I have been spending a good deal of my summer selling books in an area of the US that is actually at poverty-level and below. I'm no longer in that area, but I have worked in an area very similar to it today.
I talk to most of these people. In the process I learn about who they are, because I ask them lots of questions. I am generally curious, but I am especially curious about why these people are living in these conditions. I have heard people say that poverty is caused by the wealthy people of the world. I refuse to believe this now that I've talked to all these people.
I see poverty, and I see it as being caused by bad decisions, bad habits, and an unwillingness to change either the habits, the behaviors or the changeable decisions. These people spend their money on things addictions such as alcohol, cigarattes, coke, crystal meth, and mountain dew. These people chain themselves to a land that has fewer and fewer jobs by their unwillingness to move. Girls my age decide to have unprotected sex before marriage and forfeit much they could receive for whatever beauty they have.
Today I met a girl who is 20. She is very pretty in a very unique way. She could be a model or an actress if she'd work hard to do that. Instead, she got pregnant when she was 18 and she lives in a trailer with her parents and her two-year-old son. I talked to her for a while, because she seemed interested in the books and seemed to not want me to go -- besides I am allowed to spend 20 minutes with a customer. She got to where she is today because she "wanted to do everything that wasn't right" when she was High School age. Now she still doesn't want to go to college, she has a baby boy, and lets her parents take care of her. Fortunately, they are good at it. They got her a good paying job and helped her finance a house that she is moving into soon.
She is just one example of many. I am frustrated by the ignorance of the people that I am working with here in Northeast Alabama. I talk to many of them and let them know that things don't need to be like this, but they are very set in their ways. (Not everyone I run into is in poverty or making bad decisions -- just a lot more than I had ever met before.)
People say that people get stuck in poverty and that there is no way out. I believe this can seem to happen, but now I am realizing that it isn't entirely true. People afford cars, gas, addictions, non-productive excesses of all kinds -- like satellite TV. If these people would give up a few of their excesses and saved their money they'd be on to something. Investing their savings would add to their income and/or provide them something to lean on when they lost their jobs. People here don't trust banks or anything that is not cash. They don't see much value in saving either, because there is no value to it when you have only cash -- in fact there is risk involved because your cash can get lost or be stolen. It can be very frustrating listening to some of the things these people tell me. They seem so lost to me... so lost.
Today, I stopped at a two story brick house that had a wrap-around wooden balcony on the second floor. It didn't go all the way around, but it reminded me of my parent's office building -- only smaller. Anyway, there was a section where the guard-rail was missing. Beneath that section there was a hugemongous black trampoline!
Anyway, I got to the house and it looked like there might not be anyone home, because the house looked so new and there were no cars in the driveway. There were two garage doors though, so I got out and gave the front door a knock. Two little guys came to the door and I quickly found out that their mom wasn't home, but they assured me that she'd be back soon and that I should wait. On my way out she pulled up.
I tried to help everyone bring in the grocieries and stuff, but that kinda fell through -- I did get a sit-down though. She also ordered a book with the intent to order more when I came back. (I do this from time to time. I tell my customer to go ahead and order a minimal order and get the rest when I return.)
After that I asked to jump from the balcony to the trampoline. One of her boys had done this a couple of times before, but she wasn't really sure about it. I told her that I needed to do it because I have a fear of things like that, which is true.
At some point the other brother, Matt, woke up. (The two boys at the begining of this story were the son and a friend, Hunter) He wanted to jump too, but he had never done it before. He was afraid. I was too, and I told him I was, and it was obvious that I was, but I still jumped, because I wanted to get over that.
Matt thought that was a decent enough idea, so he stood around and thought about jumping for a while. We (his mom too) were all encouraging him to do it. At one point I told him that this was so much bigger than just jumping down to the trampoline and that it would all be over in a flash so he should just do it.
In the end he made up his mind not to jump.
I was thinking about what I had said to Matt and realized it was so much truer than I had thought. Had he jumped it would have completely changed the way he felt about himself and it would have changed his identity. He would no longer have been the chubby, fearful, conservative kid that he still is. He would have instead been just like me and the other two boys. I thought that was pretty interesting. There were other interesting things I got from this, but it is way past bedtime now so I'll have to continue this later.
"When doing Southwestern, your schedule is your lifeline. If you break it, you die."
