Chapter 2

During my first weeks there, I shadowed Bill and a couple of the other salesmen to get the hang of qualifying and closing. It seemed like everything was going the way I had hoped when I signed on at Audiomart. After six weeks I ranked third highest in the store and tenth in the chain of 56 salesmen. On my eighth week I was the No. 2 salesman in my store and No. 3 in the chain. Finally, on my twelfth week I bumped Bill and moved up to No .1 in our store and in the chain. After that I didn't win it consistently because the competition became pretty stiff, but I was always in the top three. Other salesmen congratulated me on my success. Bill, on the other hand, didn't say much. It was obvious that Bill didn't like what was happening because there was quite a bit of tension between us. I was really rolling up the sales.

A good salesman will tell you that the worst thing that can happen to him is for someone to disallow him the freedom to do what he does best. That very thing was about to happen to me. When it did, it looked like a promotion on paper. It was anything but a promotion, however, financially.

Out of the clear blue, Audiomart asked me to become the manager of another one of their stores. The rationale behind the decision was that a good salesman could become a good manager. I was about to prove that this is not always the case.

As manager I would be salaried, but I would still have to earn my commissions like every other salesman. That was unlike some stores that give their managers a percentage of the store's total profits. I saw this as a real problem. My new salary didn't equal the commissions I was already making. Therefore, I would have to continue competing as a salesman to make up for the difference. Finding the time to succeed at both jobs would become a problem. I was also concerned about taking sales from my other salesmen. They needed to survive, too.

Another thing I learned was that the store to which I was assigned was located in a tough area of Livonia, and it just happened to be the worst store in the chain. When I saw the statistics I could not find anything positive among them. For the first time in a long time I became a little discouraged.

Being the type of guy I am, I threw my all into transforming the Livonia store into a profitable store. I revamped the staff scheduling, store presentations and displays, and the store cleanliness and upkeep schedules. I took charge of balancing the cashier tapes with the cash in the till, and I started making the bank deposits. This was the head cashier's job before I came but I had a feeling that someone was dipping into the cash register before the deposit slips were completed. I also took care of the in-stock and product replacement inventories. The result was that my store began to see some positive days. In my eagerness to salvage the store, however, I had been too busy to sell much equipment. Consequently, my earnings dropped drastically and my chief competitor, Bill, started to be No. 1 again, week after week.

One day, after he had been on top for a while, he called and began gloating. I congratulated him, but then I told him I was too busy to talk. I hung up the telephone and put my feet up on my desk to cool off. "Damn him," I thought, "Why does he always have to rub it in?"