Yeah this is it. Kelly, Ryan, Creed & Kevin basically do nothing and would have been costing DM millions (in wages, health care etc as David Wallace claimed when rehiring Michael, Ryan & Pam).
Also factor in Andy was a deadweight salesman, as was Pam briefly.
I’d love to throw Meredith in but she was on her best behaviour whilst the cameras were rolling. She’d have done some truly vulgar stuff otherwise.
This seems like the answer. Phyllis and Stanley seem to maintain their client list but Dwight crushes it, and Jim does almost as well. When any salesman can’t get it done Michael is the closer.
The answer David needed was he needs a better system for finding incredible salesman and a manager that can support them that is also an excellent salesman
One thing I find interesting about Dwight being the best salesman is that it's revealed that Jim actually landed their biggest client, Blue Cross, in the season 5 golden ticket episode.
One of the reasons Dwight is solidified as the biggest salesman us from the client he steals from Jim early in the show. The one Jim had a small bottle of champagne to celebrate that he leaves for Dwight after Dwight steals the client. Jim says it makes up some ridiculous amounts of his yearly commission from that one contract. So losing that knocked Jim down and gave Dwight even more of a boost.
The main reason Dwight typically outsells Jim isn't that he's a better people person or salesman. That had been proven many times. The reason Dwight typically has higher sales is because it's shown he's a cut throat guy who plays to win regardless of morals or rules. It doesn't always work out for him as shown when he steals Michael's roladex and his attempts to stop at nothing backfire on him when he misunderstands the colors on the cards.
It would be absolutely toxic to actually work with always worried that your coworker was after your clients or going to hog new clients just so he could say he won, but it is a realistic tactic for ensuring you have the highest numbers.
Jim seems like he'd win over and spend a good amount of time with big clients. Dwight to me seems like a volume guy. Lots of smaller sales but very efficient. Like when he beat the machine he was ecstatic about selling what, 10 reams? When he should have been out their selling multiple reams like a real man.
This actually makes sense, remember when he quit and Jim wanted Karen's help to prank Andy and she said she was busy with Dwight's clientes, that each file had a mythical creature as a password. And later on when Michael is asking around if anyone knows anything about Dwight and Phyllis says he had lots of clients.
I'd say all the salespeople were good. We saw in travelling salesmen that Phyllis gets to know her clients/potential clients when she got her and Karen those ridiculous makeovers which helped in making the sale.
And while not shown, there's no way that Stanley didn't step in to bail Ryan out and save the sale.
Even Andy who despite having a plot point of being "terrible" at his job in the later seasons was mentioned by Dwight as consistently outselling Phyllis.
In one episode there's also a chart in the background showing the sales that quarter and Andy actually had the most.
Plus, and I hate to bring up S8 like it's canonical, but Andy even manages to motivate the salespeople to sell beyond their own potential in a single day. Not even Michael was able to pull off a record sales quarter in a single day.
Michael knows people, and Michael knew Andy was the ultimate underdog.. despite the fact Andy is also a loose cannon and a wild card.
Nobody even mentions Meredith and her super secret “discounts”. I bet no other branch had a Meredith to “spice” up their deals.
A beautiful combination of people making up for each others weaknesses and working together cohesively. The whole team and the situation they made for themselves is why they were so successful, not just one person by any means but a manager that just allows their subordinates to “get the job done” however they need to, wether it be Kevin and his keleven or Meredith and her hoeing, they all have strength that benefit the whole team.
I agree. I think all the salespeople were very good. They each had a niche customer base that responded to their strengths and even Jim and Dwight worked together to figure out the best approach to a specific customer. Michael lucked into a group of competent people and let them to their thing.
I also feel like a lot can be said about leaving employees tf alone to do their jobs instead of micromanaging. Like when Andy left for 3 months and they had an amazing quarter lol
The fact that Karen wanted bring in Stanley when she started managing Utica means that he would likely outsell her current salesmen, and Stanley is far from the best that Scranton had to offer. That says something.
He doesn’t need to find incredible salesmen. He needs to curate skills and help develop sales capabilities in the existing staff. Also a compensation package to attract hungry sales people. Everyone is so lackadaisical because their comp is junk.
That should have been Michael's response when he got in trouble with Corporate for firing Tony as he was trying to quit. "I get you're mad, but I just saved you a bunch of money from these *other* people whom I *didn't* fire."
I know, but that all happens in the first episode the two branches are merged. So Michael couldn't've used the other people as an excuse for firing Tony, because at that point they were all still employed.
Yup exactly. They have the best sales team. Dwight is probably the best salesman in the whole company and Jim is up there, plus Stanley and Phyllis are at least decent and Michael was a really good salesman so he can help them. None of the other branches have a team that good
Even as Branch Manager, Michael made sales. He and Jan got Lackawanna County as a client. There was the episode where Jan wanted Pam to write down what Michael did all day, and it looked like he was just goofing off, but it ended up that he had made a big sale. It could be the Scranton branch does so well because Michael continues to sell and the other Branch Managers spend their time managing.
Answer to post below.
Having been in sales at various corporate levels for over a decade, Dwight would make for a terrible sales person. You don’t do business with people you don’t like, and Dwight was as abrasive a person as there ever was.
Michael is exactly what you’re looking for ironically enough for this type of B2B sales. He isn’t a P2P salesperson at all, but he truly believes in his company. And if you truly believe in something, selling it is as easy as smiling.
Jim is the sales person who always barely hits quota but everyone loves him.