I know you don't die, but this saying of theirs is not too far off from the truth. If you alter your schedule in a significant way you suffer. You suffer badly.
Here's my lifeline to the best of my memory...
The Lifeline
Arrive at the HQ
Unpack Car
Do Weekly
Call in Stats (10:30 PM)
Fill in Selling 101
Pack Lunch
Run / Work Out
Eat Dinner / Check e-mails / blog
Shower
Go to bed
Wake up (6AM or 5:45AM)
Put bed away
Shower
Get dressed
Take stuff to car
Leave HQ
Eat Breakfast
Fill out five orders
Pay for food
Brush teeth
Execs
Drive to territory
36 Demos
12-15 sits
2-10 customers
Repeat.
Well, it's Sunday night and Marcus is kinda getting the shaft again. This is actually something that usually happens on Sunday nights and Mondays. This time he is having to move out of our HQ and into Clerison's HQ. This isn't really all that bad, and the other stuff isn't either, but I like to joke with him about it because he always takes it hard.
He is moving because he ran out of territory here in Scottsboro. He worked it all fairly quickly, I guess, but the real problem is that the walkable cities in Marshall County have very expensive transient vendor license fees or forbid our book peddling altogether. This means that he had about half of the territory that the company thought he had. So, they are having him move in with Clerison and Rasa. Those two had lived with this guy named Mike, but Mike quit early on so they have territory and living space to spare, I guess.
Farewell Marcus! I guess I'll still see him at org meetings, but he never really talked much there so this is probably for my relationship with Marcus Goynes.
This door-to-door sales stuff gets pretty boring pretty quickly if you don't do things to entertain yourself. The managers suggest things such as giving grandmas high-fives, messing with small dogs, exchanging clean jokes, inserting the word of the day into every other sentence as you talk to a non-buyer, performing slapstick comedy at the approach, etc. I'm into some of that stuff, but I have an idea of my own -- the question of the day.
So far, I've losely polled my strong customers on their astrological signs. I like to try to guess people's signs from time to time, and I now have an unending supply of people. So far I've done pretty well at guessing, but there are still a few signs that I am bad at picking out (Scorpios) and a few that I must never have as customers (Sagittarius.)
The sign thing will likely continue, but I want something that I can ask everyone -- not just my customers and their children.
So, I am leaving this open for ideas. Go ahead and post as many fun ideas as you'd like. If I like them I'll start asking people at the door, and I'll even keep track of the results.
I should probably start this off with a question or two of my own to serve as examples...
... ... ... OK, I don't have any examples. I couldn't really think of anything, which is why I am asking for help here. The question I asked an old lady that made me think of all this was, "Where do you guys party around here?" That made her laugh, because I was talking about all the old people she had just mentioned.
Dahnell's suggestion -- "Do your kids take the bus or their lunch to school?"
I don't think I'll ever use this one, because it creates too much confusion. I seek clarity and insight -- not confusion.
Note: Try to think of something that isn't open-ended if you can.
I was just looking back at some of my April entries. I was wondering what I was like before Southwestern. This trip down memory lane caused me to realize that my stress level was pretty high even in April. There are several things that are different about this time in my life and what I was going through in April.
One thing that is different about this time and the time in April is that Southwestern doesn't really matter that much, but my grades at UF did.
The next thing is that I could sleep if and when I wanted to sleep. I also had a nicer bed and consistantly got more sleep and a whole lot more free time. Strangely, I blogged less in April.
This job would actually be quite easy if I didn't suffer so much from sleep deprivation. Driving around looking for people with kids who are willing to listen to me talk about books that I'd like to sell them is really not all that hard or stressful. It is never that big of a deal if the people don't buy. In fact, that is almost the norm. If they do buy some books than I am sometimes a bit happier, but usually it doesn't affect my mood that much. There isn't much of an immediate reward for getting a sale. No reward would really matter anyway unless the reward somehow involved a full night's sleep.
...and a movie in a theater -- preferably Spider Man 2.
Here's a long story that I've been meaning to blog for nearly two months now.
Before I left for this Southwestern thing, I needed to remove nearly everything I owned from my place in Gainesville. The only things I could leave behind were the furniture, some pictures, and the washer and dryer.
