Hi. I’m the Director of Sales and Marketing for a privately held multi-national firm. I have made my living as a salesperson for almost 20 years, and I have a confession to make: I DESPISE salespeople.

Not just a little mind you. When I have to deal with a salesperson I usually find myself wanting to cut off their eye lids, cover them in honey, and stake them to an ant pile. Or better yet, shove their polyester clad ass into a wood chipper and spread the resulting mulch over their grave.

Ok, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but my feelings are intense enough that when my wife and I go shopping for a big ticket item she makes me repeat all the way there; “I WILL be nice to the salesperson, I WILL be nice to the salesperson.”

My contempt was rekindled last week when the “Cash for Clunkers” programmed lured us into a local Ford dealership.

ME: “We’ve been reading about the Escape Hybrid. Do you have one on the lot we could test drive?”

SALESPERSON: “I don’t have one here, but there is one at another lot nearby. Why don’t we go into my office and we can start drawing up the paperwork while I have it brought over.” At this point my wife saw the vein bulging in my neck, took my hand and whispered; “steady.”

ME: (attempting to remain pleasant and calm) “I really couldn’t commit to purchasing a $30,000.00 vehicle without either seeing it or test driving it.”

SALESPERSON: “I can assure you that it is the only one left in the state and it will be gone within the hour. If you don’t buy it right now, you won’t find another one for months.”

ME: “I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice, I’m going to have to kill you now.”

The only form of life on earth lower than a car salesman is a furniture salesman. They never take “I’m just looking” as an answer. They cling to you like blood sucking parasites, insistent that you come and look at the latest shipment of baby furniture even though you just told them your kids are 35 years old.

To be fair to car and furniture salespeople, I don’t live in their world. In my business a single sale is generally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. People don’t make buying decisions of that magnitude quickly. The sales cycle is at least several months and often several years. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live and die by having to close sales every day.

So it’s not so much that I despise them personally, I despise how they have to do business (and the soulless whores it turns them into). So here are a few rules of thumb when given the pitch by these guys (or gals – I’m an equal opportunity despiser).

1.    If the salesperson says that what you want to buy is one of a kind and that if you miss this opportunity, the object of your desire will be gone forever, flip them on the nose and walk out of the building. They have factories for a reason…to make more of whatever the hell it is you want.

2.    If the salesperson says that the sale ends today and that you won’t be able to get it at that price tomorrow, they are a lying sack of ca-ca. If they can make the deal today, they can make the same deal next week if they want too. If they don’t want too, screw them and go buy it from someone who will.

3.    If what they are selling is not “value-added” and the only purchasing factor is price, do not be embarrassed to make a low-ball offer. All they can do is say no, and to the best of my knowledge no one has ever died from being told no. Even if they say they don’t negotiate, everybody negotiates. Life is a negotiation. With that being said, don’t expect to get something for nothing. Every business deserves a fair profit.

4.    Do your research and know what you want before you go. Be polite (yes, I can be polite if my wife threatens me enough) but be firm. If they start the sales spin crap walk away.

5.    And finally if a salesperson ever begins a sentence with “Let me be honest” everything that comes out of their mouth from that point on is complete shit. No one ever says “let me be honest” if they are actually being honest.

As soon as I post this I’m going to go interview a builder for the home we are hoping to start construction on soon.

I have my wood chipper ready.

I recently crossed over to the dark side and have become a Mac person. I used to hate Mac people because they were all like mutant Jehovah’s Witnesses; constantly extolling the virtues of all things Mac with an air of superiority that made me want to shove their MacBooks up their MacAsses.

The firm I joined six months ago didn’t give me a choice. They do everything on Macs and as I’ve used Mac products I have slowly become a convert. In fact, I’m typing this using iWork ’09 while I listen to iTunes on my iPhone. I work from home so I keep in touch with my colleagues on iChat and we coordinate our schedules on iCalendar. If I decide to add a picture to this blog I will do it with iPhoto and perhaps I’ll even add a video at some point using iMovie.

I think you get the iPoint.

What is beginning to iChap my iBehind, however, is how marketing people have begun to steal Apple’s use of that little lower case “i” to make their product seem hip and cool.

This happened several years ago with the letters “X” and “Z.” Someone, somewhere decided that using either of those letters in a model number suddenly made their products seem much edgier and, of course, every marketing person on the planet followed like sheep.

I’m in the commercial sound, video, and lighting business. Our company is a dealer for over 850 manufacturers. Each of those manufacturers make hundreds of products and the model number for EVERY FREAKING ONE OF THEM starts with and X or a Z.

Don’t try and tell me you haven’t noticed this trend. Think about all of the cool cars you would like to own. Now think about how many of those car models begin with an X or a Z. If you’re like me you’d really like to drive your vintage Z-28 over to the BMW lot to pick up a new Z-4, or perhaps over to the Jaguar lot to pick up an XF, a XK, or even an XJ.

But now the mighty X and Z have been begun to be replaced by the tiny, unassuming “i”, and it’s starting to piss me off.

I’ve seen advertisements recently for an iSafe, an iBoat, and even an iCheeseburger. The coup de grace, however, may have been a seminar I saw advertised last week promising to teach young couples wanting to have children how to be iParents.

(I know you see this coming) That is just iCreepy.

I think I’m going to start a marketing craze in which all product model numbers begin with an umlaut. Soon you will be able to purchase an üToaster, a üTV, or perhaps even a üPet. And the best part will be that I will get a small cut from the sale of every üProduct because of my marketing genius.

Or maybe I’m just üCrazy.