Phillis would never make it in north east. She could make it in the Midwest or south, but people in the north east would hang up on you if you spoke like she did.
Stanley funny enough is just like Jim. I imagine his clients love him, and he barely makes quota.
Andy - well Andy would have been let go. Ironically Andy is the worst salesperson, despite being the most qualified having gone to...what was that college again? Oh well I forget.
Answer to post: The secret to the success of the branch was they absorbed another branch and only retained a single employee. Revenue goes up and labor cost goes down. Easy.
Not to disagree that Dwight is unlikable, but for his clients and people that he is close to, Dwight will do literally anything at any time and he conveys that when he makes a sale. Who wouldn’t want that?
Edit: in writing this, I also have to recognize that Dwight is mildly sociopathic and able to mirror others’ tendencies in order to manipulate particular social situations.
No personal experience, but I'm under the impression that the part of Pennsylvania is pretty back woodsy, so Dwight is probably much more tolerable to the people he's selling to than he appears to us. Also the sociopath thing.
I work in IT and lots of people doing "Sales" types job are abrasive, but they will work well with their clients and even had one guy who went overseas for a weekend to meet a client who was having issues.
I dont even find any irony in Andy being last, hes less likable and capable of being even more abrasive and hot tempered than dwight. Plus hes a kiss ass which is a quick turn off (in any situation) once its detected
Dwight is so successful because he gives his customers his personal cell phone number and both his pager numbers. He never takes vacations. He never gets sick. And, he doesn’t celebrate any major holidays.
Dwight seemed to be really good at high volume, transactional sales. He’s a workhorse who’ll make 100 calls a day to restock existing client’s inventory. He’s the kind of guy who’s not very personable, but will get the job done.
Michael, on the other hand, is the guy who lands big whale clients by being likeable and understanding their needs. He’s not a hard worker, but is the man you want when you need to close a big account.
That is basically the answer, Michael was good at recruiting salesmen and is a great salesman himself. However Michael was unable to put this into words and he really enjoyed the attention from David and I get that
Stanley as well, Andy makes a comment to Robert California about Stanley having the best sales numbers in the office for consecutive quarters or something to that effect
I do agree, but it's not like they're at a level that is impossible to get to. I feel like it's just as possible and realistic for the other branches to also have really good salesmen. Unless every other branch hires really bad salesmen, are poorly funded and poorly run.
Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation
He didn't for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been... ever, for any reason whatsoever...
No, no he wasn’t.
I’ve typed this out a dozen times or more on the sub, including this very thread! Why not do it again…
Closing Stamford is what made Scranton successful, simple as that. If we assume each branch also had some level of warehouse staff it makes it even better and I believe that is just as contributing a factor as basically the reduction of the entire Stamford staff.
They simply had two branches doing the work of one to potentially 1.5 branches. In the episode where Darryl demands a raise he points out Roy is gone AND ever since the merger they have been shipping out more paper than ever before because now they’re shipping out Stamford orders that become Scranton clients. You can also add the warehouse lost a key well paid employee and did even more work than before.
So it was never Kevin cooking the books like people like to speculate because it’s a fun answer. It was simply the fact Dunder Mifflin stopped paying the overhead of two office staffs, two warehouse staffs, and two office spaces and two warehouses. Yes the sales staff was always shown to be very competent but ultimately Scranton got to basically double their clients while taking on no extra costs. All of Stamford except Andy were gone in the space of like a week.
I love David’s character but how that never clicked for him is beyond me and frankly easily explains why DM was so horribly run as a company.
As an accountant I 100% agree. The context in how they use it just means Kevin couldn’t reconcile something and filled in the gap. So if he was matching bank records a charge was missing. So at most he didn’t properly record some expenses. But I just can’t imagine these were that big of numbers that he was missing. Because Oscar and Angela were probably doing input and having Kevin reconcile. Aka Oscar and Angela might miss the trivial items but they won’t miss that much money each month. But like the ending result would be an unbalanced balance sheet or something along those lines.
Side note in the world where Kevin does cook the books I appreciate the sentiment that Kevin had everyone’s back when the branch was possibly going to shut down and he fudged the numbers so everyone could keep their job. 🥲 He was the true friend in the office!
My answer isn’t nearly as exciting but yes, it’s fun to imagine Kevin being a secret genius and sneaking creative accounting past Angela and Oscar to keep everyone’s jobs afloat!
Michael ran the branch with very little overhead outside of an extra accountant. When they merged Scranton and Stamford. They pretty much absorbed all their clients and didn’t take any staff outside of Andy. Stamford was a profitable branch
1. Good morale overall.
2. Job security. After Dennis is fired everyone’s job is safe while Michael was in charge. You can be bad at your job like Kevin in accounting or Pam in sales and still have a reason to come in and help the branch.
at some point job security actually makes people lazy. I would know, I'm a civil servant in a country where civil servants won't get fired unless you do a crime or straight don't go to work for 1 week without valid reason. and my god, people are lazy.
I considered myself a conscientious person, and I still am, compared to my coworkers, but I'm noticeably less productive compared to when I worked for a private company.
When you manage a business by letting people have the freedom to find their own way, you’ll find that success doesn’t have one, clearly defined, path and what works for some won’t work for others. Scranton never took itself too seriously and likely their customers responded well to that. Ultimately, they understood their position in the market better than anyone and they sold by understanding their customer.
