Needless to say ‘The Cleaning Company’ was a company where I was more able to use my skills as a salesman than any other company that I had been with to this time. Now don’t get me wrong, I had all of the challenges of the sales world with those too, but with this company I had to deal with customers that were over vast amounts of stores. The products also were not a consumable product as with the meat company or with the soft drink company. Selling a consumable product meant repeat sales to our customers customer and the more they had on hand the more they consumed. When using a piece of cleaning the consumer may use it once or twice a year, depending or their lifestyle maybe more.
That’s why when making the sales call to a potential new customer it is so important to be well prepared and knowledgeable. Failure is too costly. With me selling these products I was able to grow in my profession and I was always so grateful for my supervisor and friend in having trust and faith in me to do what I did for ‘The Cleaning Company’.
After being successful with this company another opportunity came along. I had for all of the years left my resume’ on line at several job sites. One day while I was doing office work I noticed an e mail that popped up stating a new job that I might be interested in. It was with the largest potato chip company in the world. The benefits were outstanding. The pay was good. I wasn’t getting any younger and the cleaning company didn’t have much in the way of benefits. I hadn’t received a raise in a couple of years and the payed sixty percent toward my medical insurance that I purchased on my own. I also received two weeks vacation and had a company vehicle with all of my expenses paid. This was great for me at the time but I needed more. I had no retirement of 401k. I was in my fifties and did not want to work for the rest of my life. I showed the online site to my wife and she wanted me to submit a resume’ quickly. I did so so just to see if there was a company that would be interested in hiring some one of my age.
I submitted and they responded wanting to interview. The interview went great and the next step was some testing that I needed to do. A week later I tested the manager stated that the test needed to be sent to the west coast and it would take until the following week for the results. I left not sure about how I did and by the time I reached home I received a call from the hiring manager making me an offer. I don’t think the test really mattered they wanted me.
Now understand I really liked what I was doing and yes the travel was a lot. I was spending at least two overnights some times three out on the road. I had grown the cleaning companies business to new bounds. I had grown the business in the states that we were already in in my original territory and went further than I’m sure the company expected from five states that we were servicing to nines states in my territory. I had gained for the company hundreds of new stores. So with the other job offer on the table I thought I could negotiate a deal that would hopefully have me staying with the cleaning company. I first wanted a raise, so I went high. I also wanted my commissions to double.
I presented the offer on paper to the owner of the company and he took it back to present to his people. He then came back with an offer of no raise and would agree to double my commission. I was really hoping for the raise. I needed to pay for my own benefits, I would need to start investing some of my money toward a retirement fund. Doubling my commissions would have been fine, after all I wanted that, but the problem was I didn’t know how much more I was going to grow the business and I was receiving commissions based on gaining new customers only. There was no more negotiating it was what it was. I decided to leave and go with the chip company.
