Glengarry Glen Ross: The Greatest Sales Play Ever Written?

Glengarry Glen Ross has long been regarded as one of the greatest plays ever written about selling.

After seeing the new all-female production at London’s Old Vic, Bob and Jeremy discuss whether it works, how the play has stood the test of time, and why salespeople are still talking about it more than 40 years after it was written.

They explore the famous characters, the pressure of selling, David Mamet’s distinctive dialogue, how the world of sales has changed since the 1980s, and what today’s salespeople can still take from the play.

To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation, visit www.realitytraining.com.

Transcript

Why Glengarry Still Matters

Jeremy Blake 0:44

Welcome, listeners, welcome back to the reality of business. And I'm also going to just say welcome to the reality of sales training. So Bobby and I had a wonderful afternoon. We went to see a superb play at the Olvic in London. What do we go and see, Bobby?

Bob Morrell 1:02

We went to see Glengarry, Glen Ross by David Mamet.

Jeremy Blake 1:08

Yeah, let's we're and that's what this episode is about. We're going to look at the play, um, how relevant it is to today, the themes it carries, and why are we talking about this play? Because it really is possibly the only purest sales play. It's a play about sales and selling. Um, yeah, go for it, boy.

The Land Deal At The Core

Bob Morrell 1:29

So the play, Glengarry Glen Ross, is named after pieces of land that were sold to gullible city dwellers in America by people through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The idea was that you would buy a few acres in the Glengarry Highlands in Florida or Arizona, and these were worthless pieces of swamp or desert that you would buy for a few thousand dollars in the hope that a developer would then rebuy that land and build on it. It was like an investment in land. And of course, the whole thing is a bit of a con. And it was written uh back in the early 80s, it actually won the Pulitzer Prize because it was such an important piece of it.

Jeremy Blake 2:24

In 83.

Bob Morrell 2:25

Yeah, at the National Theatre. And the play is about these salesmen and how they go about selling this stuff and the uh the tension that exists. And when it was first reviewed, it was described as um written for a land, i.e. America, where you are what you sell. And that's a really interesting perspective on people who buy because they like being sold to, and people who sell because they've got the charm, they've got the gift of the gab, they've got the they've got the the persuasive language that that helps people understand that something is of

Leads, Prizes And A Robbery

Bob Morrell 3:08

value.

Jeremy Blake 3:08

Well, I think it's also an interesting play to see is it's all pre-digital. So modern sales offices, people will go and sit down at a laptop or a screen and they'll look up leads and they'll be doing CRM systems. This is where you're given a card, and on the card it might say Mr. and Mrs. Link, and that they have expressed an interest. They could have filled in a coupon, they could have signed a direct response mail card. Would you like to have a salesperson contact you about the Glengarry Glen Ross or the Glengarry uh territory of land, click yes, and then the salespeople pick up the phone, make an appointment, go out and see these people. They might even knock on their doors and say, Hi, you filled in a coupon and they drive to their estate there close. So that is interesting to see that there's no we're in an 80s play. There's no computers on the desk, there are phones, and they're all landlines. You know, everyone's picking up a landline. You can't leave the office to make a call on your mobile, you come back to the office where you reset. And there's only two sets in the play. One is a local Chinese restaurant that I think is pretty much next to the office, yeah, where they will eat their junk food and sit at the tables and you know, regather and debrief after work. And the other is the office. There is uh character-wise, we have a hotshot salesperson, Ricky Roma. Um, we have a down on their luck, aging salesperson, Shelly Levine, and we have another salesperson who's sort of also complaining down in the luck, uh, called Dave Moss. And we have one more who has kind of lost their way completely and can't do very much called Aronow, but I can't remember what Aronow's first name is.

Bob Morrell 4:53

George.

Jeremy Blake 4:54

George Arranow. George Arranow. We have an office manager called gosh, that's gone from me for a second. And what happens, the the we'll give you the plot and then we'll get into why it works, is they are desperate to get into the office to be given their Glengarry leads, which they believe are hot leads that will close. And they have been told first prize this month for the top salesperson is a Cadillac, second prize a set of stake knives, third prize you're fired. So they're just going to get rid of it and cull the sales force. So it becomes even more tense, more manic to achieve your your quota, if you like, to get on the board, your physical board. Those of you listening who used to work in sales offices where things would be written up on a whiteboard or a flip chart, you want to get on the board, have the leads, get over the line, keep your job. Um, and something goes awry.