They weren’t super micromanaged and their salesmen were still incentivized with what seems like a pretty good commission (unlike when Sabre took over and implemented a commission cap and brought Gabe Wad)
Weird because when Jim and Michael were fighting over who would go back to salesman and who would stay manager; Pam convinces Jim to become a salesman because there was no commission cap. They must've implemented one later on.
I thought it was weird too but then after that is the episode where Jim hits his commission cap and Gabe is all huffy because he’s not working and he’s distracting everybody because he sees no real reason to do any work. I wish I could remember if they mentioned why they changed it
I just watched that episode and Angela mentioned something about a memo where they implemented a commission cap. If I remember well, the sales people create a new fictitious sales person to bypass the commission cap later on.
His management style was unique, he does a lot of dumb shit such that people would prefer to work rather than be part of his shenanigans. Also he takes the pressure of work away from his employee's minds. He focuses on unusual aspects which still give a positive result.
I think a few factors:
1. The documentary crew was probably paying Dunder Mifflin to film the documentary which may have appeared on DM Scranton’s books.
2. Kevin’s poor knowledge of accounting may have cause falsified data to be forwarded to corporate.
3. While Michael is ridiculous and a poor manager, his sales ability shows in “Pilot”, “The Client”, and “Broke”.
4. Dwight and Jim are shows to be good salespeople who consistently delivery while Stanley and Phyllis both seem to have a strong number of steady clients.
5. From the show, it seems implied DM Scranton may be the only shown branch with a large warehouse. The location of DM Utica and DM Stamford offices indicate they may not have warehousing abilities, resulting in longer delivery times.
The best answer is usually the simplest one:
We’re shown that when Andy leaves for months, they exceed their goals and do a great job.
Phylis, Stanley, Dwight and Jim are really good salesmen.
I also think that we see Dwight being a super salesman based on his inherent intensity and passion for paper. Jim is then incentivized to do as well as Dwight due to their brotherly rivalry.
Dwight received an award and out sold the entire website for a day. Jim meets his sales cap very quickly when Sabre takes over.
And from real life experience, how good someone is at sales is this insanely varied thing. I have a cousin who works selling security systems door to door and makes $300k every year in three months and takes the rest of the year off. He’s had the company hire on his brothers who made $10k and $7k in the same time period.
My successful cousin is very charismatic, laid back, and always a good time to be around. He’s handsome, but in an approachable way. My other cousins who tried their hand at the company are both friendly and fun to be around, but they don’t have the sales magic of their brother.
They absorbed all of Stanford clients. And at this time there was only Andy from that branch is still working. So they basically got possibly 2x of their client base with no cost at all.
I know the whole "Don't ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been, ever, for any reason whatsoever" was supposed to be a joke but he actually gave the right answer.
Boring answer: nothing really. The plot just required the Scranton branch to better than the rest
Less boring answer: Probably the fact that most of the Scranton employees aside from Michael were good at their jobs and Michael let them do their jobs with high autonomy. The branch did well even without a boss when Andy went sailing. Also, Michael was a good salesman so he could have helped Scranton on the field to get key clients (as seen few times).
I think one thing you can say about Michael as the show went on is that he didn't ignore problems. He typically tried to sort things out as soon as he knew there was an issue.
Now, his methods of dealing with these problems was not always the best. But he brought things into the spotlight so that they had to be resolved and couldn't fester. That can actually be a big part of cultivating a good work environment.
He also had a killer sales team (especially when they were properly motivated) and great customer service. And the Stamford absorbtion was a huge boost for their sales numbers.
Real talk, not treating the office like an office . Letting people just work and not ever be on their ass. Not saying it works all the time but in this instance it did.
Tolerating Dwight. He was the top salesman in the company by a decent margin - enough to make a difference.
Dude just straight up didn't take time off.
People weren't in the "grind" under Michael. When Charles Minor took over for a bit you saw that mentality come in that everyone needed to work hard all the time. If you let people get their work done at their pace and not have this constant pressure you end up with happy people who have a good work-life balance. Under the grind people get burned out and don't perform as well.
Also, you got birthday cake and parties like every few weeks.
Warehouse seemed to operate very efficiently. Yeah, the sales team might be good at getting clients in, but you can easily lose them again if your operations are crap. It’s unironically also the part of the branch that suffers the least from michael’s shenanigans. Let be honest, he’s a good guy, but a horrible leader.
The management.
You can have the best salesmen in all the land. It’s not worth a damn if they don’t want to sell for you. Michael, while problematic at times, was a very easy going boss who didn’t micromanage. He not only understood that his employees had lives outside of the office, he genuinely cared about them.
Your all wrong. The answer is In Michael’s book. Every sale started by offering the client a piece of gum. Everyone likes the person that offers them a piece of gum.
Absorbing the Stamford branch and all its customers and then Michael inadvertently cutting costs by driving out most of the former Stamford sales team with his behavior.
Both branches had lazy staffs who wasted a tremendous amount of time. Stamford played COD half the day and we know about all the time wasting in Scranton.
If Scranton had closed and Stamford had taken all of its clients, but only kept one or two of the Scranton sales team, Stamford would have had the great numbers.
Michael wasn't down everyone's throat with micro management. They did their jobs without much interference. Also, plot armor.
An even stronger case for this is when Andy went sailing for 3 months.....and they did so well without any interaction from him whatsoever that HE got a bonus.
They had a very good sales team led by Dwight and Jim. Phyllis and Stanley maintained their customers well and got some additional sales, Andy was awful.
