WKRP In Cincinati & Sales

In the late 70s & early 80s, there was a TV show about a radio station hopelessly behind in ratings books and their struggle to stay on the air (and maybe even turn a profit). Part of the multitude of problems at WKRP was certainly their salesperson, Herb.

Herb is the classic “salesman,” down to the cheap suit and shoes. He’s pushy as all get out and absolutely no fun to be around. In one episode, Herb decides to try his hand selling insurance. Of all the salesperson stereotypes, insurance salesman is almost certainly the worst.

As soon as they catch wind of Herb’s new idea, the remainder of the station staff completely avoid him, going out of their way to not run into him in the hallway lest he subject them to a long, boring, and dramatized sales pitch about the importance of insurance for everything and anything in their lives. If your potential customers are on the run and avoiding you, you’re obviously doing something wrong…

Les, the newsman ends up getting cornered by Herb, who promptly strikes up all sorts of fears in Les, even going so far as to selling Les his boat just so he can sell him insurance on it.

The irony ends up being that Les gets into an accident that day, just after he signed the papers, hospitalizing an older couple. This is quite the misfortune for Herb!

Instead of badgering the staff into buying his insurance while he was at work as a radio salesperson, Herb should have solicited leads on his own time outside of work or waited for his co-workers to ask him about his newfound profession. At that point, he should have figured out what they really truly needed instead of just dumping a bunch of useless information on them and scaring them into buying policies that they absolutely did not need. This was dishonest on his part and is an excellent way to have bad word get out about him, potentially negating future sales.

The show really does an excellent job portraying this stereotype, which is anything but how a true salesman ought to act.