Bob Morrell 5:47

Now, it was also a famous um film with Alec Baldwin, um, Al Pacino, Jack Lemon, a load of other very good actors. Um, and in that film, uh the writer David Mamet wrote a friend of the friend of the podcast, we should say, David Mamet, we met him a couple of years ago.

Jeremy Blake 6:06

Yeah.

Bob Morrell 6:07

Um, he um wrote a very famous monologue for Alec Baldwin's character who was called Blake. And it was in that monologue that he used the famous line, Coffee is for closers only.

Jeremy Blake 6:21

Yeah.

Bob Morrell 6:22

At the beg at the front of each play edition, if you buy the play, it says, Always be closing brackets, practical sales maxim. Okay. So this is the idea that you're always closing people at any one point. You know, the conversation always leads. We're gonna be moving all this.

All-Female Casting Without Rewriting

Jeremy Blake 6:42

This is an opportunity. I can't wait for you to have this. It you know, it's it's this mantra. Now, why, why um we'll come to the twist in the play in a minute, but why the production we went to see at the old Vic was particularly interesting is it's the first ever uh professional production. There have been college and school productions using an all-female cast, but this is the first buy your ticket professional performance with an all-female cast. And the decision by Patrick Marbo, the director, uh working with Mamet on this, having done a male production in uh the US first, was not to change the names. So you have Ricky Roma, you have Moss, you have Aranau, you have James Link, but they're all women and they don't change the names of the characters, they just keep call them these names. Now that is sort of the first um thing that's worth saying that was a stipulation. So we haven't, you know, James hasn't become Jane. Um, you know, there's been none of that. There's also no adaptation whatsoever of the language. It still is this uh, you know, very uh um abrasive, curt, swearing. None of that has been edited. And the only thing at which Bob's just pointed out is the bit you don't have, and I think some theatre goers are disappointed when they don't realise that the Blake Alec Baldwin character is not in the play. But nothing else was changed, I don't think. Do you think, Bob? Nothing else was removed.

Bob Morrell 8:06

No, and it would have been very easy because you had an all-female cast to change the sex. But I've been thinking a little bit about that, and I think the overriding messages, regardless of the sex of the person that is saying the lines, they mean the same. The inference is the same, and I think that's a fair enough point. I just think it's slightly abstract in this sense, uh, because this is a short play, it's 85 minutes.

Jeremy Blake 8:34

One act play, no interval.

Bob Morrell 8:35

Yeah, yeah. Straight. And so, and so actually, there's not much time to think about the context, and um I I I I think it's an interesting choice. It I think for some people who have never come to the play before and will be seeing it for the first time, I think it would have been slightly confusing.

Jeremy Blake 8:54

Yeah. But uh absolutely, and that will lead us on to a couple of reviews. Just to give you another plot uh thing that happens is after um a period of time of these salespeople being desperate, going out flogging very crap leads, weak leads, um, they know that the Glengarry leads are locked in a safe, and somebody breaks in, stages a robbery, steals the Glengarry leads, and sells them to a competing real estate seller who will own those customer leads and also try and sell the land. Because I think the way it worked is the land would be owned by somebody, but they wouldn't mind who sold it. Um, you know, if you can cut up parcels of it, the the the ultimate holder will pay you for that, and then they're selling off their land. So it's very, very cutthroat. And you don't really know who's done the robbery till very near the end. You believe it's going to be um a particular person, but in the end, it is the elder um salesperson of the group, uh Levine, who is down on his luck and having been vitriolic in how he talks to people, she talks to people, steals the leads, and at the end the police are in, and and I think we pretty much know that she will be caught, wrapped up and and jailed.

Bob Morrell 10:14

Yes, now that's that's the the perspective of the of the plot, but what really what it's about is two big things. Firstly, it's the first time that the world was introduced to the real sort of memetian, David Memetian style of dialogue, which is absolutely very fast, it's kind of rhythmic in the way that it's spoken. Often it overlaps, which you don't see often in plays these days, but in this case, because everyone's trying to say their thing quickly, you get a bit of that. It's highly profane, people are swearing foully all the way through it. Yeah, but there's something slightly musical about the way that the dialogue goes back and forth. Um, and it is extraordinary, and I think it's worth looking at the film version as well, because you definitely get the sense of that enclosed spaces that they're that they're in and the pressure they're

Does The Concept Actually Work

Bob Morrell 11:15

all under.