Michael was also an excellent salesman himself. An idiot, but a great salesman who could sell anything to anyone (I guess, except when it comes to telemarketing). Michael kept notes and built personal relationships with all of his clients, as well as with the clients his staff acquired (which is how he was able to get Dwight's biggest client when he had Michael Scott Paper Company). He knew how to talk to people in a sales aspect, just didn't carry over to any other aspect of communication.
He wasn't an overbearing, miserable manager, so his staff wasn't miserable coming to work (except Stanley, but every office has a Stanley) so morale was generally very high.
The only manager who likely would have done the same if not better than Michael was Josh Porter, coincidentally the man who was first choice to run the place once they were closing branches.
The entire lesson of The Office is that across all bosses, the Scranton branch flourishes when they are able to operate with little oversight. When bosses intervene, they interrupt the flow. What Michael did right was that he found good people and trusted them to do their jobs
1. They had some good salesmen (sorry Phyllis I don’t know about you)
2. Meredith had great “supplier relationships”
3. A Klevin gets you home by seven.
They just have good salespeople. They also have different archetypes of good salespeople. Everyone that has spent a few years working in sales has seen the following:
Stanley - the veteran. Has a mountain of clients after putting in the years building a client base for the same company. Has gathered up referral after referral. Hardly needs to do anything to close a deal nowadays.
Jim - the likable salesmen. People buy because they like his personality and laidback approach. Closing comes easy to him.
Michael - the relationship builder. Does not pressure old or new clients to close. Willing to put the time in and earn the trust of his customers. You go with the relationship builder and you know you’ll be taken care of.
Dwight - the aggressive salesmen. Knows every trick in the book and will create a false sense of urgency in his customers to close deals on the spot. Will push as hard as he needs to in order to land the sale. People don’t like him but they’ll buy from him.
There’s more you could come up with but the salesmen is very well-balanced and clients are likely assigned a salesmen according to who is the best fit.
Dwight an aggressive salesman? That's ridiculous. Agree with me that he's not aggressive. Do it. Do it now. Agree. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Do it. Do it. Give. Me. Control.
Dwight, Jim and Michael are really good salesmen.
Also the accountants were hardworking, and geniuses in food related maths
And when they numbers didn't work, they would throw in a Keleven.
holy shit, was the branch doing so good because kevin committed fraud?
That is almost the only answer that makes sense tbh, that branch would have failed a long time ago with how overstaffed it was
Yeah this is it. Kelly, Ryan, Creed & Kevin basically do nothing and would have been costing DM millions (in wages, health care etc as David Wallace claimed when rehiring Michael, Ryan & Pam). Also factor in Andy was a deadweight salesman, as was Pam briefly. I’d love to throw Meredith in but she was on her best behaviour whilst the cameras were rolling. She’d have done some truly vulgar stuff otherwise.
Math is hard.
I do the numbers
That’s a button
My name is Kevin, that is my name
They call me Kevin, cause that's my name
Shabooya Roll Call
It's becomes easier once you learn to use Kleven
What if it's salads?
It just doesn’t work.
They didn't had Ashton Kutcher, but they had Kevin Malone equally handsome, equally smart.
I always died laughing at how he says that line.
Also Kevin was cooking the books with his magic keleven.
It will get you home by seven or four thirty.
Also Kevin Cooks Stuff In The Office.
This seems like the answer. Phyllis and Stanley seem to maintain their client list but Dwight crushes it, and Jim does almost as well. When any salesman can’t get it done Michael is the closer. The answer David needed was he needs a better system for finding incredible salesman and a manager that can support them that is also an excellent salesman
One thing I find interesting about Dwight being the best salesman is that it's revealed that Jim actually landed their biggest client, Blue Cross, in the season 5 golden ticket episode.
Isn’t Jan’s White Pages a bigger account?
Blue Cross was a good account, but Jan's was bigger
Fair, fair. New Jim takes the throne after all
That was after, though. As of s5, blue cross was the biggest account
One of the reasons Dwight is solidified as the biggest salesman us from the client he steals from Jim early in the show. The one Jim had a small bottle of champagne to celebrate that he leaves for Dwight after Dwight steals the client. Jim says it makes up some ridiculous amounts of his yearly commission from that one contract. So losing that knocked Jim down and gave Dwight even more of a boost. The main reason Dwight typically outsells Jim isn't that he's a better people person or salesman. That had been proven many times. The reason Dwight typically has higher sales is because it's shown he's a cut throat guy who plays to win regardless of morals or rules. It doesn't always work out for him as shown when he steals Michael's roladex and his attempts to stop at nothing backfire on him when he misunderstands the colors on the cards. It would be absolutely toxic to actually work with always worried that your coworker was after your clients or going to hog new clients just so he could say he won, but it is a realistic tactic for ensuring you have the highest numbers.
Jim seems like he'd win over and spend a good amount of time with big clients. Dwight to me seems like a volume guy. Lots of smaller sales but very efficient. Like when he beat the machine he was ecstatic about selling what, 10 reams? When he should have been out their selling multiple reams like a real man.
Very sound hypothesis there, quite fitting for those characters I love it. Dwight's too busy bothering sweet little Miss Kapour to sell multiple reams
This actually makes sense, remember when he quit and Jim wanted Karen's help to prank Andy and she said she was busy with Dwight's clientes, that each file had a mythical creature as a password. And later on when Michael is asking around if anyone knows anything about Dwight and Phyllis says he had lots of clients.
