The following morning I left a little later to return to the office, but when I went to start the van, well it didn’t want to cooperate. It would not start at all. I called and had my mechanic bring some cables for a jump. He tried and found that the starter was bad. He went and bought the parts the was needed and replaced them in the freezing cold. It was below zero, so I made sure he had some coffee. I stood there watching him and handing him tools. This brought back memories of when I was a lot younger and having to do the same for my father. I remembered that my father was angry with me because I didn’t want to be there. I told the story to my mechanic. He laughed and thanked me for the coffee and told me to get back inside to the warmth.
In a short time I was on my way to the office. The roads were passable but it was slow going. The freeways were still frozen over for long stretches. When I had made it back to the office me and the mechanic had to clear the snow from the entrance to the building. The driveway had been already plowed. The snow seemed to be a couple feet deep. That day I called and had only a few of the route salesmen that had routes close enough by come in and run the accounts that they could. The others I told to stay home until the next day.
The sun had cleared the clouds out and was so bright that you needed to shade your eyes from the brightness. As I looked across the fields that surrounded the building there looked like a layer of ice had covered the snow. It was shining brightly for as far as the eye could see. There was no movement of creatures there was a slight wind blowing and you could see a dusting of snow blow about. It was beautiful to look at. God had worked with Mother Nature to create something so wonderful yet so cold and barren. I decided to see how strong the ice covered snow was. I remembered when I was growing up I would like to see how far I could walk on the snow before it gave way. I put my right foot on some and tested it sure enough the ice seemed to be just enough to hold me. I stood on the snow and raised my other foot and as soon as I did it gave way and I fell flat on my back. Oh man snow rushed into the back of my jacket and down my back. I jumped to get up but slipped again. I turned to my knees and slowly got back on my feet. I went into the office to get warm and dry out.
I decided to spend my time going over invoices and looking for anything that could help me to fix our problem on losing the dollars. I decided to plan a sales meeting and along with presenting new products and promotions I would take this time to try and correct some of the problems with the sales team. I planned it for the following week. The region manager was going to drive in from Fort Wayne. He was going to help me figure out the problems and put together a plan to fix the issues.
The following week came quickly I was prepared. The sales meeting went according to plan. I presented some new deli products and passed out the hot sheets with the next promotions. I then turned our attention to what I found on the invoices and how disturbing this was. All of the salesmen went on the defensive. I didn’t blame them and after talking to them the region manager and I found that they were instructed to do these thing by the last manager. We told them that from this point on they were not to write any credits without bringing back the product that they were writing the credit for. Only the promotions that were in their handhelds were authorized to use. Ad promotions would be set be myself only.
