Unbeatable: The Legend of Vincent Scott – Chapter 3: Passed Over

The numbers dropped again. Somehow. The office, already on life support, found a way to dig deeper into the dirt.

But while everything else around him sank, Vincent Scott continued to rise. His team kept performing. His reps kept selling. His results remained untouchable. And still, he found himself buried beneath a ceiling of smoke and mirrors, watching leaders prop each other up while reality begged to be acknowledged.

The final stretch of 2004 brought no relief. No turning point. Just more of the same.

Days bled into nights. High performance was punished with indifference. Limbo became routine. And the endless summer of Dick Knoll’s interim rule felt like a permanent exile.

When he finally relinquished his “temporary” leadership title and returned to his old role after Shelly’s maternity leave, he didn’t really give up power. He had already manipulated the system to keep it.

Shelly—always eager to play puppet master—let Dick retain half of the administrative responsibilities Stacey couldn’t handle. That was no surprise. Stacey, after all, had only been promoted because she was Shelly’s friend. She didn’t have the track record, the backbone, or the respect of the floor. But none of that mattered in a world where proximity trumped performance. Shelly coddled her, protected her, and pretended the results told a different story.

And Dick? He came back different.

He wasn’t just another manager anymore—he came back with a chip on his shoulder and a vendetta in his pocket. Hungry for control. Desperate for validation. He returned to Rockford wielding power like a weapon, and his first move was to police the floor with an iron fist. Reps whispered about him even before they saw him. When someone got fired, you didn’t even have to ask who initiated it. Everyone knew. It was Dick. Always Dick. Cold. Calculated. Mechanical.

It didn’t take long for him to earn his new nickname: The Terminator.

The name fit too well. He wasn’t coaching. He wasn’t developing. He was eliminating. Firing became his first move—not the last resort. Reps on his team lived in fear. If they missed goal, even once, they looked over their shoulder waiting for the red laser dot of Dick’s discipline to find them. He did everything he could to try to get rid of reps early enough in the month where they wouldn’t count on his sales report and he could try to catch Vincent. He never could.

Vincent watched it all unfold from the sidelines. Disgusted. Disappointed. But not surprised.

While Dick strutted around the floor, weaponizing authority and dropping pink slips like party favors, Vincent was busy building. Leading. Coaching his team to consistent wins, pulling 80-100% performance even from the ones the system had written off. His people weren’t afraid of him—they respected him. They knew he had their back. And that made all the difference.

Every few months, a new training class would graduate, and the floor managers would gather in a back room to draft their picks. It was a ritual. Like fantasy football, but with headsets, quotas, and the fate of sales pipelines hanging in the balance. The highest-performing team from the previous quarter always got the last pick.

And that was always Vincent Scott.

Where others saw it as a disadvantage, Vincent saw opportunity.

Because while every other manager was chasing the loudest voices, the flashiest closers, the “naturals” with perfect posture and polished talk tracks, Vincent was looking for clay. He was looking for someone overlooked. Someone raw. Someone who hadn’t yet learned how to believe in themselves—but just might, if someone else believed first.

And even if he got the rep nobody else wanted, he knew what he could do with them.

That’s how Jessie Stone ended up on Vincent’s team.

Nobody wanted him. Not even the person who got him hired.

Dick Knoll had personally referred Jessie to the job. The two went to church together. Dick had even vouched for Jessie during the recruiting process. But when it came time to draft from the graduating training class, Dick skipped over Jessie in every single round. Quietly. Without pause.

That silence said everything.

The trainers had ranked Jessie dead last. His voice? Flat. Monotone. Lacked confidence. He struggled in mock calls. He couldn’t handle objections. They said he wasn’t assertive, wasn’t ready, and wouldn’t cut it.

But Vincent saw something they didn’t.

And with the final pick in the draft, he wound up with Jessie Stone.

What followed confirmed the assessment—at first. Jessie stumbled out of the gate. The systems overwhelmed him. He couldn’t find the flow on calls. When he did offer the product, it was late, rushed, and barely audible. Customers were already mentally off the call by the time he worked up the courage to speak.

But Vincent didn’t blink.

He never judged talent by what it looked like in Week 1. He judged it by the willingness to grow. The kid wanted to be successful.

While most managers doubled down on their top reps and quietly ignored the ones falling behind (or in Dick’s case, listened to just enough calls with which to fire them), Vincent leaned in. He pulled Jessie aside—not for a reprimand, but for a conversation.

He didn’t start with quotas or scripts. He started with why.

Why had Jessie taken this job? Why sales? Why now?

Jessie didn’t posture. He didn’t pretend. He simply said, “I want to prove I can do this.”

That was all Vincent needed to hear.

He asked Jessie how he liked to be coached. Jessie asked to sit side by side. He didn’t want a checklist—he wanted proximity. He wanted someone to sit next to him and show him where the gaps were. So that’s exactly what Vincent did.

But the breakthrough didn’t come from shadowing. It came from ownership.

Vincent challenged Jessie to write his own pitch. Not a borrowed one. Not something off the intranet. His pitch. In his voice. With his rhythm.

The only rules were simple:

The offer had to happen before the customer checked out.It had to tie back to their needs, not just be a list of features.It had to end with a clear, confident ask.

Jessie brought back a rough draft—shaky, timid, but his. Vincent sat with him and went through it line by line. He offered edits, trimmed fat, sharpened the language. But he left the tone untouched. Because Jessie had to believe what he was saying. Otherwise, nobody else would.

Then came the deal.

Vincent said, “Use this. Exactly as written. Every single call. No exceptions. No improvisation. Repetition creates rhythm. Rhythm creates confidence.”

Jessie agreed.

And he stuck to it—call after call, hour after hour, day after day.

