My career in sales began in a logging camp high in the hills of North Georgia. Fresh out of college with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing, I was making my first sales call as a representative with Motorola. Locked in my car, dressed in a suit and surrounded by lumberjacks wielding running chainsaws above their heads, I was afraid to open the door. (Yes, that’s right … lumberjacks! That job is rated the worst in America according to The Jobs Rated Almanac by Les Krantz.) Not only was I afraid of my customers (visions of chainsaw massacre movies); I knew very little about how to sell anything.
My original career aspiration was to become a comic strip artist. I was an excellent illustrator and could always make people laugh. I combined these two talents early in life as a fifth grader in Catholic school and had quite a following for my comic book about my teachers — Sister Anne Marie and Sister Elizabeth. The story line was about a pair of Catholic nuns who got in all kinds of trouble around the rectory after routinely drinking too much wine during communion. My career as a young author was cut short when my scorned fourth-grade girlfriend blew the whistle on me during recess. The original copy of Nutty Nuns of Saint Bridget’s was confiscated by Sister Anne Marie herself and ripped to pieces in front of the class. She was my first critic, although she never read a word of the comic book. To this day, I believe she would have appreciated the part about Sister Elizabeth and her impersonating two of the Wise Men statues in the life-sized nativity scene on the lawn of the church.
Okay, sorry to digress. Now back to my first job in sales and the hills of North Georgia. After I completed my training, Motorola moved me to Rome, a small town nestled in the hills of North Georgia. Contrary to what you might think, Rome wasn’t quite off of the beaten path, but it did appear to me that the part of the path that was beaten was the part being used by those trying to get out!
I spent my first night in Rome going through files of existing customers in the area. Only 47 files existed, and all of the customer names sounded very similar: BRS Pulpwood Company, Johnnie Putnam d/b/a/ Johnnie Putnam Pulpwood & Logging Company, Willie D. Smith Hauling and 44 similar versions of what appeared to be pulpwood companies. It seemed a bit odd that none of the 47 companies had a business address. They all had post office boxes.
The next morning I started making telephone calls beginning with the first one in the file and called AAA Pulpwood Company. “I ain’t in right now. Leave a message at the beep.” I did. In fact, I left about twenty messages that morning on various answering machines, dialed ten or more numbers that just rang and left a few messages with answering services. After lunch, I decided to drive north a bit and look for pulpwood companies.
CMB Pulpwood Company was the name on the side of the first logging truck I ever followed up a dirt road into a logging camp. I remember the drive like it was yesterday. Sunlight filtering through the trees, the only sound was the roar of the logging truck engine as it plowed up the hill churning dust in its path. I followed it deeper and deeper into the woods wondering if I should turn back. The truck finally pulled up into a clearing with me behind it, and I saw that the camp was filled with other trucks and dozens of loggers. When they saw my car appear from the dust storm created by the truck, they all hid behind trees. I felt like I was in the scene from the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s house fell out of the sky, landed in Munchkin Land and all the little people hid behind trees giggling at Dorothy. I had no idea why they were all hiding or what to do next!
So, there I was in my beige Chevy Nova, wearing a black suit, a black tie and a white shirt. As I got out of the car, one of the loggers was pushed forward from behind the trees. Obviously he was picked by the others to find out who I was. He eased forward slowly and began to shuffle over. He looked like the banjo kid’s grandfather from the movie Deliverance.
I introduced myself and then said, “You don’t want to buy any two-way radios, do you?”
He stopped shuffling about ten feet away from me and then just gazed at me with a puzzled look while tilting his head from side to side. You know the look: your dog looks at you that way when you ask him to vacuum the house or fix dinner, or some other impossible task like to not relieve himself on the living room rug.
Then suddenly he blurted out, "Yoo ah govmen revnewer or from da infernal revnew suvice?”
I didn’t understand a word he said, but it sounded like a threat so I said, "No sir," hurried back to my car, locked the doors and fumbled to get my keys in the ignition while two or three loggers emerged from behind the trees and began circling my car with chainsaws. I finally got my car started and backed all the way down the dirt road, dodging pulpwood trucks coming up the road into the camp.
Two months later at a Waffle House in Calhoun, Charles “Chuck” Michael Brown, the owner of CMB Pulpwood Company, explained to me why the loggers were hiding. “When you pulled up in that government-looking car, in a coat and tie, the crew went to hidin’ because they thought that you was a revenuer, a federal agent who busts up moonshine stills,” he said. “Or worse yet, an income tax collector.”
Dan Norman is a sales performance expert, a professional speaker and the author of, Top Ten Selling – The Lumberjack Chronicles. He has hired and developed thousands of sales representatives and hundreds of sales managers. Throughout his career, Dan has made a science of understanding the fundamentals of what it takes to be the “best-of-the-best” in sales and management performance. For more information visit www.toptenselling.com. © 2008 Dan Norman. All rights reserved.
