When I was a young man, I was a racehorse.

Point me in a direction and one way or another I would arrive at the finish line. Trouble was I didn’t have a jockey to guide me down the track…I won the race but I really didn’t.

Case in point:

My very first full-time sales job, at the age of 21, was in a stereo store. I really had a passion for audio and my enthusiasm was infectious. A friend of mine suggested I stop by the store and put in an application. When I did, I was given a “psychological profile test”. The owner of the store hired me on the spot because he needed the position filled a.s.a.p. .

I fit in easily and because I loved what I was doing (I never thought of it as selling) I moved a lot of product out the door. So much so that the following week the owner told me I was only $200 shy of having surpassed the record for first week sales of a new “sales associate” in any of the 150+ stores nationwide. Believe me, if I had been told there was such a record, I would have stayed a couple of extra hours and broken it!

At about the same time the results came back from the psychological test. According to the test I had absolutely no aptitude for sales…I was accountant material! I remember the owner of the store getting the phone call and remarking “What are you talking about? This guy walks around like he owns the place and is in the top 1% of sales associates nationwide!”

The truth is I was making more money than my sales manager and everyone else in the store…I was flying high and loved what I was doing. I had customers bringing their friends in to buy from me. The owner brought out inventory that was laying around the warehouse and I would sell it by the end of the day… I was good at what I was doing and I knew it…and I let the other guys in the store know it too.

Little did I know my success was breeding discontent in the store.

One day the owner asked me to take a couple of days off…Okay, no big deal. I went to see a potential customer and sold a big system for the store with the equipment sight unseen! (that hadn’t been done before) When I came into the store the owner was amazed and at the same time was obviously down…

“I’m going to have to let you go”…

I was absolutely stunned! I was outperforming everyone, making this guy money and he was about to fire me. “You’ve got a super-ego and it’s causing problems in the store”. He went on to explain: “You are making more money than anyone in the store, even me! The rest of the guys are so demoralized that they don’t want to work when you’re around. The business was designed to support five sales associates and you are making more on commission than all five put together. I’m afraid of losing the sales staff, so I have to let you go”…

I was never given any training or cautioned about the negative effect my “bravado” had on the other guys…I was continually praised and then one day fired? My passion for what I was doing was my source of inspiration, so of course, I was going to be successful at it… But I received no council what-so-ever about being too “cocky” (I was 21)…

I was a racehorse full of steam!

I didn’t realize I was causing problems because I had blinders on! I was left so shattered that it was almost a year later before I attempted another sales job.

The point is, I actually felt (at the time) I was being punished for being too good. That it was wrong to be the best at what you do because it was going to cause others to react negatively… Then again I had no training and no mentoring. No one took the time to coach me on the realities of life. With a little bit of coaching I could have continued to be the best at what I was doing and “finessed” the situation in a way that would have made everyone happy… If only I’d been told.

But hey, the test did say I was supposed to be an accountant!.

-Bob Baran