Slowly, things started to shift. His call flow tightened. His energy lifted. His voice—still soft—carried just a little more weight. And customers started saying yes.

Week by week, his sales crept upward. Momentum. Confidence. Wins.

And by the end of his very first quarter?

Jessie Stone—last pick in the draft, overlooked by the very man who brought him in—won Top Gun, an award given only to the top 5% of sales reps across the entire company.

Vincent didn’t gloat. He didn’t spike the football. That wasn’t his style.

But everyone saw it.

Everyone knew.

The kid Dick Knoll ignored—the one everyone expected to flame out—had become a legend in a matter of months.

And Vincent Scott was the one who unlocked it.

Dick, who had earned the nickname The Terminator for firing anyone who didn’t hit quota, never understood how Vincent’s team consistently outperformed his. Dick ran his desk like a warzone—metrics, fear, and turnover. Vincent ran his like a workshop—trust, belief, and development.

Vincent didn’t fire people to fix his numbers. He fixed his people to elevate his numbers.

Because while Dick couldn’t understand how someone could lead without fear, Vincent had mastered the art of coaching through belief.

Dick couldn’t reconcile the numbers. He thought cutting heads was the path to results, but no matter how many people he terminated, his numbers still sat in Vincent’s shadow. Month after month, he seethed, quietly boiling in the knowledge that even with a scorched-earth approach, he couldn’t eclipse a leader who rarely fired anyone at all.

Because Vincent didn’t have to.

He coached.

He connected.

He believed in his people, and they believed back.

Vincent also studied the game and knew what metrics mattered most in the weighted attainment; he would write scripts for these products for his team and he would even reward them with time off the phones if they produced the ones they weren’t paid much for.

And when you’ve got that?

You don’t need to swing the axe to get results.

But Dick had Shelly in his pocket. He called her daily. Reported every move Vincent made. Slipped her flagged calls and fabricated concerns. Shelly ate it up. She was tired of Vincent’s independence, his mouth, his results that refused to come with obedience. Dick made her feel in control. He let her play mentor. And in a place like this? That was enough.

It all came to a head when the management team expanded again—new managers Phil and Patrice added to the rotation, Dick slinking back into full participation. Another shuffle. Another play for positioning. Vincent had seen enough.

So he pitched something wild.

Something bold.

He offered to take the newest training class—twelve fresh hires—plus two more from another group, seven former top performers who used to thrive under him, and even the office’s union steward, who was constantly off the phones and dead last in performance. Fourteen new or neglected reps. No guarantees. All risk. It was the kind of assignment that would scare most managers off.

But not Vincent.

He welcomed it.

Shelly agreed—partly because she hoped it would distract or even deflate him, partly because no one else wanted to touch it, and partly because, deep down, she knew he’d pull it off. He always did.

Dick was livid. Jealous. He claimed he was going to take the group himself, then backpedaled when it became clear Vincent had already closed the deal.

Vincent got his team.

Jeff and Ted stayed with him. A few loyal soldiers returned. And the new recruits? They were thrilled to be under his guidance. In their first week, Vincent hit the phones himself—made five calls and outsold most of the office. Just to remind them who he was.

And then, in November—their first full month—they were #1 in the company.

Again.

Another rebuild. Another miracle. Another masterpiece.

But as usual, the higher Vincent climbed, the more eager the system was to cut the ladder.

He felt it before it happened. The whispers. The avoidance. The way Shelly couldn’t meet his eye. The smirk on Dick’s face that said more than words ever could.

Then came the announcement: Dick Knoll—The Terminator—was being promoted to run the Oklahoma City office. Hand-picked by Napoleon Dirk Slabor himself.

Vincent sat still. Frozen. Not with shock, but with the grim confirmation of a truth he already knew.

He wasn’t passed over because he failed.

He was passed over because he succeeded without playing their game.

He shook Dick’s hand. Congratulated him. Walked away.

Shelly sent the boilerplate “Come talk to me if you need anything” message.

He ignored it.

Everyone who had seen behind the curtain knew the truth. Vincent had built the entire foundation of their success. But that wasn’t what got rewarded here. Not real leadership. Not trust. Not truth. Just obedience.

Vincent spiraled—for a moment. Two weeks of detachment. Numbness. He went through the motions. The fire flickered. He was tired. Tired of being the best and still being treated like the problem.

But as always, clarity came through the chaos.

He didn’t need their promotion.

He didn’t need their approval.

In the coming months, Dirk Slabor self-destructed and left the company. Dana Warsaw came in. Seemed like a fresh start, though she had zero sales experience. Called Vincent when he was #1. Took the team out to dinner. Acted like she wanted ideas.

Then she revealed her true style—every manager needed to have a termination on the books. No room for grace. Just blood. Vincent’s team called her The Saw, and the name stuck. She came to town and someone got chopped. That was her rhythm.

Still, Vincent gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Wrote a 9-page plan to fix the department. Feedback from reps, peers, best practices. Shelly tried to block it. Vincent sent it anyway.

Weeks later, Dana asked in a meeting, “What report?”

She never read it.

That was all he needed to know.

Vincent stayed because he saw no other way, but he was obsessed with finding new challenges. Furthermore, with Dick gone, Shelly had to have her star performer carry the office because he was the only one who could.

He soon negotiated a team of 34 people—unheard of. Shelly let it happen because she had no one else left. And Vincent? He led them to #1 again in Month 1.

He did it his way.

No threats. No fear. Just belief.

And when Dana visited, Vincent was top of the company.

Still, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. She wasn’t going to promote him unless he started playing the firing game.

They couldn’t recognize greatness that didn’t come in their image.

But his team knew. The floor knew. The people who mattered remembered.