The Treachery of a Friend… When I was starting out as a truck salesman for Diamond Motors (a Mitsubishi automotive dealership), I met a guy named James (not his real name), who would eventually become one of my very best friends. After being friends for about a year, we had decided to form some sort of alliance. We would go on sales calls together and, when one of us was not available to assist a client, the other would take his place. It was a good arrangement for both of us because we were able to cover more ground and make sure that each of our clients was well assisted. We watched each other’s back… or so I thought. On my second year as a salesman for the dealership, I had begun winning several sales awards and making a sizeable amount of money from commissions. James, on the other hand, wasn’t doing very well with his sales, and he started to envy my achievements… a fact that I was oblivious of. James never showed that he was envious and kept our “partnership” running normally. Little did I know that he was actually plotting against me. Since he had been with me during a lot of my sales calls, James knew which of my clients would be buying soon; and he had set his sights on a potentially large fleet buyer. Whenever this client needed a follow-up call, James would eagerly volunteer to assist him. Since I trusted James, I would allow him to assist the client on my behalf. Sometime later, I found out that three trucks had already been delivered to that client; but, much to my dismay, the sale had been credited to James. This made me furious! Not only had he “stolen” my sale, James had done it at a time when I was in need of money because my wife, Helen, was about to give birth to my 3rd child. I would also learn later that James had been spreading lies about me to my clients. I decided to confront James. To my amazement, he had actually admitted to me that he was jealous of my achievements and hated the fact that I had outdone him in sales even if we worked together on all our clients. He shouted at me and tried to make me feel that it was my responsibility to share some of my sales with him. After that argument, our “partnership” was dissolved. Though James was able to steal one of my biggest accounts, he would not prosper as a salesman for the dealership we worked for; and eventually he was asked to resign. My friendship with James had blinded me from his real thoughts and motives. I had no idea that, behind his smiles and during our occasional beer drinking sessions, he was scheming against me. Throughout my many years of doing business I’ve found out (mostly the hard way) that creating a business partnership (even one that was only verbally agreed upon; like in my story above) based on friendship can often be a very dangerous move. I’ve witnessed many corporations with brilliant concepts break down into rubble because the incorporators were friends… well, not anymore. With friends, we often have a set of rules that we have to abide by so as not to “shake” the friendship. We also have a set of high expectations that we imagine our friends to be. And, when these rules or expectations are broken, so goes our friendship. You might be thinking; “You’re wrong, Boom. A true friend is truthful to you and does not expect anything from you.” You may be right; but how many “true” friends do we actually have? For that matter, are we in fact true friends to our friends? At least, with our enemies, we know where we stand. But, do we really know what our friends think about us?
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 13:56:00 +0000