Though Doug was getting acclimated to his new job as sales manager he took a few days to show me around my new territory. He introduced me to all of the key accounts. My responsibilities had changed considerably. I would have to make appointments with the managers of the stores that I called on if I was to get anywhere with them. I decided to try to have set appointments with my top major accounts every week. Every week it seemed like I was becoming friends with a lot of them. I was gaining space and getting displays. My district was growing.
I had six routes within five counties. Some of my routes were in the city but most were in the out lying areas to within about 50 miles from the plant. The six routes had a mix of young and old salesmen. It was good to have this mix as the older more experienced sales people help set some examples. I also found that the older ones were the ones that were the hardest ones to get respect from. Most of them thought I was a kiss ass because I took the management job. They really didn't want to listen to me, they just wanted to be left alone.
I found that no matter what company I worked for, that all of the people that had any kind of time with that company had the same attitude. That's to say, they have seen it all, they have seen the management turn over several times, they have done that before or that they sold that product before and none of this has worked in the past. Most of them knew how much to sell to make a certain paycheck and that the quota that was given them was not there number, but their companies or managers number.
I think that a lot of them had started out with there own dreams. Dreams of making money and maybe when they first started out they were seeing there dreams come true. They maybe worked less and got paid more or possibly because of change with the way they worked there attitude also changed. I had to challenge myself to also change. I had to try to better understand all of my salesmen. Young and old, ones with less experience and those who had seen it all before.
How was I going to bring myself up to the challenge? I remembered back to when I was in the Marine Corp and I was promoted to Corporal. I had friends that were below my rank. With this promotion I was now a 'Manager'. This particular time that I am remembering was when we were getting ready for a general inspection. The type of inspection where the officers were white gloves and checked for dust. Everything had to be perfect. I had to assign duties to everyone in my platoon. Stripping the floors and waxing the floors, Cleaning windows and the cills. Dusting and scrubbing down all wood work. Policing the lawn and parking lot, and the job that no one wanted, cleaning the head. That's the bathroom. The latter job was of the most important. All metal had to shine, floors spotless, and the john’s had to look like new.
Now I knew all of the men in my platoon. They all thought I was their friend and when it came to the assignment of cleaning the head several of them would come to me and ask to be assigned to something else. At first I did help out the few, the job got done. I was later called aside by the platoon leader, a 2nd Lt. He told me that although the job got done that I had not done it ethically by assigning the easier jobs to my so called friends. That everyone had to follow orders. There would be no time for second guessing during a combat situation. Now was the time to understand that I was a leader and if I didn't waiver then all would follow. He was right and it made me stronger. I had to lead.
