I wouldn't believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes

So my buddy and I golf every Friday early to get in a quick 3 hour round and then go to work. We tee off 6:15 A.M.

We get behind a guy and his son in a cart and two guys with pull carts

First of all, they’re playing from the back tees and they suck. Worst of all, they are playing so slow that you would have thought they were playing in the U.S. Open( it took everything in me not to lose it though a couple of holes I did yell loudly to “Come on!”

Well, we tee off on a hole and both my buddy and I are right down the middle of the fairway. We’re waiting for Dadddy/Son and the Pull Cart Brothers to putt.

All of a sudden a ball from another hole rolls about 20 yards from us( errant tee shot of another bad golfer)

We look and there is a giant Hawk swooping down by this ball. The Hawk is trying to pick up the ball( Must have thought it was an egg-I told my buddy he wanted to have sex with the ball)

Next thing you know this hawk picks up the ball in one claw and flies onto a branch of a nearby tree. Just sitting there

The bad golfer that hit the ball drives up and I say “Dude, you will not believe where your ball is”. I point to the tree and everyone is dying of laughter

The hawk dropped the ball and flew off

I told my buddy that we will never in our life see anything like that ever again

I took a pic of this with my phone so the pic is bad but what a story!

Great Shirt! Does it come in your size?

it's 1996 and I'm in my first year of selling promotional products and I get a meeting with a lawyer in a small firm in Chicago( about 5 lawyers). He says he wants to get polo shirts to give to clients and was thinking of gettting a good amount of shirts, maybe 12. 12?!?!? OK so his good amount and my good amount are obviously 2 different numbers. It's my first year and I will do any deal with anyone at this point. So I meet with him and bring in with about 10 different polos samples for him to look at. He's see one he likes and says "Mind if I try it on?" I say hesitantly "Sure" He closes his office door and proceeds to remove his dress shirt. Let me tell you, this was a man in his late 50's that probably hasn't been to a health club since leisure suits were in style and his chest was so hairy, I felt like saying "Maybe you want to take your sweater off before you try on the shirt" So, as I'm still recovering from throwing up in my mouth, this out of shape 1/2 man 1/2 gorilla is putting on the sample shirt. Well, the sample shirt is a size Medium and this guy is definately an XL ( probably one large lunch away from being an XXL). Children and pregant women would have been banned from watching this. He's has the shirt on (if it was any tighter it would have been painted on) and says "Hmmm, not sure about this. Can you get me a quote" I tell him no problem. As he's attempting to peel this polo shirt off, I tell him "You know what, Keep it"

I never got the order,never did a deal with him and never ever want to remember what I witnessed that day.

PASSOVER

Jewish food is really quite awful. Even when someone who knows how
to cook Jewish food well, its bad.

My Mother and Sisters couldn’t cook to save their lives. My
Mom’s Brisket last night was an all time low.

It tasted like the worst dried out beef jerky of all time. I never
use Ketchup( except on Hamburgers) and I had to put almost half a
bottle of Ketchup on my Mom’s brisket to get it down my throat. The
rest of the meal ( which my oldest sister cooked) would have caused
a riot at any maximum security prison.


So, Passover is the holiday to remember the suffering the Jews went
through to gain their freedom from slavery.

Those Jews had it easy. They didn’t have to eat any food cooked by
my relatives

A Sales Career was my Destiny

I got my first real job in sales at age 16 as a salesperson for a nationally known men’s shoe store in 1980. I loved it. I wore a bad blue blazer, poorly fitting khaki pants and a horrendous knit tie. I thought I was hot stuff. By the way I also looked like I was 11 years old. My sales manager was a creepy guy in his early 30's. He sounded like the worst used car salesman you ever heard. It didn’t help his image that he wore real shiny suits and had an awful 1970's adult film star mustache. He was a real piece of work.
I do have to give him credit in teaching me some selling basics like top down selling and handling objections. After a few months I got the hang of it and was selling like crazy. I was easily the #1 part time sales person and doing as well as some of the full timers. I definitely had a feel for sales and knew I enjoyed the challenge. The money wasn’t bad either.
My ego was the size of the Goodyear Blimp and I thought I knew everything. So one Sunday I was the only one in the store. I was feeling really good about myself. Imagining myself as sales manger, regional manager and then maybe CEO of the company. I had to stop myself and focus on the task at hand which at this time was reading the Sunday Sports Section of the newspaper. As I’m sitting in a chair in the showroom, I notice an elderly couple in their 50's walk in( people in their 50's are elderly to a 16 year old). They are looking around and I peer over the newspaper and say “Folks, if you need anything, just get me”. I continued to read my newspaper.
The next day I come to work and my sales manager is livid. He asks me how my day went in the store yesterday. I said fine. He asked if I noticed a couple in the store asking for help. I told him I didn’t remember( I absolutely did). He went on to tell me that a the Vice President of our company’s Eastern region was in yesterday with his wife and the sales person was just reading the newspaper. Uh Oh! He went on to give me the lecture of a lifetime and said he did everything not to get me fired. (He didn’t fire me because I was making the store’s monthly numbers look good which helped him keep his job).
I did learn a valuable lesson and at very young age. You will never know everything and never take any customer for granted. I was lucky to learn this lesson early on in my sales life. By the way, I have a feeling that my old sales manager is trying squeeze a size 8 onto a person who wears a size 9.

Karate Class

I know it's been way too long since I've posted anything. This is new to me plus work has kept me very busy. (Unfortunately, my wife and daughters have become addicted to food, shelter and clothing). This has nothing to do with sales but this will help you get more insight on what goes on in my mind. (I have to admit demented and scary stuff)

So I had Karate last night. (good workout)Our Karate class starts and ends with all the students lining up in a straight line by Belt color( Highest to lowest). If an Adult has the same color belt as a child, the adult stands in front of the child. Children get stripes added to their belts when they don't get then next belt color after testing. adult just get colors, no stripes. I'm currently a Green Belt(right in middle of beginner and Black Belt) Class begins and this quiet nervous 14 yr old boy, who is about 5' 2' 90 pounds and also a Green Belt, goes right in front of me.

Danny: "Where do you think you're going?"

Kid: "I've got 3 stripes so I'm ranked higher than you"

Danny "Adults supersede Kids in belt colors"

Kid: "I'm Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah. In the Jewish world, I'm a man"

Danny: "I'm Jewish, had a Bar Mitzvah and was told I'm a man too. I wasn't and you're not either. Move your ass behind me."


I did offer to spar(fight) with him and if he beat me, he could stand in front of me.
He said "No thank you"

I told him I liked him and appreciated his attempt(futile as it was)

Danny World is a messed up place, isn't it?

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.