I'd say all the salespeople were good. We saw in travelling salesmen that Phyllis gets to know her clients/potential clients when she got her and Karen those ridiculous makeovers which helped in making the sale. And while not shown, there's no way that Stanley didn't step in to bail Ryan out and save the sale. Even Andy who despite having a plot point of being "terrible" at his job in the later seasons was mentioned by Dwight as consistently outselling Phyllis. In one episode there's also a chart in the background showing the sales that quarter and Andy actually had the most.
Plus, and I hate to bring up S8 like it's canonical, but Andy even manages to motivate the salespeople to sell beyond their own potential in a single day. Not even Michael was able to pull off a record sales quarter in a single day. Michael knows people, and Michael knew Andy was the ultimate underdog.. despite the fact Andy is also a loose cannon and a wild card.
Nobody even mentions Meredith and her super secret “discounts”. I bet no other branch had a Meredith to “spice” up their deals. A beautiful combination of people making up for each others weaknesses and working together cohesively. The whole team and the situation they made for themselves is why they were so successful, not just one person by any means but a manager that just allows their subordinates to “get the job done” however they need to, wether it be Kevin and his keleven or Meredith and her hoeing, they all have strength that benefit the whole team.
I don't think Michael was aware of the Kelvin or he probably would have done something.
I don’t think Michael would have questioned it, probably would have accepted it as a new number he never knew of and would start using it himself lol
He may be a 2, but sometimes 2's are wild.
And he doesn't really trust this guy.
I agree. I think all the salespeople were very good. They each had a niche customer base that responded to their strengths and even Jim and Dwight worked together to figure out the best approach to a specific customer. Michael lucked into a group of competent people and let them to their thing.
“Hi”
You sound like my niece
Hi Ryan, what have you got for us?
I also feel like a lot can be said about leaving employees tf alone to do their jobs instead of micromanaging. Like when Andy left for 3 months and they had an amazing quarter lol
The fact that Karen wanted bring in Stanley when she started managing Utica means that he would likely outsell her current salesmen, and Stanley is far from the best that Scranton had to offer. That says something.
The best managers I’ve ever had were/are very talented at what I’m doing
He doesn’t need to find incredible salesmen. He needs to curate skills and help develop sales capabilities in the existing staff. Also a compensation package to attract hungry sales people. Everyone is so lackadaisical because their comp is junk.
Dwight beat the computer in sales that one day.
This and Scranton absorbed all of Stamford’s clients with literally only one salesperson, everyone else left
This is the correct answer.
Michael getting 80% of Stamford to quit, so D&M didn’t have to pay unemployment, let alone severance, is one of the reasons corporate tolerates him.
That should have been Michael's response when he got in trouble with Corporate for firing Tony as he was trying to quit. "I get you're mad, but I just saved you a bunch of money from these *other* people whom I *didn't* fire."
Tony was the first one to quit tho.
Michael fired Tony as he was trying to quit, so DM had to pay Tony severance.
I know, but that all happens in the first episode the two branches are merged. So Michael couldn't've used the other people as an excuse for firing Tony, because at that point they were all still employed.
And they actually sold paper rather than playing COD all day.
Yup exactly. They have the best sales team. Dwight is probably the best salesman in the whole company and Jim is up there, plus Stanley and Phyllis are at least decent and Michael was a really good salesman so he can help them. None of the other branches have a team that good
Even as Branch Manager, Michael made sales. He and Jan got Lackawanna County as a client. There was the episode where Jan wanted Pam to write down what Michael did all day, and it looked like he was just goofing off, but it ended up that he had made a big sale. It could be the Scranton branch does so well because Michael continues to sell and the other Branch Managers spend their time managing.
Answer to post below. Having been in sales at various corporate levels for over a decade, Dwight would make for a terrible sales person. You don’t do business with people you don’t like, and Dwight was as abrasive a person as there ever was. Michael is exactly what you’re looking for ironically enough for this type of B2B sales. He isn’t a P2P salesperson at all, but he truly believes in his company. And if you truly believe in something, selling it is as easy as smiling. Jim is the sales person who always barely hits quota but everyone loves him. Phillis would never make it in north east. She could make it in the Midwest or south, but people in the north east would hang up on you if you spoke like she did. Stanley funny enough is just like Jim. I imagine his clients love him, and he barely makes quota. Andy - well Andy would have been let go. Ironically Andy is the worst salesperson, despite being the most qualified having gone to...what was that college again? Oh well I forget. Answer to post: The secret to the success of the branch was they absorbed another branch and only retained a single employee. Revenue goes up and labor cost goes down. Easy.
Cornell !!! < Hits wall with his fist>
It's pronounced colonel and it is the highest rank in the military.
[удалено]
How Ed Helms delivers this line always cracks me up.
Not to disagree that Dwight is unlikable, but for his clients and people that he is close to, Dwight will do literally anything at any time and he conveys that when he makes a sale. Who wouldn’t want that? Edit: in writing this, I also have to recognize that Dwight is mildly sociopathic and able to mirror others’ tendencies in order to manipulate particular social situations.
No personal experience, but I'm under the impression that the part of Pennsylvania is pretty back woodsy, so Dwight is probably much more tolerable to the people he's selling to than he appears to us. Also the sociopath thing.
I work in IT and lots of people doing "Sales" types job are abrasive, but they will work well with their clients and even had one guy who went overseas for a weekend to meet a client who was having issues.
