My job here at Masterbrands, in addition to overseeing the basic operations of the company is managing a sales force as well as taking care of my own sales. Because I am so deeply involved in the sale process of our company, and my 20+ years of personal experience in sales, I am very aware of how different sales people sell to our company. We buy all kinds of things at Masterbrands, from office supplies to copy machines, fabric and all of the other products we use to run our business. I can honestly say in the past 19 years of business, I cant think of one great sales rep that has called on me! There has not been an instance when someone has researched our business and discovered a need we probably have, come in asked great questions, created a relationship and closed me. That’s not a bad thing for us. It means the percentage of great sales reps must be so low, that I would have this experience over the course of 19 years. If that is the case and we can develop great sales talent for our business, think how easy it will be for us to grow our business. So , I want to personally thank all of the average and below average sales reps and managers out there for making my job a little easier.
Welcome to my new blog.
I started to write a blog several years ago and some marketing person told me it was not official enough. I guess times have changed because apparently now it is better to just be yourself in your blog rather than trying to come across as the copy written in your company brochure. I started Masterbrands a while back. I say a while back , because for years I lied about how long the company had been in business to give us some legitimacy. Over the years it has made it difficult to remember when I actually started the business. I think it’s somewhere around 18 years ago. I thought it would be a lot easier by now, but it is still a pretty tough grind running this thing. I started in a small 8×8 office with a telephone and some sales aility that, looking back was not as good as I thought. I’m glad I didn’t know at the time. The one thing I was not afraid of was talking to people. So out I went to sell custom logoed shirts, jackets hats and anything else I could convince companies they needed. I used the profit from my first order to pay for the goods on the 2nd order and so on. I don’t really want to give much more history, because I imagine that is what most business owners do when they are writing their first blog. That being said, I am going to use this blog to convey my thoughts on business, sales and customer service. Most of it will probably sound like rants about customer service I receive from vendors and companies I am a customer of. I’m out of time for now as I need to tend to business; but you’ll be hearing more from me in the days, weeks, and months to come.