as well.  To say her awful driving skills put her on the company watch list was an understatement.

During one of the company acquisitions, I filled a Sales Director role and a few of my peers become direct reports. It was a rather unfriendly acquisition and the incoming management had this particular arrogance about them. These people took charge in an antagonistic manner that made the highly successful legacy team feel embattled and bullied. What made matters worse, they knew nothing about the equipment and drug manufacturing business. False assumptions and abrupt decision making were the norms to demonstrate control and power. It also didn’t help that they wanted to protect their people at the expense of others. Mergers and acquisitions are a prime time to take care of removing some “dead wood” in an organization.  The organization was restructured under two separate business areas, headed by separate VPs.  There was a lot of chatter how things were being run as it was disruptive and a distraction to Field Salespeople and its impact on our customers.
Laure moved into the other business area that I was not in. During the post-merger, there were lots of meetings at HQ that the field teams had to come in for. Of course, everyone was on their best behavior and highly polished. One particular day, I walked into the large lobby area where a group of salespeople was gathered around listening to Laure. She was more animated than usual that day. I do remember what she was wearing.  She had a very nice professional looking dress and these awesome high heel shoes, everything designer, I’m quite sure.  I walked over and she continued without missing a beat.  As I mentioned before, I just got promoted but I was still at that the awkward stage of the transition between peer and manager. I joined in listening to the story.  Apparently, she was in another fender bender in a mall parking lot and had backed into another car. Minor car damage, but a major dent to Laure’s career.

While we were all standing in the lobby, the new VP was talking to HR about terminating Laure for having multiple car accidents and tickets.  Laure to say was upset and panicked about this conversation is an understatement. Laure looked particularly polished that day.  I looked at Laure and stared at her shoes and asked her if she wears high heels when she drives. I’ll never forget what she said. “But of course, I am French.” Classic Laure! That gave everyone a good laugh and reduced some tension. We talked a few more minutes and then I excused myself.  I then walked over to the HR manager’s office and knocked on the closed door. When the HR person answered, I apologized for the interruption. I asked if I could add some value to the conversation about the situation they were discussing, as I was just talking to Laure in the lobby.  They invited me in and closed the door. I asked the VP/HR if they were trying to get rid of Laure. They both said no, it was about company liability and her safety and driving record. I agreed that Laure’s driving record was not impressive and that some corrective actions were in order. I then said we should start with her shoes. I received the death stare from both of them.
I went onto explain that all of her accidents happened while she was wearing high heels. Perhaps this might be the cause of her ability to manage the brake pedal properly. Thank goodness the HR person was a woman because she knew exactly what I was talking about. The VP, who turned out be an empty suit anyway, did not, but he asked what I was suggesting. I proposed that the company require her to wear sensible and comfortable shoes when she is operating a vehicle on company business, including rental cars. I also suggested to require her to take a safe driver course at her own expense. A last resort option would be to take away her company car benefit and require her to secure her own vehicle and all the expenses that go with it. Let her know she’s highly valued as a salesperson, but she needs to improve her driving record. The meeting lasted a few more minutes and essentially they agreed with this approach. The HR person said that this was a workable solution and thanked me. On the way out, they asked me to send Laure in.

Laure was still in the lobby with a few remaining reps. One happened to be one of my new direct reports. I told Laure that I just left the HR meeting and there are a couple of solutions they want to discuss with you. She asked me what happened, and I said they will explain it to you and everybody should win. She then went off to HR, with trepidation. As for the reps standing around after Laure left, they looked at me waiting for me to divulge the story. I told them it’s up to Laure to fill them in and I left to go to a meeting. I learned later that they directed Laure to comply with nearly the identical plan that was described above and that her employment would continue.
I myself learned a lot about problem-solving from an employee perspective rather a customer perspective. I was a peer that was promoted into a management role, and at the time, I was unaware that I had just sown the seeds of my leadership capability with this single act of insight and execution. I also learned how to be on the other side of management/peer communication channel and utilize it effectively.

Laure did seek me out later that evening to thank me for intervening and helping. This situation demonstrated to the legacy team that the new management team is not all that bad. While painful, the culture will change, improve and then will eventually start working as it should.
One of my team members mentioned to me a few weeks later that people in our business area were impressed by how I stepped into an area that was clearly none of my concern. My response was that I thought that how they were about to handle this was going to be another post-merger injustice. I was ever so fortunate to know about it while it was occurring and saw what I thought was the root cause. A couple of solutions came to mind and spoke up to the right people at the right time.

As for Laure, she thrived for years in her position and territory with a much improved driving record.  Sadly, we lost her to cancer in 2010, a day after her 49^th birthday. She is missed by all who knew her and worked with her. She was a fun person to be around, loved taking care of her customers, and an aggressive sales professional when she needed to be. I don’t ever expect to meet another sales professional that can fill Laure’s colorful and flamboyant shoes the way she did.

She happened to have been a professional salesperson that unknowingly helped a newly minted manager recognize the first glint of his yet undeveloped public facing leadership skills.
This is my favorite Laure story as I remember it and I appreciate the opportunity to write about this on my very own blog.

This week’s bottom Line:

1. Top performers get some slack if they stray too far from professional expectations. There is a limit, and it’s important to monitor and adjust your behavior on your own terms. If not, someone else will.
2. Keep your eyes open and your antennae up, as the solutions to a problem may be obtained from the people you are interacting with.
3. Serve others and offer value. Don’t expect anything in return other than the experience itself.
4. Build bridges yourself whenever you can or find a bridge builder if you can’t get across the conflict without some help.
5. Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff and life is way too short.

Author: Francis

Started out in science and somehow ended up in sales & marketing. Grew into a results oriented sales professional with extensive experience selling and positioning scientific solutions in the pharma/biotech, life sciences and medical diagnostics markets. In 1998 I created an excel sheet to track spending and cash flow to learn personal finance on my own. They don't teach this in school and by the time one figures it out, most of let all these resources slip through our fingers. It's time to pay it forward to this next gen so that they can shave 15-20 years off for working for "the man" with insights, a library of tools, and motivation from me and plenty of other FI bloggers that I follow. View all posts by Francis