Road Trip From Hell Ends Well

Its 1995 and I’m on one of my 5 day road trips all over Illinois as sporting goods multi line sales representative. No sales rep in this territory has ever covered this terrain. I have scheduled 4 average meetings, 4 bad meetings and one potential diamond in the rough meeting. The “Diamond in the rough” is a new soccer store in Quincy, Illinois that needs a lot of what I have in one of my soccer equipment lines.
The trip is going worse than expected. The 4 average appointments were bad and 2 of the 4 bad appointments actually cancelled on me without calling me. I get to Quincy(Population 1,000) at about 8:00 P.M. the day before the appointment. Usually getting a motel room is no problem in this sleepy town. Though in keeping with the theme of this road trip( The business trip from hell), there are no motel rooms to be found. There is a Professional Go Cart Race(Yes, a Professional Go Cart Race!) in town and every room in town is booked.
I finally find a motel(Let's call it the Bates Motel) that is going through major renovations but there is actually a human at the front desk. The man(we'll call him Norman Bates) at the front desk,who obviously flunked the test to work at the Post Office, tells me there are 3 functional rooms and only 1 is vacant. I took it. This room had no lock on the door and there were funky brown spots ( I don’t want to know) all over the walls. I had to pile all my samples against the door as a pseudo barricade. There were strange sounds coming from the hallway. None the less, I didn’t get an ounce of sleep. I kept thinking,” I hope my daughters are nice to there new step dad.
I got up the next morning(after about 35 minutes of sleep) and headed off to the last meeting. The diamond in the rough. I would have settled for a pleasant person telling me that they don’t need any of my sporting goods and have a safe trip home. Well, to my amazement, this store placed one of my largest orders of the year and became a great client. So I at least drove back home with a big order and big grin on my face.

Is that a coin holder in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

In my 2nd year in the promotional products industry, I landed a very good client with some real potential. The client is a young up and coming financial firm headed up by “Jim”, a very shrewd business man in his early 40's. Jim and I hit it off great. I can’t tell you how excited I am for this opportunity.
The first project I do for him is a coin/key holder for a trade show.( Sort of a cylinder tube with rope on it to wear around your neck ). Jim’s assistant picked it directly out of a catalog. This is going to be a slam dunk! They’re ordering 1,000 units, an easy logo to imprint and no issue on price. What could go wrong?
I’ve checked on the delivery and the holders have been delivered the day before Jim’s company needs them. Excellent. Another deal in the books and I breathe a sigh of relief. Well, all of a sudden a get a phone call and its Jim. He’s says” Danny, come to my office right now.” I said, “ Is everything alright?” He replied” Danny, I need to see you right now” I hopped in my car and got to his office in about 30 minutes.
Jim calls me into his office and says, “Danny, what does this Coin/Key Holder look like to you?” ( the coin holder was a 5" inch Vinyl Cylinder in a Natural color-almost skin like). I said, “Jim, it looks ...” Jim interrupted me “ Danny, it looks like a #@$*%& ! (An adult toy that rhymes with HILDO). I said, “Yes, Jim it looks like a $%*&@” Now I’m sweating bullets thinking I just lost a potentially great client and I own 1,000 @$#%*.
Jim, says “Danny, I like you and I didn’t get to where I am in life by not taking risk. So I’m going to take these to the trade show and see what happens. If they are a flop, you own them.” What could I say? Nothing.
Well, I get a call 3 days later saying the coin/key holders were a hit. Everyone at the show thought they were hilarious and the traffic at Jim’s booth was awesome. They ordered another 1,000. The lesson learned is when problem occurs, like taking off a bandage, deal with it immediately. The fact I drove to Jim’s office and was ready to do anything to solve this problem, showed I cared and it secured a client.

Man, I love sales!