Jeremy Blake 11:15

So the question is, and I'm gonna I've got a snippet of a timeout review, and I've got a snippet of a Guardian review. Before I go into those and we can debate what they say, what do you know? The question is sometimes we'll say, Does it work? Because if, for example, you go and see um Macbeth and they said it in the Second World War, one of the first things regular theatre goers will say who know Macbeth, for example, the Scottish play, they'll say, Does it work? Or they take Chekhov and you instead of having the ch the cherry orchard now, it becomes a modern field and developers want to build an amusement park or something. And does it work? So my question is if I use that close question, do you think it works?

Bob Morrell 11:57

Yes, but I have a caveat. Okay. It it could work even better.

Jeremy Blake 12:02

Okay. So why don't I read you what uh the snippet of the guardian here and see what you think? So originally a dark comedy and funny tragedy question mark, the play is all the more humorous in this send-up, although at times it is rather Bugsy Malone. An exaggerated dress-up version. More importantly, the darkness is missing. Mamet's whip smart patter is there, but the high energy and volume come to feel relentless and tonally flattening. I wouldn't go. Well, I wouldn't go along with that. It's quite harsh that. Now, Bugsy Malone, there's no um, you know, um ice cream guns or whatever you call them. Um, you know, there's not you don't feel like when you watch Bugsy Malone and normally always children's productions, 15-year-olds dressing up as grown women and so on. That is a particular uh nuanced style of you know showing violence and humor. I don't think it has any of that. So I think that's particularly harsh.

Bob Morrell 13:00

I think it's too harsh, yeah.

Jeremy Blake 13:02

Yeah, I don't think it became um tonally flattening, and I felt that other than my only thing was that the names seemed odd when your woman's coming in and calling her James, that that occasionally grated. But what was the bit, what's your caveat before we look at what Time Out said?

Bob Morrell 13:18

M my caveat is that um I don't see any reason why you couldn't uh switch the genders in the dialogue.

Jeremy Blake 13:28

Right.

Bob Morrell 13:28

Right that was my that was my point because they talk about he, they talk about they, they talk about the they they didn't um they use the same names, uh male names, they talked about salesmen rather than saleswomen. Um now they do that in America anyway. A salesman is a man or woman. That's just a a colloquialism. Yeah, but I but I just think that they they could have easily switched the the sexes because if you by not doing that, what you essentially had is a lot of women playing men.

Jeremy Blake 14:02

Yeah, okay.

Bob Morrell 14:03

And and and I think that the question is, is the play just as appropriate for a lot of women who are salespeople, you know?

Jeremy Blake 14:12

Do you think by keeping the names it was almost um a kind of aha, uh okay, they're speaking men's language, which is why they've not changed their names, but they're inhibiting a female body, uh, it's kind of like carrying a license to do it.

Bob Morrell 14:30

I mean that may be what they intended, but if they did, it wasn't very explicit. Right. And so and and and the thing, the difference for you and me, Jay, is that we love and know this play well and have seen it many times and can recite lots of the dialogue. Um, I my feeling is that for people who would never have seen this before, this is a very intense 85 minutes, and I think you're gonna come out slightly bewildered if you if you don't have an idea of the context of how they're doing it.

Jeremy Blake 14:59

Yeah. There we are. So, timeout, this is interesting. The rage and posturing and that usually ever-present whiff of testosterone are largely gone, which gives the player meaningfully different texture. Salazar's Roma is less the roaring stud, more a twinkly-eyed bullshit merchant whose absurdly convoluted attempts to close the deal with Link come across as puckish gambit rather than a brazen macho con job. I think that's quite good. Well, I like that because I thought it was almost flirtatious. Um, it was semi-sexual with Link because here was a woman who was strong and uh flirtatious to try to get Link and his stroke her wife to buy. So I thought that worked. I I didn't I thought it was different to the portrayal that Pacino gives in the film, which is sort of purely disregarding. I found it slightly more layered.

Sales Skill, Desperation And Aftertaste

Bob Morrell 15:57

One of the reasons that we like this play so much is the dialogue, and it's also the um the way that the salesperson uses their skill in order to talk themselves out of different situations. Okay. Um, and that comes across very, very well in this uh in this production, but there's another reason we like it, and I think it's just so important to point this out. The aging salesperson, Shelley Levine, in this instance played by Indira Vama, that person in their 50s, struggling to maintain their quality of sales, their the relationships, the skill that they may have had in their youth, when it starts to fall away in this sort of highly competitive environment, it also exposes the damaging nature of this sort of endeavor.

