My friend, someone I’d known since school, helped me get the job.
He had left the company six months before, but they still hadn’t replaced him.
I would never have got the job without his coaching and recommendation, as I had no sales training or experience.
Plus, I was babyfaced, and although he and I were the same age, he looked like my much older brother.
The firm assigned me my friend’s territory.
It was a huge patch encompassing South London and Southern England, from the Kent coast to West Sussex.
My friend had left out something important from his background briefings.
The products the company sold, radios, clock radios, early computer and TV games, were not the most reliable.
If you bought ten radios, it was likely that half of those delivered wouldn’t work as they should. Sometimes, they didn’t work at all.
Returns were high and retailers had to deal with many complaints from dissatisfied customers.
However, salespeople in the firm I aspired to work for were paid commissions on products delivered.
Unbeknown to my employer, my friend had left the business with a bumper commission payment because he had doubled the number of products clients ordered on his last run.
The results of his salesmanship were searingly evident during my first weeks on the road.
Radios and other portable items were thrown at me on at least three occasions in the first month.
Luckily, I avoided the missiles.
And I didn’t take to heart the swearing, non-throwing buyers used when I stepped into their stores and warehouses.
For the first few weeks on the job, I was bringing back more products than I was selling.
I lasted six months.
I can’t say I look back fondly on that job, but it did provide an excellent, albeit sometimes dangerous, introduction to the world of sales.
And my friend?
He laughed hard when I told him how the job was going.
With friends like that…