My ten years at Coca Cola were some of the best years that I had in my sales career. I would have still been there or I would have retired from there except that I let my ego get in my way and I could not find a way to humble myself at that time. I had been a district manager for three years and I had made my numbers every quarter that I was a manager.
Doug had been promoted to General Manager in another state, and he had recommended me for the Sales manager position, I was looked over for someone else with less time and not as much success. I was so angry that I made a mistake, a very big mistake. I left and went to be a Sales Manager for one of my customers. End of my time at Coca Cola.
It was 1988 when I took this new job at a large petroleum company local to the area. It was a family owned business and I was the first outsider hired into this position which had been handled by one of the owners. I received a little more pay than I was receiving at Coke. I had a company vehicle and my own office. I was in charge of ads for their c-stores. I helped to oversee the c-stores too. Once a week I would go and deliver oil products to some of the customers that this company would job fuel to.
I missed selling and this was not selling. The job took a toll on me and after one year I became so very unhappy with what I was doing that one day I quit. No new job to go to, nothing. I look back and I think about how if I had just been humble when I was at Coke, my life would have been different.
I looked in the newspaper for a job. There were not a lot of sales positions that looked right for me. I thought that maybe I could sell cars so I applied for a sales position with the largest Ford dealer in town. I was hired and there was to be a lot of training before you could get to the sales lot. The pay was very different. It was based on what they called a negative draw. That means that you would draw a paycheck every week in this case $200.00 per week. That total for the month would be taken from the total commissions for the month. If your commissions were more than the draw that you received then you received the amount that you were over. There was insurance and a new car to drive.
Training took about four weeks and it was hard for Darlene to pay the bills, but I was determined to make this work. I gave her my word I would try hard. I thought selling cars would be fun, but I found instead that it was one of toughest businesses in the sales world.