I didn't have a whole lot of time to do all of this, and I ended up renting a U-Haul to get all my stuff into a storage unit that I was renting for the summer. The second-to-last night before my trip I still had the U-Haul, and Joy and I stayed up late packing up more of my stuff and then packing all of that into the U-Haul. We packed as much as we could and then drove off to the storage place at like 3AM. We did this because the lady at the facility told me it was a 24 hour facility, which was a big reason for choosing to store my stuff where I did.
Anyway, we got to the storage place and it was closed, of course. So we started to drive home with the full U-Haul -- completely tired and sleep deprived. Then on the road ahead I see these kittens playing. They weren't moving for the U-Haul so I had to slam on the brakes. I was pretty upset, because slamming on the brakes caused everything in the U-Haul to fly forward and hit the back wall. It was loud and it sounded awful. (This story is a lot longer than it really needs to be right now.) Anyway, I was so tired, and so worried, and so upset that I just yelled out in frustration, "those kitties!"
I just don't think I'll ever forget that night, the way I said "those kitties!" or the way Joy reacted.
There was a Thunderstorm the other day. I think it was Monday or Tuesday. I was really excited about it at the time because I kinda missed the thunder and lighting of a "normal" SW Florida summer.
It rains rather strangely in this NE corner of Alabama. It will rain for about five to ten minutes and then drizzle for a good hour or so. It has been raining a bit harder this past week, so I decided to check weather.com and see what was in store for the next few days.
The ten day forecast shows a variety of whether. There will be thunderstorms everyday, but somedays they'll be isolated and other days they'll be scattered. Tomorrow we're just having plain old thunderstorms though. This makes me think of Huddle House and eggs.
How do you want your thunderstorm?
I am trying to figure out the best thing to eat when I am out in the book field, and I am having problems with it. First I lost a lot of weight and ended up really thin. Now I think I am gaining it all back and more in about a week and a half. I am gaining it back so quickly that I am now in pain because of it.
The only really big change I made was to stop eating Peanut Butter and Jam on whole wheat and to start eating Pop-Tarts instead. I guess I am also eating a w more free cookies, but I was eating cookies beforehand too. It's so weird. The Pop-Tarts may have to go.
One thing about Southwestern that is kinda cool is all the free stuff that we get. Not only do we get free stuff from contests that happen every week, but we also get a constant barage of free stuff from "Ms. Jones."
Today, for instance, I got a bank bag, a root beer, a bottle of gatorade, and had a lot of other stuff offered to me that I did not accept.
Draft...
I miss a lot of things out here in the bookfield. It is so strange to still be in the middle of America and yet feel so out of touch with everything. I am glad that I can still log on, but I am so busy that I still feel disconnected with almost everything. I think that this is going to be the longest period of time in my life that I have gone without watching a movie.
I've actually managed to watch bits and pieces of movies in the different hosues that I go into throughout the summer, but I never really get to sit down and watch a movie, play a video game, read a book, etc. There is no escape. I am stuck in the reality of this dream-like world of constant work. There is barely time for sleep and getting ready for the next day.
Sure, I occasionally make some time to write e-mails to people, take care of personal financial business online, and blog, but other than these things I do little else but drive from house to house knocking on doors trying to sell books.
The crazy thing is that I actually still kinda like this job. I am just convinced that it would be better if there was more down time to it. We need more than one day a week for a break and we also need more than nine to ten hours a day off for sleeping, showering, eating and getting organized for the next day.
So, I take breaks. I take a break at times to leave Joy a voicemail. I call my mom, my dad, and I even talked to Steve yesterday. I don't think that it should be bad for me to take a half an hour or so out of my day to do these things. However, they strongly advise against this sort of thing. Any time you spend taking a break could be that one extra door you could have knocked on to get one more sale. Well, I think that maybe forgoing that sale is worthwhile for my sanity. I'll still be working 13 hours of the day through everything that happens.
Honestly, I can't wait until this is over, but I also daily consider doing it again next year. This job is the most emotionally polarized thing I have ever experienced. I am always one way and then the exact opposite -- one right after the other -- sometimes simultaneously. I can't figure out for sure if it is because of my personality, my piscean nature, or if everyone feels this way. It seems as though everyone has felt a full variety of emotions this summer and summers past, but I don't see or hear of many people feeling them all at once.
When today is done I will be half way done with the time that I spend in Alabama. I am already more than halfway done with the program as a whole, and the part in which I am selling books. I've come this far, I know, so I can definately make it the rest of the way. I just pray that I can improve so that I get some money and some respect from my peers in the program.
