Official thread

Conference Confessions: GeneralCorp Wants the Scoop

War Room Savages!

We're headed to the Emblaze DigitalNow Revenue Summit in Chicago on April 2-4 and our fearless leader, @GeneralCorp , is all set to shake things up.

Leading up to the conference, Corp isn’t interested in hearing how to make the most of networking events or how to choose the best sessions to attend. It’s not his first rodeo, folks. What he does want to hear are all the wildest, most mind-blowing stories you have experienced at conferences.

Share your funniest, most surprising, and (bonus points for) or even most embarrassing sales stories from conferences. Corp will cherry-pick the juiciest tales and read them at the summit. The weirder and more laugh-worthy, the better.

Your tales be immortalized and you'll bag 50 commission points for sharing your story. For those who post it from their public profiles - don’t worry, we’ll keep it anonymous. What’s to lose?

Unleash your tales below or DM me.

ps: no more bots from next week; scout's promise

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23 comments

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antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

6

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I'm here for the entertainment. I've been to a few conferences, and nothing crazy happened at mine... So I'll have my popcorn ready.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

6

🦊

Samesies. All professional.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Apparently we all attend the wrong conferences.

Filth

Politicker

6

Live Filthy or Die Clean

I don't have many as I wasn't lucky/unfortunate to be picked to go to a lost in past lives but in 2022 my current org hosted their own conference. A lot of silly shit happened but the I'll drop my most embarrassing moment. The first day of conference ended, we all did the dinner event and now we are doing cocktails on the rooftop bar. I start chatting it up with a guy in a suit, midwestern, easy back and forth. We start talking home cities and football teams and both of ours are historic with shit recent seasons looking to make a comeback. From here, I start to get into the business aspect of things and as we do, I realize I don't recognize his name but he's the CEO of a big partner we have...this would have been awesome EXCEPT at this conference we announced that this big partner I'm talking to HAS JUST BEEN REPLACED BY THEIR TOP COMPETITOR and apparently we still invited this poor bastard AND I'M THE ONLY ONE TALKING WITH HIM FUCK FUCK FUCK.........so I quickly try to steer us away from business chat, but not fast enough... he hits me with, "So any idea what's going on with the partner change? B/c your org and mine have been doing business together for years and this is the first I'm hearing of any shake ups." At this time I'm pretty sure I started sweating, stuttering, and looking as pale an albino. I barely was able to get out that I'm newish with the company and ha ha nobody tells me anything before quickly looking for the bar to raise my hand and go grab another drink and disappear from the bar and go back to my room to hide. It was all good and nothing happened but man my team had a good laugh at my choice of conversation partners and we all wondered how he got the invite in the first place. Sorry nothing too exciting or salacious but felt like a big deal at the time.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

6

War Room Community Manager

Sounds like you accidentally played CEO roulette and won the jackpot of awkward conversations. This one’s definitely going to the summit btw
cc: @GeneralCorp

Filth

Politicker

2

Live Filthy or Die Clean

perfect! lol glad my misstep can get a few more laughs. Tell Corp he can buy me a beer if he ever gets lost in Ohio.

oldcloser

Arsonist

6

💀

2017 - A vendor 2 booths down had 3 "show" girls out if front of their booth. They sort of looked like Hooters waitresses in a software company's uniform. Show was Thurs, Fri, Sat. At the end of the day on Friday, one of my sellers, sort of in a panic, asked to be excused for the last hour of the show. We had an hour left and a company dinner planned right after.
I asked him where he thought he needed to go. He tells me one of the girls had eaten too many mushrooms and he was going to "talk her down." Didn't see him til the next morning. Covered him. Didn't ask for details.
All I got.

Goomba

Opinionated

4

Director

Had initial training for a large mortgage lender several years ago. Most people were flown out. Four people were fired after a brawl at the local Ruth’s Chris and sent home. An announcement was made that people should be more aware and open bar access was cut for drink tickets.

They clearly didn’t plan this as the drink tickets were signed pieces of notebook paper which were easily printed off/copied.

Two more people, that I know of, were fired after a heated argument on the second to last night of the week long say we had there.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

The only thing missing from this story is a mention of Waffle House.

Goomba

Opinionated

2

Director

Are you crazy? I’m not going to Waffle House on an expense card. 😂😂😂

Sunbunny31

Politicker

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I mean, where else were brawlers to go after Ruth’s Chris threw them out?