I’m selling office equipment in the summer of 1988. It's a Friday afternoon in August and its about 110 degrees outside. Its so hot I’m actually seeing fire hydrants flagging down dogs. I’m wearing the only suit I own. A Blue pinstripe 100% wool suit that is made for the dead of winter. Most of the other sales people have decided to start the weekend early but not me. I’m a sales animal. I’m going to continue to cold call and make something happen.
I’m in a 25 story building in and I’m hitting every office I can. Did I mention that I’m lugging around a 60 pound piece of office equipment that is on a rolling cart held together by a thin bunge cord? Its about as subtle as my wool blue pinstripe in August. Well, as always I start at the top and I’m at floor 20, when what do I see? A security guard(obviously another highly motivated person on a Friday) walking down the corridor. I quickly duck into the stairwell and keep quiet. I hear him take the elevator. Ha! Victory. Another security guard I’ve dodged. One minor problem. The sign on the stairwell door says “ Stairway Doors locked. Next exit 1st floor.” 1st floor! I was on the 20th. I had to lug this equipment down 20 floors. I did it begrudgingly. Banging my equipment each step. I was really mad.
I finally got down to the 1st floor with my equipment and my now soaking wet blue pinstripe 100% wool suit. Now I’m walking back to the office with half of Chicago leaving work going to the train station the opposite direction as me. As I’m fighting through this mass of humanity, I realize two things. One, I’m going slightly downhill and two I didn’t attach the bunge cord real well on the rolling cart. Suddenly, SNAP! The cord breaks and my 60 pound piece of office equipment is now rolling down the street. I just stood there and thought “Man, I love sales!”

Dressing the Part

In the promotional products industry, most of my clientele are white collar Fortune 500 companies. As in any sales position you need to dress the part. This means that 99% of the time I’m in a full suit (IBM school of blue suit, white shirt, blue tie). Well, this next meeting I couldn’t have been more off base on how I presented myself.
I received a referral from a client on a Wholesale Frozen Foods company in Chicago that might need promotional items. I’m scheduled to meet the owner at 8:00 A.M..at his warehouse/office. This guy starts his day at 1:00 A.M. so I’m getting him right before he goes home for the day. The warehouse is on the South Side of Chicago which is not an area where they are holding Boy Scout meetings. Though I’m ready with my samples and my black suit and tie.
As I pull in all the workers(again not Boy Scouts) are looking at me like I’m from Mars and a few of them are ducking behind pallets of frozen food. I walk into the dispatch room/office and there is my owner I’m meeting with. He is talking to a Chicago Policeman with 2 other guys that work there standing nearby. I see the owner pull an envelope from under his desk blotter and hand it over to the policeman. I turned away quickly( I really wasn’t prepared to be a witness to a illegal payoff to a Chicago policeman). As I’m facing another man in the office(I believe the co-owner of the company), he says” What the *^%$## are you looking at!” OK. No sweat. I think I have an extra pair of underwear in the car.
The room clears and the owner says to me, “ Danny, next time you come to meet with me, drop the suit. All my guys here think you were either with the IRS or The U.S. Immigration Department.”