I've learned so, so very much this summer. I really hope that I can remember at least half of all that I've learned. Luckily, Joy is taking notes for me when she gets her voicemails so we can have a collection of my thoughts and experiences at the end of this. Maybe after sifting through all that and some of these blogs I'll have a wealth of new knowledge and wisdom that I can use for the rest of my life. That can be worth much more than the money that I may or may not make this summer.
This probably seems a bit contradictory to some, but the truth is that I am being humbled and gaining great deals of confidence by doing this program with Southwestern. Along the way I am learning quite a bit about myself -- most of it is fairly negative which only adds to the humility.
I am being humbled from all sides.
I am performing below average in terms of sales. I have slightly above average work stats in a few categories, but as the stats require more and more skill to achieve and less forced work I am under-performing in comparison with my peers and years of people doing this. I am supposed to work 80 hours a week, which is no problem, in fact it is practically required. I am supposed to get 30 demos a day, which is also no problem. Unfortunately, I have not been able to sit down with 12 families in a day with the exception of one day last week -- I somehow got thirteen. The average person in Southwestern probably gets about 30 strong units a day. I don't do that either. I've been getting around 50 to 60 for three weeks now.
I am also humbled because one of my three organizational leaders -- the one I call my stats in to every night -- is frustrated with me. He feels like I am performing beneath my potential. Also, another student manager of mine has essentially stopped speaking to me. I'm not sure why. I just know that she was frustrated with me too.
Confidence is increasing constantly though. I am getting better at my job. I am getting better at dealing with people. I am becoming quicker at dealing with people's objections and quick on my feet with the jokes again now that I've figured out Alabama humor. Now I have absolutely zero reservation with talking to a complete stranger, and I have no problem with making a fool of myself in front of one either. I daily dance like a chicken in front of a Huddle House that is on the most important road in town. So, I also do this on patios and proches across Marshall County for laughs. Whatever... Why not?
I am discovering things about myself constantly. I am realizing new strengths and new weaknesses. I am realizing that being good at things only matters if you are in an enviroment where those strengths are valued. Adaptaility is so key right now, and even though I always felt adaptable I seem to be unable to don this hat or wear the clothes of a salesman.
Soon I will.
I don't really sell a lot of Southwestern books when compared to my peer group. However, I do seem to be reasonably good at transfering my ideas and ideals to people. Here are some examples from the book field --
I talked a postal worker into investing so that she'd have money to live on after her husband died, which will likely be soon. I also got her to use my brokerage -- Scottrade.
I talked one mom into using the book purchase as an opportunity to teach her children about saving up for things. I hope it works out for that family. :)
I talked two families into having their daughters pay for their books/CDs. I have suggested this at many different times to different families, but it actually worked twice this past Saturday, and both girls decided that they wanted the products enough to spend their own money. One girl, Jessica, bought a college prep CD package and a Learning Companion, which cost her in excess of $250. I was impressed. We even talked about how long it would take her to earn back the money she spent on that -- two weeks. She thought it worthwhile. She was very intelligent and wanted nothing more than to do well in school and go to college.
Man, I took this college thing for granted. Alabama is changing all of that.
I am, of course, having some insanely crazy experiences here in Alabama. I want to blog about them all, but I simply don't have time. So, what I am doing now is making little notes about them on my pre-approach pad so that I can jog my memory and maybe write about them later.
However, I am writing this now, so I think I will go ahead and write about a few of the crazy things that happened today.
I stopped for a few minutes and watched a guy bass fish out of a pond the size of three swimming pools. He caught a bass while I was there, but he hooked the thing in its belly. He cast so hard that the way too heavy lure that he was using went straight into the water and snagged a bass in the side. It was kinda funny and kinda sad all at once.
I saw a very chubby five to eight year old boy unabashedly run out of his front door butt naked and belly flop into a 3 foot diameter 3/4 feet deep plastic swimming pool.
I did a book demonstration in a moving golf cart.
I came to an intersection that was blocked by loose cows. On one side of the road they were quickly eating someone's corn field. On the other side of the road they were eating a really nice lady's garden. I stopped and took three pictures while I waited for a couple of the cows to move out of my way in the road. No one had noticed that they were missing yet!