Goomba

Opinionated

3

Director

Very true.

HVACexpert

Politicker

1

sales engineer

The fact that it happened at a Ruth Chris steakhouse is amazing.

jefe

Arsonist

3

🍁

Just a few too many but not followed by anything crazy. Also here for the entertainment.

sugardaddy

Politicker

3

🍬

No more bot's he says!

Space_Ghost20

Valued Contributor

3

Account Executive

I think the wildest thing that happened at any conference I've been to was our hotel in New Orleans had a busted sewage pipe. So water (of God knows what quality) was sprinkling down into the lobby the entire time. Smelled like a barnyard. Thankfully a few floors up where my room was it was perfectly fine.

HVACexpert

Politicker

2

sales engineer

So I didn’t see this happen, heard this from a friend, but was kind of confirmed by a few people.

So my old company does this internal national sales conference every year. Large company, hundreds of sales people. Every couple years they do it in Vegas. The running joke is they do it there because they know eventually people will do stupid shit that they can be fired for , so it’s their way of cutting a little fat.

Here is one of those stories.

So obviously in Vegas there are escort services. One of these sales people decided to partake and bring a girl up to his room he met at the bar. Well it didn’t go as planned, she instead handcuffed him to the bed and had a gun on her and robbed him cold. The company has people double up in rooms. The roommate came back during the robbery. HE was also forced onto the bed and handcuffed him and robbed him also. She left them there until room service found them in the morning.

So let this be a lesson to you when that nice lady at the bar starts to sweet talk you on the casino floor.

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I guess the milk wasn't free in this case.

lowhangersalesbanger

Executive

2

Director of Sales

I was at a conference with a co-worker who used to be a gymnast. He had been drinking a little (lot) and a person who came to our booth was talking to him and his gymnastics background came up. I threw out there that he could do a standing backflip no problem, and so he did but forgot he was holding a bottle of beer. Made quite the mess.

Pachacuti

Politicker

2

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Here's a conference story:
I had just been let go from a company based overseas - very messy and bad experience. My ex-boss (not an American) was a very conceited, self-centered peacock of a person who had to have things just a certain way or he'd go ballistic. Knowing this, and knowing the company had a big trade show coming up (the biggest of the year) in Las Vegas, I knew how to get my revenge.

He always stayed at the Mirage - without fail. And in the most expensive rooms there (like $1000/night). The rest of the "team" stayed in regular rooms or wherever they could, most of them not in the same hotel. So I called the hotel, pretending to be his assistant, and cancelled the block of rooms. I felt a little bad because I kinda liked a few of the other people, but I couldn't just cancel the boss's room, unfortunately, and I knew that he'd steal anyone else's room if there were any there to take. So BOOM - they were gone and the hotel quickly sold out.

When he got to hotel and found out he had no palatial hotel room to lounge about in, nor any room at all, he was of course furious. And since it was a very large conference - no other decent hotels had vacancy. He spent the next 6 hours running from hotel to hotel and he ended up staying at some way-off-the-strip flea-bag hotel. That was just round 1 of revenge.

Next, because I knew how the booth was being shipped in, I had the booth shipped to somewhere else. I did this by called the freight forwarding company, pretending to be him this time (because I didn't want to get his assistant in trouble for this), and sent it to a different conference center in Vegas. It was remarkably easy to do - people send stuff to the wrong conference venue all the time in Vegas I learned. So no booth for him. It took several days for them to unravel this. Round 2 done.

Finally, after he arrived to Vegas, I called the airline he always flew and cancelled his return flight back to NYC. Again, pretty easy to do since I knew his schedule and airline. Round 3 - DONE. Took him an extra 2 days to get out of Vegas and he had to rebook the flight from scratch. And I guess 1-way flights out of Vegas are VERY expensive. But on the bright side, I heard he was finally able to switch hotel rooms after the conference ended.

Doing the math, I that cost the company >$25,000 between the booth, hotel, and flight costs.

FoodForSales

Politicker

2

AE

wow. don't f with you i guess

Gasty

Notable Contributor

1

War Room Community Manager

That's one of the wildest white-collared revenge stories I've heard in a while.
@GeneralCorp - don't miss this one

TennisandSales

Politicker

1

Head Of Sales

does hooking up with a random person from the booth across the hall and that person turning into a stalker count?

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