Do you remember your first sales job?  What was memorable about that experience that stands out the most?  For me the entire experience was mind-blowing and yes, painful at times yet the very foundation of my career.  Sales new hire training, the winning environment (made up of cheap office furniture, a single community computer, a row of cubes and a couple conference rooms) and most importantly the people I worked with stand out the most, especially the Management team.  They were idol-like!  Everyone wanted to be like them, talked like them and incorporated their gestures.  The successful ones, including our VP of Sales and his RVP’s and front line managers were reps at one point and came up through the ranks and most of them worked with each other at a previous company, and then came to the current company, together, like a band of brothers.  They were all amazing people, both in and out of the office.  They shaped my career and hundreds of others.  I owe a lot of my success to them.

The start of it all was the training and preparation, paramount to success in anything one can do.  New hire training consisted of five, intense days of skill based sales training including, “if-then” statements, tie-down usage, how to handle objections, sales presentations, funnel management, appointment setting, proper activity and the list goes on.  We participated in countless hours of role-play and drilling for skill. Most of us were as green as grass.  We couldn’t tell you what a sales process consisted of, how to manage a territory, conduct a proper sales meeting or what a value proposition even meant.  The hilarious thing was we all wore suits for the first time and what carried us through that crazy week in Chantilly, VA was determination to be the best presenter, had awesome attitudes, and confidence that would carry us in our respective territories.  At the beginning of class we stumbled a lot however by the end of the week, our class was a fine tuned machine.  We soon realized the value of a sales process.  You could apply a method to something and actually sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Once we had a weekend to recuperate from sales training, we dove right into the swing of things back at the shop.  We had to make 50 new cold calls per day, a slew of daily telemarketing calls, 50-point rules, 2 meetings per day and stick to a schedule that was tightly managed and somewhat militant.  Each week consisted of rigorous role-plays sessions everyone hated, manager field rides, Monday morning sales meetings, and the constant sales structure that dominated the sales floor, business owner’s conference rooms and lobbies.  There was a constant buzz while “dialing for dollars” during our morning phone prospecting sessions, stack ranking everywhere and a competitive spirit that echoed through the class B office space.    You couldn’t come back to the office until after 5 p.m. otherwise you were looked at as a lazy worker.  Sound familiar or somewhat crazy?  Maybe both…

When we came back to the office, we would all congregate around the huge sales board, where our names were stack ranked from best to last and put up our daily numbers and who was on track for the number one spot for the day, week and month.  I loved the camaraderie, competition and the high fives after closing a deal and getting personal and peer recognition for my efforts.  Most of us didn’t need our management to motivate, the sales board did that job or us, every day.

It was this system, sales training and sales process that allowed dozens of us to rise to the top and move through the ranks during our career.  We became “those managers” that everyone wanted to be like.  Humble with the right amount of confidence, polished, and developing others for future leadership potential.