I met the CUTEST little girl today named Courtney. She was TWO! She was sooo cute. She had a little brother that was 10 months younger than her and they got along really well, which I always like to see in siblings. She really, really liked me almost instantly. We totally hit it off in a big way so I didn't mind at all when I had to go to her house twice. When I came to the screen door the second time, she ran up to it and opened it for me.
She really liked me and she'd always look into my eyes really long and hard and then she'd climb all over me and do all this other crazy stuff.
Obviously, part of her cuteness was in the way she acted in reaction to me, but I don't care if I am biased. She was totally focused in too, the only times she wasn't focused in on me were times when she'd run off to another part of the house to grab something to show me.
OK, in case it isn't obvious, this little girl really grabbed me by the heart strings. I am torn. I'd quickly wish that I had a daughter just like her some day, but then again, I know that she'd be miserably spoiled-rotten.
Leaving the second time was really hard for both of us.
This week we didn't have recognitions the way we normally do, because of the time spent reflecting on and discussing Andrew and his recent death. However, they did take a moment to recognize me and Dhimithraq (pronounced Dmitri) and the people who won flowers for having their best week in strong units and meeting the minimum units sold.
I was recognized because I had my best week in the three major categories by which they measure our performance -- Customers, Sit-downs, and Strong units. This meant a lot to me not because of the recognition, which was quite akward after hearing about Andrew's death, but because Peter Martinello gave a speech. The gist of the speech was that not everyone who comes to Southwestern has a natural selling ability. In fact, some of us are the exact opposite -- referring to me. However, sometimes these people quit and go home or decide to just be negative the whole time. Peter and Mike wanted to recognize me though because I am not gifted at this and I am still working hard at it. I am one of the worst people in the org at selling books, but I am continuing to get better and I continue to push myself and work harder and harder. I appreciated having that be recognized even though it was used eventually as a segway into a lecture about how our org's week was better than last week in terms of money and units, but sliding in terms of work stats. Every first year had fallen in some category except Dhimitraq and I.
So, that is positive and motivational. There's really no reason that I can't repeat the growth next week too. I am looking forward to it, actually.
This morning during our organizational meeting in Decatur, Alabama our twenty person org heard that Andrew Tomkiewicz passed away Saturday morning. He was involved in an car accident at a four-way stop. I was told that he was hit on the driver's side and died on impact.
Our sales manager, Kian Ostovar, flew to Huntsville, AL to talk to all of us about the accident and help us deal with it emotionally. He said that it was the first time he had to deal with a death on the book field. In fact, he had to make a number of calls and look way back to the last time a death occured during a summer with Southwestern.
We all listened to Kian, Mike Yandre, and Peter Martinello talk about Andrew, his brother Mike who is also in our org this summer, Andrew's family, and what we need to do now that we've heard this news. Finally, Andrew's roommate, Nick "N-Rod" Rodriquez, came up and talked about Andrew for a while. He told us a few funny things that had happened during his five weeks of living with Andrew and reminded us all of the qualities that we all liked about Andrew. It was funny, because these typically unsung qualities were all mentioned. We all laughed and appreciated who Andrew was for a few minutes and then most of us broke down shortly after, because all those things that made up this great guy are gone now. Once Nick broke down into tears Kian let us all go out and spend some time alone or talking with our friends. I pretty much broke down too during this whole thing. I had never had an acquaintance, peer or a friend die before. I went for a long run to use up the rest of my fifteen minutes and when the meeting resumed it kinda went on semi-normally.
I really feel badly for his older brother, Mike. Those two guys are really close, and Mike was already going through a lot before this accident and loss. Now he is going to feel this whole in his life for the rest of his days. I actually spoke with a lady the other week who had lost her brother eight years earlier, and I was just asking her a few questions about some things and she broke down in tears all over again. It must be rough.
Since I have been doing this job, every week I have eaten at least five of my twelve book field meals at various cemeteries across Jackson county. I'd take about a half an hour off and just eat and think about things and read the names and dates. Not exactly what Southwestern people would call positive, but I found it to be soothing or something -- I don't know. I was just drawn to them. I don't know if I'll be doing that this week.
I am looking forward to being done with this internship with Southwestern. This would be considered "negative" to the Southwestern people, and I can totally understand why. This job is really emotional and mental more than anything, which hurts me because I think a lot -- "too much" according to many in this program. I am also a fairly emotional person.
