What's the stupidiest thing/service your company has ever paid for?

What's up fam,


There are tons of stupid expenses, but which one takes the cake?


At a previous company, they hired a lady to speak to us about "Video Call Etiquette".


She literally just talked about showing your hands, wearing a shirt, and having a blank or professional background.


It was a 6-hour session in which she just regurgitated the same info in multiple ways, plus breakout sessions in which we were supposed to talk about how we would implement the shit she was talking about.


We took them as coffee breaks.


I found it insane that companies pay thousands of dollars to speakers like this.


Who has experienced anything similar?

😂 Sales Humor
🕶 Trends
📠 Startup
19
Pachacuti
Politicker
15
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
Gong
E_Money
Big Shot
8
💰
+1
realbread
Executive
3
Enterprise Account Executive
+2
champchamp
Arsonist
3
Certified Savage
+3
CuriousFox
WR Officer
6
🦊
How to overcome objections. Dude couldn't overcome ours on how to combat specific client objections we get daily. Marketing really effed that one up. 
champchamp
Arsonist
1
Certified Savage
Hahaha you should've asked to record so you could "study it later" lol, would've loved to see it.
TennisandSales
Politicker
6
Head Of Sales
wow......that sounds insane!! 

For me we were a sponsor at a conference, and to drive ppl to our booth our CEO paid to have puppies from the near by shelter brought in and they played in a pen in front of our booth.......


the cuteness level was through the roof but then the CEO told us we then needed to go talk to these ppl about our software which of course went as well as you would expect. 

oh and I found out it cost $12k for the puppies.....

Im convinced there is some sort of money laundering going on 😂
champchamp
Arsonist
1
Certified Savage
Hahaha I imagine them like "yeah, yeah, your software's cool but have you seen the puppy behind you?"

At least you helped shelter dogs though (: haha
TennisandSales
Politicker
1
Head Of Sales
the shelter dogs were the real winners for sure haha
SaaSam
Politicker
5
Account Executive
A "sales consulting" firm. We had recently entered a new vertical and all we really needed was time to build pipe because everyone on the sales team knows what we are doing. This ended up being the biggest waste of money. Literally, everything these guys had us do was trash. CEO asked us what we thought when the time came to renew or end our contract and I told him these guys shouldn't be allowed to call themselves sales consultants. 
champchamp
Arsonist
1
Certified Savage
Haha sounds terrible, how long did it last?
SaaSam
Politicker
1
Account Executive
3 months of extreme eye roll
Sunbunny31
Politicker
4
Sr Sales Executive 🐰
BombBomb for AEs.   I used it twice, and only because I had to.   

The time spent prepping a script and recording multiple times in order to send the message would have been better spent on quick calls to multiple contacts, rather than a recorded message to a single prospect contact.
1nbatopshotfan
Politicker
3
Sales
At an SKO the company hired a speaker who was roughly 200 years old. His advice to a room full of sales people was to spend less than 30 minutes a day responding to and writing emails. This was in 2019, which is a time period that emails were pretty important for. Unsure if we were supposed to fax people, send Morse code, carrier pigeons. Who can say. But 30 minutes a day on emails. 
champchamp
Arsonist
0
Certified Savage
Well, at least if your boss asks why you don't answer emails or slack after 8:30 AM you got an excuse... FOLLOWING YOUR FUCKING SALES GURU'S ADVICE.
techsales
Politicker
1
Enterprise Account Executive
An expensive ring light with a tripod for us to use to better illuminate our faces during zoom meetings. I'm talking the type of lights that you see beauty influencers use.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
5
🦊
Still won't get me to turn my camera on for most meetings 🤣
techsales
Politicker
1
Enterprise Account Executive
You're a champ. I feel forced when I'm the only one off camera and my company paid not only for the beauty influencer light but the logitech camera

sigh
Sunbunny31
Politicker
1
Sr Sales Executive 🐰
My camera is not on for the delightful 6 am calls I have to have with my European customers, or our company-wide meetings that have to accommodate the globe.   Heck, for those, I generally don't even turn the lights on.

I bet you look glam, though!
CuriousFox
WR Officer
1
🦊
Ok I'm curious - what light did they send ya?
techsales
Politicker
1
Enterprise Account Executive
the LUME CUBE lol. overkill
Boudreaux
Politicker
1
Regional Manager
Hirevue- My former company would choose a topic like differentiators or objections for us to video ourselves, and submit for review. So awkward and not realistic! An absolute waste of everyone's time.
sketchysales
Politicker
1
Sales Manager
A cold calling agency.  Paid them like $20k, got zero leads or opps.  Biggest waste of money if your product is slightly niche or complex.

Hired a new SDR, pulled in a $200k lead which I turned into customer on his second day of calling.  
champchamp
Arsonist
1
Certified Savage
SDR with the assist.
realbread
Executive
1
Enterprise Account Executive
LATTICE
Stratifyz
Big Shot
0
Account Executive
But HR loves it…
realbread
Executive
0
Enterprise Account Executive
Yeah HR can lick my bag
Stratifyz
Big Shot
0
Account Executive
Real talk, why the beef with Lattice though?
sales321go
Good Citizen
0
Account Executive
+1, but does it even do?!
goldenlazard
Politicker
0
Senior SDR
Lusha. Good idea in principle but we have ZoomInfo already and Lusha salesforce is shit
Gizmo
Politicker
0
AE
I have the opposite experience - Zoominfo tends to be lacking whilst Lusha has gotten me direct numbers I couldn't find elsewhere.
Mr.Pickles
Arsonist
0
Sr. Customer Success Manager
Salesforce full migration without making any sandbox testing before full implementation - they went full retard, wasting 20K USD
DungeonsNDemos
Big Shot
0
Rolling 20's all day
I'm just picturing Ricky Bobby "I don't know what to do with my hands"
Sniper
Valued Contributor
0
Enterprise Account Executive
Poor hiring decisions.
oldpeppertooth
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Ambition
ABX
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
We paid a brand consulting firm out the nose for a re-branding which simply added a single word before our existing company suffix. 


Essentially we paid millions to rebrand as "BigBravado".

It sounds stupid as fuck but you should have heard what we came up with internally before hiring it out. Marketing, I swear to God 🤷🏻‍♂️