Having been in our industry for (oh my God I can't believe it but it's true!!) 37 years! Ok I have to admit I did not start at 12 years old! But in all sincerity, I have tried to stay in touch with people I worked with as well as people I competed with. When I first started as a territory salesman I made friends with a few of my competitors and believe it or not still hear from them! Some are out of the industry, some are still in the industry albeit with different brands today and some have retired. My point is that we are a fraternity and are actually a very small fraternity compared to other industries. The best analogy I can think of is to compare our industry to the NFL. There are currently approximately 1600 NFL players. That number has gone up quite a bit in the last 10 to 15 years however is still a microcosim of the USA's total population. I do not know the total number of sales people in our industry but would guess it may not be far off the total number of NFL players. When we "play" (compete) against one another there is no quarter and we all want to WIN! When the game (or in our case the deal) is done, we move on to the next deal/game. I have always enjoyed getting to know my competitor, maybe even having a beer with him/her. Sometimes we bust each other on who won or lost the deal but in all cases there was a level of respect for someone that played the same game well and fairly, but for a different team. Just like the NFL there are certain players that really bend or even break the rules of winning the game/deal. Just like in the NFL these people are usually known by the other teams/brand whether on a local or national level depending on their job.
I have already gotten way to verbose with this! My bottom line thought is that all of the good guys/gals (please excuse me ladies I mean no disrespect) are the people we should all know or at least know of and when they pass on let us all mourne the passing of one of our brothers/sisters. This is a great industry and there are so many really good people in it. I look at oldtimers like me and want to make sure that we pass the mantle of this FRATERNITY on to the younger ones. To do that we need to remember all the good people we worked with and yes, competed with that made our industry what it is. If we do not do this it will become just another job.