A New Look At Peak Oil’s Impact: The Sales Conference

Earlier this week, my wife and I returned from an 8-day trip to the West Coast. After suspending their annual sales conference for the past two years, my wife’s company resumed the practice this year. (The usual methodology is to alternate West Coast and East Coast locales, so we’ll be attending next year’s conference here in the East.)

Lavish sales conferences took a fair share of media and public pounding a couple of years ago, during the heyday of TARP funds and “corporate bailouts”. An easy target of course, and as is typical of easy targets, some of the bashing was perhaps justified, some was definitely not, and much of the facts supporting the reasons for conducting these events never made their way into the public domain.

I won’t devote too much to resurrecting the good image of the national sales conference. I will, however, point out that my lovely wife works an average of 70 – 75 hours each and every week. Hands-down, she is the best and most honorable businessperson I have ever encountered. I’ve certainly listened to enough of her customer calls from home to speak with considerable authority—the immense level of respect from peers and the phenomenal success she richly deserves are ample evidence if my word is tainted by personal bias.

On 6 major holidays during the year, the vast majority of her customers (but not all, of course) have the good sense not to call her. But that leaves almost 360 other days of the year when they do call, or ask for meetings, or otherwise require some of her considerable skills and services (as does her management, and peers, and colleagues in related professional fields who also seek her out). Sunday night call around 9:30? Check. Meeting at 8:30 Tuesday evening? Check. 7:30 a.m. call on Friday? No problem. 1:00 a.m. computer time to catch up on all the paperwork she didn’t get to that day? Almost every night. Vacation? No such thing … just a bit less time on the phone and computer those days.

Now, I don’t recite these facts—which I’ve been a first-hand witness to for all of the eight-plus years we’ve been together—to toot her horn. She doesn’t like me or anyone else doing so, for one, and her reputation speaks for itself. Year in and year out, customer surveys about her are off the chart, and deservedly so.

I point this out because one of the primary objectives in gathering several hundred of the country’s best and brightest is her company’s desire to let these high-performance, high-quality professionals meet and exchange ideas and information, strategies, marketing techniques, and a host of other brain-picking opportunities because it’s generally the only time of the year that it’s at all feasible to get so many together in one place. Now, there are of course business meetings during the multi-day conference (we tack on a couple of days whenever we do the West Coast trip if for no other reason than to try and adjust to the time difference), but the free exchange of information and ideas and critiques play an absolutely invaluable part in the successes these many individuals enjoy.

They succeed? So does the company. Better service ideas for customers? They benefit, too. All in all, just about the most effective way for high-ranking company professionals to pick the brains of peers and executives—all with the primary purpose of improving what they do. Kinda hard to argue against the strategy.

This conference was decidedly more low-key and less extravagant than the heady days of the early 2000s. We’re talking serious extravagant years ago, yet not a soul was heard to complain inside or outside the company. Big, big bullseye during TARP, and most understood what was happening. It was hurtful to hear criticisms from people who clearly had no idea what they were talking about, as it was from people who did. Part of the process….

Why was I there, along with most other spouses and significant others? The company’s perspective on this has always been to recognize and extend appreciation to those whose support, holding down of the fort, or other assumed household/family responsibilities in turn frees up the professionals to do what they need to do. It is, on balance, a nice gesture. Did we miss the conference these past two years? Sure! But we survived, and would have had the conference remained in suspend mode this year.

Speaking for myself, while I appreciate the efforts of my wife’s company executives to “honor” the spouses et al (and this company does make a sincere effort in doing so), I’ve always looked at what I do here on the home front as being part of our personal “deal.” The trips are always a great deal of fun; we go to places (Vancouver, for instance) that we would not likely have visited on our own, and partake of activities (a concert in the Arizona desert or a hot-air balloon ride, for example) we’d surely never have the chance to do on our own. The resorts are wonderful, the warmer and sunnier February climates are usually quite agreeable with us hearty winter-slogged New Englanders, and we do eat well.

So why all of this in PeakOilMatters?

As one could easily imagine, getting together in one location nearly a thousand sales professionals, spouses, executives, ancillary staff, and anyone else I’ve neglected to mention is no easy feat. Of course it has to be quite expensive. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. But several hundred hotel rooms, a dozen or so meals per person, and air fares or similar transportation and travel expenses for a thousand or so individuals, speaker fees, cultural and entertainment expenses, and probably fifty other items I’ve omitted ain’t cheap!

But even that’s not the point. As oil production begins its slide downward, and increased fossil fuel costs or basic availability become prohibitively challenging, what happens to conferences like this? I cannot imagine even the most profitable company won’t triple-check much, much higher costs and transportation expenses (assuming those remain readily available for people scattered across the nation) before deciding to put together anything even approximating the kind of once-a-year extravaganza that has long been part of the sales industry culture.

Again, I’ll survive quite nicely if I never attend another one. It’s always been a great perk, but life goes on. But my wife and her peers? The benefits they derive from the personal exchanges with fellow professionals and executives are incapable of carrying any monetary value. Few do not benefit greatly from these gatherings. A rising tide lifts all boats….

Will they manage to carry on without the annual sales conference? Almost all will, no doubt. Surely there will be alternatives to the once-a-year national splash, but something will have been lost in the adaptation to fossil fuel decline. When industry after industry must deal with the elimination of these and similar business gatherings and the personal exchanges of information, a diminution of quality will creep onto the landscape. To the outsider, few tears will be shed, but when quality in all its manifestations declines, the effects are not restricted to only the industry or company in question.

The decline of peak oil means much more than higher prices at the local gas station. Cutting a wide swath across all industries is bound to trickle down and affect each of us in some way, easily measureable and recognizable, or not.

What’s their Plan B?

PeakOilMatters