Sales Team
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Eric and I were a top sales team. Eric Giles and Avery Thompson, platinum level sellers. ‘The Best in the West’; top performers for three years running.

We covered a lot of ground together. We visited a lot of cities, and even more towns. We knew our product; we knew how to treat buyers. We knew who to bullshit and who to give just the facts. We knew how to close deals.

Not everybody went for our pitch. We called those who didn’t, “resisters”. Just recognize them early and forget about them. Don’t waste effort. Concentrate on the numbers – volume and scale. Plenty of sales and big sales where possible. Chase them and close the deal.

And when we closed big, we lived big too. We drank and we caroused, and we went out on the town, if there was one. If there wasn’t, we would drive until we found one, and crash in a local motel.

I am not sure how it started, but we got to visiting drag shows. I thought it was fun. Not just guys dressed as girls, but the whole show thing. Somehow just a strip club seemed dull, even if the stripper came on in a novelty costume, like a cowgirl or a nun or something. Have you ever noticed that strippers only have seventeen moves? You probably know what they are. We have all seen them - just seventeen.

A good drag act is a real show piece. I mean crazy costumes, singing (or lip synching) and dancing, maybe some audience participation and a little comedy. It’s a show. Best of all, the performers look like they are enjoying themselves.

“It makes you wonder if those guys are not a hell of a lot happier than we are,” Eric slurred over his drink. “Just looking pretty and strutting about. It’s clear that they love what they do.”

“We don’t know anything about their lives,” I said. “Have another drink”.

We must have gone to thirty different drag clubs throughout our sales territory before Eric suggested that we do drag.

Eric assured me that he had never done it before. We went to a show and some of the “girls” told us that if we were still in town later in the week, they were having an “Amateur Night” with prizes for the most outlandish and the most convincing. We were around and about the town, but we had done well so we decided to go back to have some fun.

“Outlandish” requires more effort than we had time for. Any decent drag queen with time on her hands and access to sequins and spring wire could do a better job than us. You have to know your limitations; but we felt that “convincing” was something we could have a go at.

“We just have to sell it,” said Eric. “We are good at that.”

Good? We were the ‘Best in the West’, remember?

Being convincing is about good shapewear, an appropriately feminine outfit, and a great makeover, plus you need to present yourself properly and that is the hardest sell, but it is a sell. Learn the patter, and the moves. Imitate as required. Improvise where needed. Sell it. That was something we could do.

We made our booking at the salon for the afternoon of Amateur Night, and we successfully worked on some buyers in the morning.

We had bought some outfits – evening wear but not over the top. Eric had a dress with a keyhole in the front showing off a pair of silicone false tits underneath. I went for a neck to knee body hugging dress requiring a seamless padded body stocking. Because I had good legs the overall look was of one very sexy shapely body. But the trick would be the hair and makeup.

“Use what you have,” the salon manager said. “We can get you a wig including some expensive veil wigs if you like, but you both have youthful hairlines and enough length to anchor some extensions. The only problem is that you will still have long hair in the morning.

I tell you, we looked at one another and I could see that Eric was thinking the same thing as me. ‘Why’ is a whole different question. But when you make a decision that will see a costume become hard to take off, then losing some of your eyebrows does not seem something too serious.

We had a few drinks at the salon, which didn’t help. Neither of us were wine drinkers but that is what they were offering. It is the kind of drink that seems to go down like pop and the effect sort of sneaks up on you.

Anyway we were only concerned with looking good, and we did. We looked like a couple of hot chicks – not guys pretending to be chicks. We sold it. Big time.

It is like when you are on a roll and you know it. Everyone is lapping it up. You can see some doubt in their eyes: Is she, or isn’t she? A she, I mean. When you see doubt like that, don’t stop. You don’t see the doubt because you are what you say you are – the product is everything you say it is. You have to believe it before you can make them believe it.

Eric and I became Elizabeth and Adeline – Lizzie and Del. Nobody doubted it, least of all us.

We had to win the prize for most convincing, and we did. It consisted of some vouchers from women’s clothing and cosmetic stores, but that was not the point. It was another award for selling. Oh, and there was a bar tab for the rest of the evening, so we did our best to get the most out of that.

When we woke up the following morning, we were in the same twin room at the motel. We had separate rooms, but we had got back together and we crashed together. The room looked like a bomb site. There was our feminine clothing pulled off on the floor, and tissue with some attempt to remove makeup, although it seemed a lot of it was on the pillows. Eric was starting to stir.

I expected to see a horror movie in the mirror, but what I saw left me surprised and a little troubled.

Long hair fell about my shoulders still looking shiny – just in need of a brush. The smudged mascara made my eyes look big and blue, even without false eyelashes, and the eyebrows shouted female. Even without makeup properly applied, my face did not look male.

“We are going to have a problem at work, Eric,” I said.

He rolled over and swung his legs onto the floor. His hand was scratching his nuts between those two smooth and shapely limbs. It just looked all wrong. He looked up at me and just said: “Shit!”

He looked pretty good too. Nothing that a shower, a hairbrush and a little lipstick would not fix.

“But what a night, huh?” he said. “That was great. I haven’t had so much fun in years.”

“Did I see you kissing that guy who was all over you?” Memories were coming back. Maybe they were memories that were better left forgotten.

“Maybe,” Eric smiled. “I mean, a guy who tries that hard needs a little reward, right?” Then with a look of concern he added: “I hope I didn’t give him my phone number.”

Then I had an idea. It was me, as I recall, but then as a team we often come up with the same idea at the same time.

“We could try going to work tomorrow as Del and Lizzie. Maybe even revisit some of those resisters?”

