NEEDLING

THE AMERICAN DREAM

I was wrong, it wasn’t no telemarketing job, it was the next worse thing, a door to door cutlery sales job. No cold calling, the “sales manager” kept saying, you work with leads only, people who WANT YOU to come to their houses and sell them some knives. Okay, I figured, lets hear him through. During his presentation, he was telling us all about how you sell the knives, the scissors, and other cutting appliances, to the potential clients… but nothing about how we got the leads. It’s simple, he finally got around to it, when you’re making a sale and you’re done with the presentation, the customer’s all happy signing you over a nice big check, you ask him to call a couple of his buddies and refer you to them… there’s even a little paragraph all written up and ready we give to the customer in question and which he reads to the person on the other end of the line… the company’s statistics show that we get an average of two references per client, that two out of three clients buy, and that the average sale is of two hundred buckaroos. BUT HOW DO WE GET THE FIRST LEADS? Guess… we figure, the sales manager said, that the best way to get started is to work with people you know, this way you as a rooky sales-rep you don’t get nervous and stutter too much, and them the clients since they know you they’ll give you some constructive feedback on your sales presentation. SHIT ME SILLY. I should have known this morning. That beer I drank last night did some nasty business to my intestines, and this morning I had the shits Bonanza. Should have known all about it… but went on down to South Austin nonetheless dressed in grey slacks and freshly ironed button-up shirt… once arrived, the potential candidates of which I was a member, first filled out a form with your basics questions. Then we went on a one on one interview with the region’s Sales Manager, during which time it was quite difficult to get said Sales Manager to tell me anything about the company and the products I was interviewing to work for and sell for respectively and inversely. Thirdly, the three out of five people left after the one-on-one were invited to stay on to listen to the company and product presentation. The whole guacamole lasted two hours. Driving back here to Flightpath, I got a call from Sales Manager. I didn’t pick it up because I was driving. The minute I found a parking lot, I stopped, listened to his message and called him back. He told me all about how he was impressed with my professionalism, the way I was dressed, my apparent good communication skills, my relaxed demeanor, et cetera… and told me to be back next week if I wanted for the training period. I’m gonna do it. By gawd, I’m gonna go out there and sell me some knives, cutting through chunks of leather with a steak knife in front of a gawky housewife all impressed pulling out her wallet and signing me a multi-hundred dollar check. Hell yeah, buddy, that’s what I’m gonna go and do. What the hell. This is America. The American Dream. Haven’t we all seen the door to door sales-rep movies taking place in the fifties? I want to be one of those sleazy guys. Those fat fwellows driving pink Cadillacs and wearing three dollar suits. Hell yeah.