I mention this, because the people are right. When I think of anything like this it does kinda mess with my mind and emotions when I am out in the "bookfield." I need to concentrate on enjoying my time out here and enjoying my job. I haven't exactly figured out how to do this just yet, but I think I may be on my way.
I am kinda seeing this as a game. I need to complete certain sections of the areas that I work, and I know that the faster I go through them the sooner I will get to people who will buy the books and the sooner I will get to "better" (there supposedly is no such thing, but that is quite obviously BS) territory.
Seeing it as a game has helped me work harder, faster, and enjoy this more. I seem to need a sense of completion to feel good about doing work. In this job there is rarely a sense of completion and never, ever a sense of accomplishment in terms of "satisfactory" or "good enough." You can always do better. You could always have done something different. (I find this incredibly negative, but apparently it doesn't meet their definition of negative, because it happens all the time.)
The next thing I am doing to enjoy my job more is figuring out what I do well when I am doing this. I seem to thrive on positive reinforcement instead of constant correction and suggestions for improvement, so I decided that I'd make a list of things I am doing right so far. I'll also make a list of the things I am doing wrong, the mistakes I make, and the suggestions that Marie, Mike Yandre, Clerison and Dahnell make for me to improve. I'm going to largely ignore the second list though. What I plan to do is to take the first list and just get enjoyment out of the fact that I am doing the things on that list well. I want to be consistant about those things so I will focus on them. Then I want to add things from the second list to the first list from time to time. Maybe I'll attempt to do this every two days or so. Finally, I am going to see the suggestions that Marie makes as assignments and just "accomplish" them every week so that I can feel a sense of accomplishment there too.
Hopefully this will all work out for me. :)
Tonight, after my last house, I noticed some lighting all across the Eastern horizon. I really miss lightning, so even though I couldn't hear it I decided to drive out to a unlighted country field area and sit on the roof of my car for a while. I looked at all the stars, watched the lightning in the distance and just enjoyed the scenery.
I don't really get why people always say that the country is more peaceful than the city. I mean, obviously, there are fewer people and such, but the people in the country can be just as obnoxious as city people. There are encredibly loud trucks, people blaring their music, cows and roosters doing their cow and chicken thing, and dogs everywhere that bark anytime you come anywhere near them, which sets off a chain of dogs parking all across the countryside -- just to name a few things.
I'd have to say that country is maybe even a little more annoying to me, because the noise and distractions aren't constant. In a town or city there is definately a constant din, but it is relatively constant so it fades into a background. In the country the din is made up of bugs and frogs and anything else that makes noise is different, new, and attention grabbing.
Oh! Another thing that is very not peaceful about the country is the nosiness of the people who live there. Nearly everyone in the area that I am working is fairly bored, and I am quite an unusual site (people constantly note that I have a Jeep (read: unFord -- fortunately it is not Japanese. They'd hold that against me here) with Florida plates.) I have been informed many times though that the people here are pretty much nosy about everything, which is funny to me because people tell me all the time that they don't really know their neighbors when I ask them if the neighbors have kids.
OK, that rant really had nothing to do with the starry night thing at all. I guess it was sort of related, because I really like the country -- I just don't really like the people that live there so much. Isolation seems to have a negative effect on people.
Dahnell's car has all kinds of issues.
This week the issue was the transmission. Arguably one of the most expensive things to replace on the car. It took three days to find a new (used) transmission and replace it for him. During that time I helped out by driving Marcus to his sales locality and then driving an hour in a different direction to drop Dahnell off at his sales locality. Today was the first day that I didn't start my day at 9:30 (as opposed to around 8AM.)
The biggest problem with this is not the morning. Doing it all again in the evening is what killed me. Add another hour and a half to the time I normally get home and you are looking at some time after 11PM, which means I didn't get to bed until midnight or later, which really kinda sucks when you are waking up at 5:45AM every morning.
I explain all this just to let everyone know why I haven't been blogging or sending many e-mails this week. This car thing is over for now, but something else will surely happen later on -- I just know it. Man, I can't wait to get to bed! Only 30 more minutes until I can call in my stats and start snoozing.
Today I got week five off to a good start and a sad start all at once. I set my goals high and finally found my motivation. Marie had tried in vain to help me figure out what motivates me during our personal conference Sunday and left it to me when the PC was over.