Now, there will be people out there reading this who will be thinking: “What the fuck!?” But those people would not have seen us the night before. And maybe those people aren’t in sales, because good salespeople never walk away from the deal that didn’t happen without thinking: “If only I could have a do-over on that – if only I could be somebody else and try another approach.”

“Let’s take our showers and go spend some of those vouchers”.

The first thing we needed was a couple of hairbrushes and some lipstick, and then something relaxed for that Sunday, and something professional looking for Monday. The vouchers were soon used up and a bit of our cash too, but we needed to present well.

We spent the whole of Sunday as Lizzie and Del. It was like we could show the world that we looked just as good in daylight as we did in a dimly lit bar, so long as we followed the established rules about daywear and suitable makeup.

We dined alone, but that was a struggle. We were propositioned more than once. We decided that we would retire to Lizzie’s room and watch chick flicks.

We had a target for Monday, and we called ahead to arrange a time with the procurement guy – somebody I remembered well, but hoped he would not remember me. We checked one another once we were out of the car. We looked great. He confirmed that without saying a word, when he greeted us.

He followed with: “I know the product. I think that some guys from your company were here before … Eric and somebody.”

“Those guys know the product,” said Lizzie. “They know it really well. But they are transactional. Maybe they didn’t stress after sale support. Del and I are more about relationships with our buyers.”

“You mean I would be seeing you regularly?” he said.

“Of course!” I did my best to sound a little offended, maybe even giving a pink painted pout. I was learning. In the last 48 hours I had learned how signals can enslave a man. What a tool to have at your disposal in making sales!

Bang! Deal done. Then another, and another.

It was starting to get exciting. But when girls like us get too excited, things start to get uncomfortable. We had to cut things short and get back to the motel.

“If we are going to keep selling like this, we are going to have to get serious,” said Lizzie. “We are going to have to lock up the beast.”

We looked around for options, and the best seemed to be the pharmacological solution. I think that we figured it was just for the duration of our experiment in an alternative sales mechanism. Anyway, as it turned out the drugs that we needed were available from a local source, no questions asked.

I am not saying that Lizzie and Del were better salespeople than Eric and Avery but they certainly produced the results. The only thing that happened was if we ever got the ‘you have such a pretty mouth I find it hard to believe the words coming out of it’ look we would say: “We will have Mr Avery or Mr Thompson call you on that”. Then one of us would revert to a baritone over the phone – something that seemed to become progressively more difficult.

With the need to become more separate from Mr Avery and Mr Thompson we needed to come up with new surnames, new IDs and then we had to go on the books of our employer as two new sellers. That was the easy part as our system encouraged “selling networks”. The only problem was that the sales figures were dropping for Eric and Avery as the figures for Lizzie and Del were going through the roof.

I suppose it didn’t matter if the commissions were rolling in, and they were.

Another rule of sales is that you never change a winning formula. You only look to make changes when you are not making sales.

So I guess we sort of got stuck, but not stuck in a rut. Stuck on the crest of a wave, a thrilling ride, with the added excitement of living as women.

It is funny that as female you find yourself looking at men and thinking what a sad and colorless existence that is. A woman lives in a world full of color and full of choices. Everyday is an expression of self. Maybe in sales you understand that better than most.

There is also the experience of being admired. Eric and I used to consider ourselves as being admired for our achievements, and that is nice. But only people with the knowledge admire you for what you may have done. Lizzie and I experienced admiration from strangers. I am not talking about men lusting after us, although there was plenty of that. No, a woman can be admired just for the way she is, by men or by women. Feeling it is something very special.

We were both becoming more and more attractive, and that was not down to the effect of the drugs on our bodies, we were developing in other ways.

We were attractive to one another too. I suppose something was bound to happen, and it did. You may understand by now that we had a special bond, Eric and I that allowed us to work off one another. We were not attracted to one another as men, but the more the maleness slipped away, the more open we became to being intimate with one another.

But the drugs did what they were supposed to and left our pricks all but useless. We needed to find other ways to gratify one another sexually. I think that we both agreed that anal sex swapping a strap-on was appropriate to our new physical forms.

I think that we both understood that this was not the way it should be. We were friends and we were presenting a lie to the world. We could only share our secret between ourselves, but I think we both knew that our futures lay in relationships with other people.

I think also, that we both assumed that those relationships would be with women. Neither of us had any reason to believe, while we lived as men, that either of us could ever be attracted to men. We had chased women. Our only experience of sex with anything other than a woman was with each other, but only once our transition to being women seemed almost complete.

But being women, and being attractive to men, exposes a person to temptations that might otherwise seem abnormal. In Lizzie’s case it was a customer. Somebody who had left the buying department to take over as CEO and missed Lizzie so much that he pursued her, very vigorously.

I did point out the obvious way to blunt his spear was to reveal her own. But in response she just burst into tears. It seemed that I had misread my sales partner, which I had never done before. It seemed impossible to believe that somebody’s sexual orientation could be flipped like that. I only began to understand it when it happened to me.

In my case it was a salesman. I feel almost guilty for admitting it. I fell for his pitch. He told me that there was nothing else in the world except him and me – everything else was meaningless. I believed him, because he believed it. I believe it now because even when he learned my secret it shook him but could not change his beliefs.

What it did do was give Lizzie the courage to tell her man. She knew what to do. She knew how to present the goods – give him the pros, and there is just one con, and that is easily cut away. Mine too.

We still sell the product, but only as a sideline. We are both kept women these days, and happy for it. But every now and again we hit that road just to show that we still have what it takes. We remain very different, but still a great sales team.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2020