Neil: Sales Genius

I should have kept this site updated. I will try to get it up to speed.

At the end of Novermember, I think we pushed Neil to going Postal. It was Monday, and he was suppose to have a nice dinner date over the weekend, so maybe the kid wouldn't be such a spaz. It was a shame I didn't hear about the accident or maybe I would have removed his AIM away message that I had set on Friday night. It was to the tune "HALP!!! I'm locked in the bathroom and can't get out. Don't ask me why I have a computer in the bathroom, just call my mom!!".

So in walks Neil, late, tired, and plops down in his cublicle. Not a peep. Hmmm, Monday is starting to look good. Then there goes the keyboard flying across the hallway followed by the speakers. I guess he had a few away messages in AIM and he saw the Away respones. He couldn't believe we would do that, and then he talk about a fender bender he had Friday night and was unable to get to that dinner date....which he later found out she had already ditched him.

I gots lot of work done that day! Best Monday ever!!

Neil has a name plate, that he hangs on the outside of his cubicle. We have placed it all over the office, including the back and front of the bathroom door. He constantly is sipping on a water bottle and then running to the bathroom every 10 minutes or so, complaning that he has a small bladder. So we felt that it was appropiate place for his name tag.

The lastest incaration of the name tag was up in the ceiling between the light fixture and the ceiling fan. It took him 2 days to realize that was where it was. He is a bright one.

John

Another reason I have to wear headphones with Neil around is because all he does is read slashdot and giggles and then wants to explain to me why he's laughing. So headphones have given me that peace, until he walks over and wants to share. I ask him to send me the link like everyone else does and I can read it when I have time. But noooooo, Neil insist on printing it out and then reading it to me in dramatic fashion, as that would be the only way I could "get" it.

So Thursday night, I edited his HOST file to redirect slashdot.org to the IP for www.shashdot.net, which basically shows Slashdot in Maint mode and then redirects to a German site. Others in the office wanted me to re-direct to a porn site, but that would give it away.

So sure enough, Friday was giggle free and I actually got tons of work done. Neil was under the impression that Slahdot was down and thus didn't mention a peep. When some of the techs came back in the office late afternoon, I had one of them mention a funny article on Slashdot.

He then perked up and said "Oh, Slashdot's been down all day, I've been waiting for it to come back up".

So I nudged the tech to say he must have read that article yesterday. When Neil comes back in on Monday, he will know for sure that Slashdot is not down, and will think more local. I think I should go in this weekend and reset the HOST file, and then set it back on Tuesday? Hmmmm

Neil was talking with a customer during the worm infestation a few weeks back, when we were getting calls left and right for virus removal help. So he's telling the customer that he really can't help them to understand the extent of the damage of the virus, since the Windows OS is not open source and thus can's see what the virus is doing.

Guess Neil never though about asking the experts.

Today as we were trying to troubleshoot a server problem, Neil comes over and ask if we want to know what nickname he had in Highschool? So we offered some logical choices, such as Weenie, PuffNstuff, Philsbary Dough boy. Boy were we off, he informed us that he was called Phsyco. After we looked at each other, one of use asked the stoooopid question "Why?". He proudly told us he earned the name in Band. And proving we never learn our lesson to shut up, we asked once again "why?". Appears Neil was quite the mad man motivator for his band mates before competition. I guess he knew how to throw the percussion section into a frenzy.

Neil likes to think he has some sort of partership with the president. And this partnership allows him to treat us like the President treats us. Expect Neil forgets one thing. We take the abuse from the president because he signs our checks.

So Neil being Neil one day, was asking every tech that came in the door what call they just came from, what are they doing, and if they are billable. I just ignore him as he shouts the question over the cublicle and forces him to get up and come over and ask which I tell him "check the ticket database". Done with me, he goes and jumps on the next tech that walked in the door. But John was having a bad day, and so Neil asks "So John, what are you doing?". John's reply is classic. He said "Gonna kick your ass if you ask me that one more time!".

LOL...we were all laughing so hard, and Neil went and complained to the President. He was laughing himself and reminded us that he's the only one allowed to Kick Neil's ass.

Neil just hit another speed bump in his short lived sales career. He spent all this week, staying up late last night preparing his first real proposal. One that he really needs because he has sold nothing. It's a good proposal, I give him that. So he and the president took off this morning downtown go go meet with the client.

I come back from my call and they are already back at the office. So I ask how the sales spiel went. Never have I seen such a long face. At first I thought the president did his typical Bull in the china shop routine. But it appears the client was not aware of the meeting and had another meeting scheduled. So Neil learned an important lesson today. Confirm your appointment with a client!!

So he's all depressed, and was even more depressed when I asked how it went. So I sent an email text message to all the field techs to call in separately throughout the day to call Neil and ask how his meeting went! LOL...I had the headphone off every time I heard his phone ring! He would answer the phone with the desperate motivated Sales expectation, and then it would tone down that it was just a tech, and then he had to explain his whole story again to each tech

The president of the company likes to send out mass email regarding his special of the month. This month's special is only charging $100 for a network security audit. Which in turn involves sending a tech out to run Shields UP and other freebie utilities since he is too cheap to actually buy real utilities or processes. Keep in mind that he is sending spam, he convinced Neil it wasn’t spam, and so Neil helped with the email. I got wind they sent out one last night and noticed they used a fictitious Remove@domain.com email address for people to reply back to if they want to be removed from the mailing list. Since I manage the email accounts, I created that email account and had all email forward to Neil.

Well, my plan worked out too well. Neil came to my cubicle this morning begging me that he stop receiving all the hate email. Of course I played dumb and said I would look into it. In the meantime, the hate mail was overflowing his inbox and he must have received a real nasty one that had him really shaken up. He kept blabbering about how he lost their trust and whimpered back to his cube. He's been quite all morning!!!

Hmmm, I wonder if I should put an auto reply to the remove@domain.com with Neil’s cell phone?

So what pixie dust do you require if I could any of your IT woes?

Neil: so Jim, it appears you have all your development and networking needs met, do you have any LaserJet’s or Plotters?
Customer: (I guess he made the mistake of saying “yeah”)
Neil: Do you provide your own maintenance on those machines?!!!
Customer: (Not sure why he hasn’t hung up, and must have answered “yeah”)
Neil: Oh my gosh. Now I don’t want to sound like a worry wart, but you really shouldn’t touch those unless you know what your doing as you may get seriously hurt!!!
Customer: (customer must have actually sounded interested or wanted to see where this dip wanted to go with this)
Neil: Yeah, you really need to be careful as someone in experience can actually get killed working on those!!!!!
Customer: What?
Neil: Yeah, be careful or they could Explode!!!"

Welcome to Neil's "Sales Genius" blogger. Share our pain as Neil learns the sales ropes.

There are way too many stories or one lines to share. I wish I could say we made this up. But as we hear them, we report them. I will start off by backlogging some of past comments and/or actions. Our goal is to reach a "live" reporting on Neil's activities.