My motivation comes from a verse that I've been meditating on recently -- Colossians 3:23. The verse is, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as you're working for the Lord, not for men." Yeah, that solved that lack of motivation issue pretty quickly. Luckily, I had a taped sermon in my car that discussed that verse and others like it for a good 40 minutes. I played that tape over and over all day today, which was positive. I'll probably have it memorized at some point.
OK, as for my first day...
The day was great in terms of attitude and effort level. It was also fairly good (for me) in terms of customers and reaching new firsts. I didn't reach a few of my goals though. I wanted to get 25 strong units every day this week, but today I only got 5. I also wanted to get 12 sit-downs every day this week, because I haven't gotten 12 sits yet, but I only got 11 today.
My firsts were --
11 sits
Selling two handbooks at once
Selling three handbooks at once
Completely ignoring the fact that I had weak customers (meaning I was unsatisfied) and still driving forward toward the 25 strong units that I wanted.
There is definately a learning curve in the Southwestern program. Unfortunately, it is week four and I am still at the begining of the ride. I have had seven customers so far this week, which is probably still less than the lowest number of customers in one day that any student manager in my org has gotten this week. (I hope that was somewhat clear.)
Here are the things that need to happen for me to continue to ascend the learning curve --
I haven't learned my complete sales talk yet.
I am still not very assumptive at all. I don't walk into a house feeling like the people will buy the books I am about to show them.
I still don't get 12 sit-downs in a day, which is unfortunate, because I usually get a customer for every two to three sit-downs I get. That is also true for everyone else as well.
I am barely doing the 'proper' hours now, and I am still being horribly inefficient after dark, which is principally due to the fact that most homes in my rural area have their lights out shortly after dark.
My attitude is more balanced than positive. It needs to be positive they say for me to do well, but I am stuck in a non-negative realism. I know that I will find a few buyers every day, because I work the area quickly and tight, but I also know that I won't persuade anyone into buying with my underdeveloped sales skills.
Here are some things I am improving lately --
I am just now begining to smile at every door. For some reason I'd just wear whatever face that matched my inner attitude when I knocked on the door instead of wearing an enthusiastic, positive smile. Silly me.
I am just now begining to speak more naturally and less like a kid trying to recite a poorly memorized script.
I am confident when talking to people.
I have noticed that I furrow my eyebrows when I am speaking and the sun is in my eyes. This looks incredibly weird with a big grin. I am making adjustments concerning this issue, but still haven't figured it out completely.
I have great eye contact -- most of the time.
I knock loudly and clearly and place the bag and my person in the right spots in front of the door. :)
I was forewarned that it was highly likely that my car would experience some sort of problem when I was out in the book field. Saturday, my car didn't start -- twice. It took about 15 to 20 minutes for it to finally cool off or something before it would start and then -- it just did.
The second time this happened I just happened to have pulled into the driveway of the Manager of the GM dealership's service department in Fort Payne. He told me my starter needed to be replaced soon, and recommended getting one at Advanced Auto Parts and doing it myself to save money.
Problem: I have no clue as to how to go about doing the second part of that little procedure.
So, I decided that I'd take it to the Harbin Ford Dealership on Memorial Day because they were open. That took up a few hours of my time and all they did was recharge my battery -- something I could have done at my temporary home.
I decided that I'd trust these Ford Dealership people though and so I went on with my business (literally) until this morning when my car didn't start again. Once again I was in someone's driveway. Once again I had to wait for the lady to finish showering and get dressed to help me. She gave me a jump, but it didn't work. No big suprise there -- my battery is a three-year battery that I've had 14 months now and it had just been tested and charged the day before.
After some time of talking and such I tried it one last time and it started. I drove straight to the Jeep Dealership (I feel better about dealerships than mechanics when I am out of town.) in Fort Payne where the guy I had met on Saturday worked. They had the starter I needed for my Jeep and replaced it in less than an hour, but before that happened I had to wait for four other customers to get service, which took a while because there were only two guys working that day (due to a full Memorial Day.)
Needless to say I was once again off schedule and totally thrown off for the day. I got straight back to work when I arrived in my territory at 3PM, but I was way behind in terms of work stats. So, I did my best to make up for it, but still didn't hit what I am expected to hit for the day. I did, however, find two customers. That was cool.