I guess for anyone who’s ever been laid off, this question crosses your mind at some point

There I was, driving back to West Kirby, when my phone rang. It was my old manager
“Do you want your job back?”

So… what would you say?

When I left Sysao, an Oracle partner, there were some pretty harsh anti-competitive clauses in my contract

The assumption was that I’d set up a competitor, so I had six months where I couldn’t work in the Oracle market

I put myself on the market anyway, and a role came up at Niku

They were a legacy supplier sitting on a cash pile and needed to pivot, and pivot fast

They were building a brand-new sales team from scratch

Pure new-business A-players

People who could sell at C-level

People who could sell complex, multi-million deals …. that's me!

It was a big risk, but I had six months to “kill”, so why not?

We had great fun

The sales team genuinely worked as a team, sharing contacts, opening doors, and helping each other get board-level meetings

I learned a huge amount

Many of the techniques we used to secure C-suite conversations are things we still use today in our social selling methodology: creating conversations, not pitches

But circumstances changed. The cash pile wasn’t as big as we’d been led to believe

Now, I’ve never been one to lie in a CRM, others were less strict

After six months, my pipeline looked the weakest in the CRM, so it was time to go

As I drove north (I was living in West Kirby at the time), I lined up my next role

Then the phone rang

My old manager was on the line, asking if I wanted my job back

What he thought had been an account review meeting that morning with another salesperson had actually been a resignation

One of the salespeople had quit

He told me there were no hard feelings and that I could come back and take over her territory

What he didn’t know was what I knew, she hadn’t been honest about where her deals really were

She’d been stringing things along until this new role came up

I told him I’d think about it and called a few friends to get their advice

So what would you do?  Would you take your old job back?