Something Doesn't Smell Right in Denmark

My third job in Sales was as a multiple line sales representative in sporting goods. I had 7 lines ranging from racquetball equipment to soccer shoes. My territory was the entire state of Illinois. Most sales reps would have focused on Chicago(where 95% of my account base was) but I’m going to see everyone in Illinois that I can sell sporting goods to. That means little stores in little towns.(unfortunately, by 2009, all those mom and pop stores got gobbled up by the big box retailers).
I’m off on my first road trip to downstate Illinois. My SUV is loaded up with my samples, maps and a sales rep ready to conquer the world of sporting goods. Now, I’ve got it all planned. My first appointment is with Bill’s Hunting and Sporting Goods in Collinsville, Illinois. About 15 minutes away from St. Louis and 6 hours away from me. Bill says come on in at 10:00 A.M.. I leave my house at 4:00 A.M. and its pitch black outside. I’m at about the 3 hour mark and I feel a bump and hear a weird sound. I think I just lost a hubcap. I pull over and open my car door. My foot hits the ground but the ground is way too soft. Oh Man, I just stepped in ankle high wet mud. Funny thing, this wet mud smells kind of bad. Not bad, horrible. I have just stepped in cow manure. This is not good. I have everything in my car but a towel. I typically didn’t have a real need to wipe off cow manure when driving in Chicago. After I decide which sample soccer jersey I’m going to sacrifice, I clean myself as well as I can.
The next 3 hours of driving was bad. Downstate Illinois is the most boring drive you can make. All flat and cornfields. You can go into a self induced coma and drive off the road. It also didn’t help that the manure smell kept me company the entire way. I finally see a sign that says BILL’S HUNTING AND SPORTING GOODS. I’m on time. Stinky but on time. As I lug about 4 rolling racks of samples into the store, a man in there looks at me and says “What the heck do you think you you’re doing?” I said, “ I have an appointment with Bill” He says,” Bill went fishing and won’t be back for 3 days.” As I stood there dumbfounded, the man then says, “ I hope you didn’t drive to far for this.” I replied “ No, not far at all, got a towel?”

The First Job

It's 1987 and just out of college. I got hired by a Fortune 500 Office equipment company to be a Sales Representative in the Chicago area. Things couldn’t be better. Great company, Salary plus commission and I think there are a few cute girls in the office. Well, I was hired on June 26 and told I would start on July 5th. How great is this? New job and enjoy the upcoming 4th of July festivities. All my new Sales manager told me was to learn a 2 paragraph sales pitch that he provided to me verbatim when I started on the 5th.
Oh yeah, as if I’m going to learn this sales pitch while I’m having fun attempting not to blow my fingers off with illegal fireworks. The guy loved me in the interview process or he wouldn’t have hired me.
So I enter my new office on July 5th bright and early, ready to become a sales god.
The sales manager calls me in and says “Let’s get the sales pitch out of the way, go ahead whenever you’re ready”. Well, I don’t think I looked at this sales pitch more than once. No problem. I’ll wing it. Bad move. I was stumbling, stammering and butchering this sales pitch so badly that my new sales manager said “Stop. You don’t know this do you? You didn’t work in this did you?” I said “ No, I guess I don’t know it as well as I thought”
Next thing I know, my new sales manager says “ I think I made a mistake, you can go home now.” FIRED. Fired on the first day. Not the first day, the first 5 minutes! I went into panic immediately and begged this man for my job back. I told him that I would know this sales pitch like the back of my hand by tomorrow morning. I offered him a future child to give me another chance. Well, he did. I did have to leave the office right then to go home and learn the sales pitch. Walking through the bullpen of sales representatives was like walking through the gauntlet of shame.
That day I locked myself in my bathroom for about 8 hours and learned the sales pitch perfectly. The next day I came in and blew the sales manager away. All was well and I started my journey into office equipment sales. The irony is that my sales manger got fired 2 weeks later. Guess he didn’t know his sales pitch to well!

The First of either a ton of postings or not a lot at all

My name is Danny Friedman and I've been in some form of sales since I was 16 years old. I started out selling shoes after school for Florsheim(no longer in business). The year was 1980 and I was 16 but looked 11. I wore a bad knit tie, khaki pants and blue blazer. Why anyone bought shoes from me is beyond me. I was outgoing and had the gift of gab( 2 attributes that will help any sales person but no one would ever be successful in sales with just those traits). My first sales manager was a 30's something creepy guy sporting a really cheap suit and cheaper looking 1970's porn star mustache. Mr. Slime( I privately referred to him as) did teach me some basic selling skills such as top down selling and adding on to sales. I also learned to bullshit people by telling them classic prose such as "The I know you wear a size 9 but this leather on this size 8 will stretch" I did find out that I loved the competitive nature of selling. It was a game and I loved all kinds of games and sports. It what was to become a career of no job security, abuse of an ignorant magnitude and the best thing I ever decided to do.