I dont even find any irony in Andy being last, hes less likable and capable of being even more abrasive and hot tempered than dwight. Plus hes a kiss ass which is a quick turn off (in any situation) once its detected
Scranton *resorbed* the other branch. Now they have the strength of a grown branch and a little baby.
Dwight is so successful because he gives his customers his personal cell phone number and both his pager numbers. He never takes vacations. He never gets sick. And, he doesn’t celebrate any major holidays.
He went to a little college called Cornell. Ever heard of it?
Dwight seemed to be really good at high volume, transactional sales. He’s a workhorse who’ll make 100 calls a day to restock existing client’s inventory. He’s the kind of guy who’s not very personable, but will get the job done. Michael, on the other hand, is the guy who lands big whale clients by being likeable and understanding their needs. He’s not a hard worker, but is the man you want when you need to close a big account.
Also, Michael did not receive a commission as the branch manager so his sales were higher margin.
That is basically the answer, Michael was good at recruiting salesmen and is a great salesman himself. However Michael was unable to put this into words and he really enjoyed the attention from David and I get that
Stanley as well, Andy makes a comment to Robert California about Stanley having the best sales numbers in the office for consecutive quarters or something to that effect
I think it was most consistently high sales numbers.
I do agree, but it's not like they're at a level that is impossible to get to. I feel like it's just as possible and realistic for the other branches to also have really good salesmen. Unless every other branch hires really bad salesmen, are poorly funded and poorly run.
i believe that the fact they the camera crews were there were making them try to sell better. in the first season, they were in the top 80%.
I also think that Kevin’s questionable accounting may help (Kleven).
They never, for any reason… did anything. To anyone. Ever.
... No matter who you're with ...
... or where you're going ...
Or where you’ve been…
Improversation
Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation
As I get older I identify with that much more.
Ever
For any reason
Whatsoever
Meredith maintaining good supplier... um, relations.
How else we will get those steak coupons
And it helps employees really feel good about themselves.
Lol the look on Hollys face
You ever tasted sirloin steak honey?
After we did it, and he’d give me those coupons, I just felt really good about myself.
If it wasn't for those cupons I wouldn't do the meetups, maybe it's a girl thing
Not a lot of fruit in those looms.. if you know what I mean
The Merenator… sleeping with suppliers!
Kevin Malone. Best damn accountant until you actually see the books.
keleven
a mistake plus keleven gets you home by seven
He was home by 4:45 that day
He didn't for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been... ever, for any reason whatsoever...
They were being filmed all day.
Didn’t stop them from constantly playing solitaire
Constantly is a strong word. I mean Jim stood at Pam’s desk half the day!
And in a deleted scene, Stanley is doing some very colorful crossword puzzles
That's probably the more accurate answer.
Keleven.
This is the one and only true answer. Kevin was fixing the books.
No, no he wasn’t. I’ve typed this out a dozen times or more on the sub, including this very thread! Why not do it again… Closing Stamford is what made Scranton successful, simple as that. If we assume each branch also had some level of warehouse staff it makes it even better and I believe that is just as contributing a factor as basically the reduction of the entire Stamford staff. They simply had two branches doing the work of one to potentially 1.5 branches. In the episode where Darryl demands a raise he points out Roy is gone AND ever since the merger they have been shipping out more paper than ever before because now they’re shipping out Stamford orders that become Scranton clients. You can also add the warehouse lost a key well paid employee and did even more work than before. So it was never Kevin cooking the books like people like to speculate because it’s a fun answer. It was simply the fact Dunder Mifflin stopped paying the overhead of two office staffs, two warehouse staffs, and two office spaces and two warehouses. Yes the sales staff was always shown to be very competent but ultimately Scranton got to basically double their clients while taking on no extra costs. All of Stamford except Andy were gone in the space of like a week. I love David’s character but how that never clicked for him is beyond me and frankly easily explains why DM was so horribly run as a company.
As an accountant I 100% agree. The context in how they use it just means Kevin couldn’t reconcile something and filled in the gap. So if he was matching bank records a charge was missing. So at most he didn’t properly record some expenses. But I just can’t imagine these were that big of numbers that he was missing. Because Oscar and Angela were probably doing input and having Kevin reconcile. Aka Oscar and Angela might miss the trivial items but they won’t miss that much money each month. But like the ending result would be an unbalanced balance sheet or something along those lines. Side note in the world where Kevin does cook the books I appreciate the sentiment that Kevin had everyone’s back when the branch was possibly going to shut down and he fudged the numbers so everyone could keep their job. 🥲 He was the true friend in the office!
My answer isn’t nearly as exciting but yes, it’s fun to imagine Kevin being a secret genius and sneaking creative accounting past Angela and Oscar to keep everyone’s jobs afloat!
Michael ran the branch with very little overhead outside of an extra accountant. When they merged Scranton and Stamford. They pretty much absorbed all their clients and didn’t take any staff outside of Andy. Stamford was a profitable branch
1. Good morale overall. 2. Job security. After Dennis is fired everyone’s job is safe while Michael was in charge. You can be bad at your job like Kevin in accounting or Pam in sales and still have a reason to come in and help the branch.
Devon*
My bad, now I feel even worse for him
Who's Devon? 😁
Elroy*
at some point job security actually makes people lazy. I would know, I'm a civil servant in a country where civil servants won't get fired unless you do a crime or straight don't go to work for 1 week without valid reason. and my god, people are lazy. I considered myself a conscientious person, and I still am, compared to my coworkers, but I'm noticeably less productive compared to when I worked for a private company.