Jeremy Blake 16:55

Yeah.

Bob Morrell 16:55

And also how um how painful it can be when someone starts to to go off the boil. And that and that I thought that that was portrayed brilliantly. Yeah, see the panic in her face that she was losing her her ability.

Jeremy Blake 17:17

And her ability. So if you like, salespeople are amateur psychologists in that the best salespeople read the human they're with, they know when to shut up, talk, leave. You know, I could go on and on. You know, it's it's an art and a science. What Levine has lost is the ability to really see through the true picture, yeah. So is forced a desperation to thieve and steal a lead. And this is where it doesn't make any difference. Giving these leads to her may still not change the outcome because she hasn't really got it. Um, she's lost the the effort and is still involved in trying to constantly prove her value. And you know that that's what's good to watch is the decline is quite quick and it comes crashing down. And if you've got people who don't have the enthusiasm, the ability, and the truth, then that then they're often stuck in the wrong job. This doesn't mean you can't have much older salespeople because age is just a number. Um, but you occasionally can't roll back the sands of time, and if they get to you, you need to do something else. But also, what I think is cripplingly sort of sad about it is none of these people could ever be in leadership or management. And not and they give their leader an extremely hard time, and then you know, I I know she's not good, she doesn't understand things, she is dreadful.

Bob Morrell 18:41

Um well, I know I think she does understand things. I think Williamson, Dave Williamson, is one of the best parts because Dave Williamson explains that his job is to marshal the leads, the sales leads, and and he's only permitted to give the top leads to the best performers. Yeah, now his job is to uh manage that process effectively, and at the same time, you've got all of these people trying to convince him to help them, so they're trying to close him on giving out the better leads.

Jeremy Blake 19:19

What Williamson is unable to do is read some of the nuances and the stage acting and the when the thing is sent and posted and all of that. They they don't quite get all of that, but they wouldn't need to. Where Williamson then has her victory, if you like, is the chance to pay back Levine, who's been so foul to her, and just been able to introduce her to the cops and close close that deal. You know, we now know who's done this robbery, and so that is wrapped. And then I think she'll have her her her her greater victory and be given you know great credence by the owners, and they'll get all their money back and so on and so on and so on.

Bob Morrell 19:58

Um I've got one more thing to say, which I just think is important to get across. This is also a slightly um archaic perspective that we're looking at because slightly these but what I mean is these sorts of sales operations largely don't exist anymore. And if you were in any kind of a sales team like this, it would be probably be illegal and um criminal. Um so it's it's of its time, but at the same time, it also gives you a kind of an idea that there are people who are perfectly happy to buy things on the off chance that it might change their lives. It's a gamble, it's like buying art or um, you know, you you you you buy something because you think it might be an investment for the future, you're taking a little bit of a gamble on it, but you enjoy that process, and what that salesperson does is make you feel good about that gamble.

Jeremy Blake 20:58

Yeah.

Bob Morrell 20:58

And that's so that there's so much less of that these days. And I I think what what's interesting is that within the deplorability of what these people are doing, there is also incredible skill, which you think if they just employed it in the in the right place and the right way, they would be amazing. Yeah, they've just been skilled. Yeah, yeah. They've been sucked into this horrible world that they're selling in.

Jeremy Blake 21:25

And there's some lovely stuff that you would only get from a salesperson trying to bond with somebody where Roma talks about the great relationships you've had in their lives. It isn't really the sex, it's something else. It's the way she brings you cafe o lay in bed. There's some lovely dra speeches, really humorous language where this salesperson is trying to bond with a stranger, saying, you know, life is is an is elevated on a higher plane in some way. And let me give you access to something else that makes you have that same feeling. Are you owning land? Own a piece of land. And he says one of the lines he said, when I first said this, um, they said Florida bullshit, and that's what I thought, and that's what I said, but it isn't bullshit, and this is a piece of land, and you'll own it. It's escapism, um, it's kind of freedom from the day-to-day grind. Um, so yeah, it it's it's still wonderful in that way, and I think if you if you were to rewrite it today, it would be you know, selling people land and trying to get them to put solar panels on it and telling them they can make money out of having panels on their land or something. I don't know.

