JavaJennifer

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’ve had a sales career since the age of 15 when I took a job at a toy store in an affluent part of town. I was paid hourly (minimum wage was I think $3.35/ hour) and didn’t get a commission or bonus but I was very good at selling dolls, legos and brio trains.  I worked in that toy store through my graduation from college and interspersed in those years were stints at The Limited and Victoria’s Secret.  Minimum wage again but I was introduced to the concept of spifs (Sales Promotion Incentive Funds) which for readers in real jobs means that for every pair of cotton scrunch socks I managed to add-on to an existing sale, I would get a small incentive, usually in the form of a deeper discount on a banana yellow shaker knit sweater.

I had only two non-quota carrying jobs.  The first was the summer when I worked at the toy store, Victoria’s Secret and Wimpey’s a burger joint that my uncle bought and the second was when I worked as a property coordinator for a real estate company.

At company X my job titles were all sales variations and even though I carried the weight of a huge quota (disguised as a “goal”), I though of myself as being in the sales department but still not a career sales person.

The new company has a 5 step sales process that I’ve been practicing to only a modicum of success over the last 14 months.  I leave Chicago tomorrow, but while I’ve been here I’ve been trapped in a conference room pouring over case studies and role playing various sales scenarios with real and fictional business needs and my company’s solution.  I wasn’t raised in a family of salespeople so I’m not sure how I got here.

I live in constant fear that I’m one step away at any time from being found out- that I’m not a salesperson at all.  My mom commented over the holidays that she never really knew how I was doing at work because at any given time, I’d always say I was on the verge of getting fired.  And you know what?  It always seems that way.  Looking back now, I would have had to run naked through the lobby of Company X AND committed an act of fraud in order to have been fired.  I was never going to get fired from that job.  I could have done it for another 7 years and retired (theoretically).  At the new company, I constantly think I’m one day a way from getting shit-canned.  I’ve lost all objectivity for how I’m performing, or how well I’m doing with the accounts that I have.  These reps at the company are very bright and very young (the median age is 28) and are very competitive.  It’s not doubt made me a better sales person but at what cost, I don’t know.

Ugh.  I can’t believe I’m going to post this.  You can tell that I’m feeling especially morose.  Faithful readers know how much I travel and I’d thought that after this trip, I would be in town through February.  Today I learned that I have one trip every week in February for 2-3 days each week.  It will be ok.  It will be ok.

It will be ok because I won’t have to stay at the Hard Rock Hotel.  Friends don’t let friends stay here.

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This entry was posted by javajennifer admins on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 12:38 am and is filed under Blog Blend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.