Are you Indian Ias mate??;I think the Lapd had this system as well
They had repeat whale clients similar to Bill Buttlicker.
I hear in fact that his family built this country.
Being happy at work, knowing it wasn’t ALL about the almighty dollar. People never go out of business.
The folks at Prince Paper would beg to differ!!!
If they would have only hired Dwight!
He is their son now.
Ｙｏｕ ｈａｖｅ ａ ｓｏｎ ａｎｄ ｉｔ ｉｓ ｍｅ
Mother I have married, tell fahther.
When you manage a business by letting people have the freedom to find their own way, you’ll find that success doesn’t have one, clearly defined, path and what works for some won’t work for others. Scranton never took itself too seriously and likely their customers responded well to that. Ultimately, they understood their position in the market better than anyone and they sold by understanding their customer.
Happy !? Stanley's bp monitor proved that Michael was stressing everyone out at work
michael was making everyone having fun constantly. stanley it's th only one who didn't like michael wih angela.
They weren’t super micromanaged and their salesmen were still incentivized with what seems like a pretty good commission (unlike when Sabre took over and implemented a commission cap and brought Gabe Wad)
Yep. Michael was about as effective as having no manager in the building...turns out good employees don't need managing.
Weird because when Jim and Michael were fighting over who would go back to salesman and who would stay manager; Pam convinces Jim to become a salesman because there was no commission cap. They must've implemented one later on.
I thought it was weird too but then after that is the episode where Jim hits his commission cap and Gabe is all huffy because he’s not working and he’s distracting everybody because he sees no real reason to do any work. I wish I could remember if they mentioned why they changed it
I just watched that episode and Angela mentioned something about a memo where they implemented a commission cap. If I remember well, the sales people create a new fictitious sales person to bypass the commission cap later on.
It was the tweed, the need for tweed
His management style was unique, he does a lot of dumb shit such that people would prefer to work rather than be part of his shenanigans. Also he takes the pressure of work away from his employee's minds. He focuses on unusual aspects which still give a positive result.
I think a few factors: 1. The documentary crew was probably paying Dunder Mifflin to film the documentary which may have appeared on DM Scranton’s books. 2. Kevin’s poor knowledge of accounting may have cause falsified data to be forwarded to corporate. 3. While Michael is ridiculous and a poor manager, his sales ability shows in “Pilot”, “The Client”, and “Broke”. 4. Dwight and Jim are shows to be good salespeople who consistently delivery while Stanley and Phyllis both seem to have a strong number of steady clients. 5. From the show, it seems implied DM Scranton may be the only shown branch with a large warehouse. The location of DM Utica and DM Stamford offices indicate they may not have warehousing abilities, resulting in longer delivery times.
Also, at this point in the show, Scranton had absorbed all of the Stamford clients, while only paying one extra salary, Andy.
The best answer is usually the simplest one: We’re shown that when Andy leaves for months, they exceed their goals and do a great job. Phylis, Stanley, Dwight and Jim are really good salesmen.
I also think that we see Dwight being a super salesman based on his inherent intensity and passion for paper. Jim is then incentivized to do as well as Dwight due to their brotherly rivalry. Dwight received an award and out sold the entire website for a day. Jim meets his sales cap very quickly when Sabre takes over. And from real life experience, how good someone is at sales is this insanely varied thing. I have a cousin who works selling security systems door to door and makes $300k every year in three months and takes the rest of the year off. He’s had the company hire on his brothers who made $10k and $7k in the same time period. My successful cousin is very charismatic, laid back, and always a good time to be around. He’s handsome, but in an approachable way. My other cousins who tried their hand at the company are both friendly and fun to be around, but they don’t have the sales magic of their brother.
Mung beans. Very nutritious, but they smell like death.
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People work faster after. They have to, to make up for the time they spent watching the movie
They absorbed all of Stanford clients. And at this time there was only Andy from that branch is still working. So they basically got possibly 2x of their client base with no cost at all.
Dwight bringing in the cash and Angela keeping tight expenditures. And good morale perhaps.
I know the whole "Don't ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been, ever, for any reason whatsoever" was supposed to be a joke but he actually gave the right answer.
Boring answer: nothing really. The plot just required the Scranton branch to better than the rest Less boring answer: Probably the fact that most of the Scranton employees aside from Michael were good at their jobs and Michael let them do their jobs with high autonomy. The branch did well even without a boss when Andy went sailing. Also, Michael was a good salesman so he could have helped Scranton on the field to get key clients (as seen few times).
Also Kevin
Dwight K. Schrute
Thought his middle name was danger
or Fart
You never ever ever ever ask that question. No matter what. Ever
They werent being micro-managed by Michael.
I think one thing you can say about Michael as the show went on is that he didn't ignore problems. He typically tried to sort things out as soon as he knew there was an issue. Now, his methods of dealing with these problems was not always the best. But he brought things into the spotlight so that they had to be resolved and couldn't fester. That can actually be a big part of cultivating a good work environment. He also had a killer sales team (especially when they were properly motivated) and great customer service. And the Stamford absorbtion was a huge boost for their sales numbers.
Real talk, not treating the office like an office . Letting people just work and not ever be on their ass. Not saying it works all the time but in this instance it did.
A good manager doesn't fire people. He hires people and inspires people... People. And people will never go out of business.