Bob Morrell 22:33

You you would struggle to get a context in the modern sales that would work. But I I think the other bit that we love is in the scene in the office where the customer comes in to cancel the deal that they've just bought yesterday. As the customer's walking in, Ricky Roma sees them and says to his colleague, You're a client, I just sold you eight lots of Mountain View farms. Uh, when I do this, and he touches his hair, you throw me the cue Kenilworth. And the person says, What is it? Kennelworth, and then he and then the person's walked in, he can't finish the word Kenilworth. My mother owns the property, my sister owns a property, and he just starts going into a pitch. Okay. And they just have to take on their roles immediately at that point. And that is such a great situation. Again, when would you see that now? I'd it'd be very, very difficult to see to see that.

Jeremy Blake 23:31

Well, it's the masquerade, it's the it's it's the lie. It it it's the and then when Williamson walks into the office and sees them, she actually also lies and says, Don't worry, I sent your thing downtown, it's going to be processed. But actually, because of the robbery, it was still on the desk and it didn't go downtown. So the office manager tells a lie as well, and then that exposes Levine, who knew and said, Why would you lie? How did you know I lied? And then Levine is caught. But that's wonderful. That whole kind of let's let's act out a scene here where you are a very senior person, American Express. This might make Link not want to cancel, realizing a American Express president is even buying the land. Umter drivel.

Bob Morrell 24:15

Um, so so what one of the reviews I've read of it says that essentially the allegory of Glengarry-Glyn Ross is that on the surface, this idea that it's a sales contest, etc., it is not nothing to do with it. Okay, that this is a scathing critique of the American dream and hyper capitalism. And essentially, these people are selling worthless things to unwitting customers whilst their own company is treating them like they're expendable prawns in a very rigged game. Now that is uh the snapshot of life that you see. Now, in the 80s, that would have been the case in many, many, many, many careers, many, many types of job. Does it exist now? I in in some ways it will, in some ways it will, but it will it but it's different. You know, it's there's big no.

Jeremy Blake 25:12

I think if you think of successful dramas that have an element of sales, there was the double glazing thing a few years ago, gold or something it was called. Um and you think of Tin Men, the film with Richard Dreyfus, Danny DeVito, they're selling aluminum siding. That is the 1960s in the 60s. 1960s. Yeah, that's an innovation for the home, and let's try to get every home buying this for thousands. I think I there probably isn't really a modern equivalent, you know. I and and also they're always slightly more attractive to watch because they're business to consumer. Whereas if I was to make a film about my time at Yellow Pages selling to plumbers and builders, would it be as interesting? No, probably not, because it's you know, because it's business to business. There isn't the drama in there. Whereas the consumer can watch this, realize they've all been duped and they all get sucked in. And but a business to business play, does it exist? Probably not, um, or not not very easily. But we would encourage you to um watch the film at the very least. Seek out these kind of dramas when it next is performed, get to see it. It's it's something that I think all salespeople have a kind of shared bond over this. Those salespeople who've grown up with this and watched this, you know it's never gonna be this bad, but at the same time, it's got the humour and the wit and the sharpness, and that's why I think salespeople is this quick, the quick-wittedness of it.

Bob Morrell 26:39

Absolutely. No, very good. Well, look, um, we enjoyed watching it, it was a nice afternoon, and it was lovely. We were we were two ro two rows from the front. Um, we were actually positioned on the actual stage of the old Vic because it was set in the round, and that was a great thing. And I I have to say, to see good acting up close, yeah, um, it was similar to when we went to see Hamlet with uh Ian McKellen, who was right in front of us acting, yeah, and that was such a privilege. And um, it reminds me of the good old days, Jay, when we crept the boards in our youth. Yeah, so there we are. We would never play the Dane. We will never play the Dane.

Jeremy Blake 27:22

Then McKellen plays him in his 80s, so you know.

Bob Morrell 27:25

Well, maybe there's maybe there's there's hope for you. I'd I I'd love to see you play the Dane even now. It would be a privilege. And I I would play Claudius quite well, I think. I think I'd suit him very well.

Jeremy Blake 27:35

Yeah, that'd be fine.

Bob Morrell 27:37

Um, yeah. Okay, well, enjoy. Thanks for listening, everyone, and uh we'll see you again soon for another reality of business.

Jeremy Blake 27:44

Bye for now.

Bob Morrell 27:51

This podcast comes from reality training. For the last 25 years, we've transformed the customer interactions of many leading UK businesses and developed thousands of managers to be better at what they do. To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organization, go to realitytraining.com.