What You Need To Consider Before Signing On The Dotted Line

From the David Mamet play, Glengarry, Glen Ross:

Roma sees something outside the window.

ROMA: Oh, Christ.

LEVENE: The hell with him. We’ll go to lunch, the leads won’t be up for…

ROMA: You’re a client. I just sold you five waterfront Glengarry Farms. I rub my head, throw me the cue “Kenilworth.”

LEVENE: What is it?

ROMA: Kenilw…

Lingk enters the office.

In the excellent film version of the play, Roma is played by Al Pacino, Levene by Jack Lemmon and Lingk by Jonathan Pryce. While giving perhaps the truest depiction of the pressure that salespeople labor under than any film I’ve seen, it also reveals the speed to which scams and tricks are sometimes utilized to get the deal signed. Routinely throughout the movie, the salespeople pretend to be heading out of town when they are not, speaking to secretaries who don’t exist, and offering returns on investment that will never be realized. The bottom line, as Alec Baldwin’s character (added for the movie) famously says, “Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.” Then, make sure it stays together until three business days have passed, after which time it legally cannot be undone.

And that’s the background of the above scene. The night before, Roma met Lingk at a bar and used all his powers of persuasion, coercion and anything else he could come up with to guilt Lingk into buying land, almost as an act of independence from his dominating wife. But once Lingk got home, that same dominating wife sent him right back out to find Roma and cancel the deal. Within milliseconds of seeing Lingk coming into the office, Roma concocted a scam and communicated it to his co-salesperson Levene, who would pose as one of Roma’s high-powered clients in need of an immediate ride to the airport.

It was devious, and it was brilliant, but due to the lack of such “street smarts,” the office manager, Williamson, played by Kevin Spacey, inadvertently blows the scam, earning a historic tongue-lashing from Roma. “You idiot. Whoever told you you could work with men?”

I got to thinking about scams and other such nonsense the other day when I received an email from someone promoting a conference. The subject line of the email started with the “RE:” that indicates a reply to something I had sent, but I had sent this person no email. Now, this is not groundbreaking scamming. As everyone knows, an email which indicates it is actually a reply is more likely to be noticed and read, which it was. But rather than making me more likely to attend this conference or do any kind of business with the sender, it immediately relegated that person to “scammer” status — something almost impossible to alter. It also hasn’t helped that I’ve received at least 10 emails promoting this particular event.

What’s the lesson here? At first blush, you might think it’s important to be honest, but I hardly have to tell our audience that. At second blush, you might think that it’s important not to do business with folks who employ such tactics, but that also is very well understood by our readers. But what is, apparently, not so well understood by our folks is that when you sign on to be part of anything like a conference, Webinar or advisory board, you may be signing off on how your name is bandied about — because many folks I know and respect are prominently featured in the body of the above-referenced email.

So when you do sign up to be a part of something, be sure you know what you’re getting into. Be sure you know the culture of those you’ll be working with, which should ensure that anyone they bring on board to handle operations or downstream marketing will act with some honor and dignity. Because being named as a star attraction of something unscrupulously promoted doesn’t burnish your image.

The bottom line: it’s all about culture. People come and go, so putting your trust in one person is risky. But good culture, just like any other form of it, eats scamming for lunch and would never be tolerated in an organization that is built around honesty and integrity. Perhaps the most important thing you own is your reputation, so be careful about who you entrust it to.

I may have enjoyed a drink with David Mamet’s real estate agents, but I sure wouldn’t have bought land from any of them.