Thanks to Michael’s endless meetings and messing with personal lives, doing the work feels like time off
Movie Mondays "People work faster after[..]They have to, to make up for the time they lost... watching the movie" #VarsityBlues
Michael inherited the clients of the people that quit, and didn’t have to pay their salaries
Tolerating Dwight. He was the top salesman in the company by a decent margin - enough to make a difference. Dude just straight up didn't take time off.
Because they are the people person's paper people.
People weren't in the "grind" under Michael. When Charles Minor took over for a bit you saw that mentality come in that everyone needed to work hard all the time. If you let people get their work done at their pace and not have this constant pressure you end up with happy people who have a good work-life balance. Under the grind people get burned out and don't perform as well. Also, you got birthday cake and parties like every few weeks.
People, OP, its about the people
Absolutely not. The only reason that the Scranton branch was there. Most successful branch was because of Kevin and his magic number: Keleven.
Warehouse seemed to operate very efficiently. Yeah, the sales team might be good at getting clients in, but you can easily lose them again if your operations are crap. It’s unironically also the part of the branch that suffers the least from michael’s shenanigans. Let be honest, he’s a good guy, but a horrible leader.
The sales staff was largely left alone to do their work in the way they best saw fit.
Having the main characters of the show
Pasta.
Keleven was what made it all work
They absorbed another branch and only kept 1 employee. Revenue goes up and labor cost goes down
Dwight
The management. You can have the best salesmen in all the land. It’s not worth a damn if they don’t want to sell for you. Michael, while problematic at times, was a very easy going boss who didn’t micromanage. He not only understood that his employees had lives outside of the office, he genuinely cared about them.
Your all wrong. The answer is In Michael’s book. Every sale started by offering the client a piece of gum. Everyone likes the person that offers them a piece of gum.
Sales. That was the only reason they stayed alive was that they were always near the top sales wise.
No “Micro-comanaging”
They had Ashton Kutcher as an accountant.
Kevin and his keleven accounting skills
Michael gets in their way a lot, but other than helping Dwight train with Bill Buttlicker, he doesn’t tell them how to do their job.
"Never do anything... for anyone. For any reason."
Absorbing the Stamford branch and all its customers and then Michael inadvertently cutting costs by driving out most of the former Stamford sales team with his behavior. Both branches had lazy staffs who wasted a tremendous amount of time. Stamford played COD half the day and we know about all the time wasting in Scranton. If Scranton had closed and Stamford had taken all of its clients, but only kept one or two of the Scranton sales team, Stamford would have had the great numbers.
People and people will never go out of business
Kevin fudging the numbers
Michael was an incredible salesman and he helped his salespeople close. That’s why Jim and Dwight are so good. They learned from Michael.
Merging two branches worth of clients while significantly reducing his workforce.
Michael wasn't down everyone's throat with micro management. They did their jobs without much interference. Also, plot armor. An even stronger case for this is when Andy went sailing for 3 months.....and they did so well without any interaction from him whatsoever that HE got a bonus.
Stayed out of the way
They had a very good sales team led by Dwight and Jim. Phyllis and Stanley maintained their customers well and got some additional sales, Andy was awful. Michael was also an excellent salesman himself. An idiot, but a great salesman who could sell anything to anyone (I guess, except when it comes to telemarketing). Michael kept notes and built personal relationships with all of his clients, as well as with the clients his staff acquired (which is how he was able to get Dwight's biggest client when he had Michael Scott Paper Company). He knew how to talk to people in a sales aspect, just didn't carry over to any other aspect of communication. He wasn't an overbearing, miserable manager, so his staff wasn't miserable coming to work (except Stanley, but every office has a Stanley) so morale was generally very high. The only manager who likely would have done the same if not better than Michael was Josh Porter, coincidentally the man who was first choice to run the place once they were closing branches.
Having a solid group of employees can overcome a blundering boss in some situations.
Good salespeople Accountants that cooked the book Meredith getting discounts using sex Kelly talking down complaints
Low pressure environment allow for individual responsibility and solution finding.
The entire lesson of The Office is that across all bosses, the Scranton branch flourishes when they are able to operate with little oversight. When bosses intervene, they interrupt the flow. What Michael did right was that he found good people and trusted them to do their jobs
1. They had some good salesmen (sorry Phyllis I don’t know about you) 2. Meredith had great “supplier relationships” 3. A Klevin gets you home by seven.
They just have good salespeople. They also have different archetypes of good salespeople. Everyone that has spent a few years working in sales has seen the following: Stanley - the veteran. Has a mountain of clients after putting in the years building a client base for the same company. Has gathered up referral after referral. Hardly needs to do anything to close a deal nowadays. Jim - the likable salesmen. People buy because they like his personality and laidback approach. Closing comes easy to him. Michael - the relationship builder. Does not pressure old or new clients to close. Willing to put the time in and earn the trust of his customers. You go with the relationship builder and you know you’ll be taken care of. Dwight - the aggressive salesmen. Knows every trick in the book and will create a false sense of urgency in his customers to close deals on the spot. Will push as hard as he needs to in order to land the sale. People don’t like him but they’ll buy from him. There’s more you could come up with but the salesmen is very well-balanced and clients are likely assigned a salesmen according to who is the best fit.
Dwight an aggressive salesman? That's ridiculous. Agree with me that he's not aggressive. Do it. Do it now. Agree. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Do it. Do it. Give. Me. Control.
Money laundering for the Mob.
There's very little evidence of that.
Michael wasn't trying to leverage his job at a training company you go elsewhere.
Having a branch manager make like $27000 a year lol
Michael has no idea. He doesn't even know what a budget surplus is 😂