Adventures in Telephony

My last posting was so boring that I fell asleep a couple of times writing it, let’s hope that I do better this morning!

Even though I was in a management development program at Bell, I started on the bottom rung in Marketing. I was a communications rep…it didn’t take very long for management to determine that I had a knack for the job. I was ambitious and ended up writing all the orders for Ramsey County (it as a prestige assignment) where I did well enough to be promoted into a “real” sales position in something called Phone Power. This was a very innovative program as it was selling a product so subtlety, that the customer was rarely aware of the product.

The concept was to work with very select customers who had the potential to use a great deal of long distance service such as a collections agency that did business nation-wide. We would start the customer on a bank of measured WATS lines (bulk-rated long distance), and then provide training for their collectors on how to maximize the effectiveness of their calls. It was actually the forerunner of many other programs which were in the category of consultative selling. On my own I developed a program for recruiting new students using a “bank” of “800” numbers for Hamline University. I understood the value of networking in business much earlier than the general business community…this coupled with a few other programs allowed me to become the top sales person in the Bell System that year. My wife and I got to so to San Diego for a big recognition party, go to Pasadena for the Super Bowl (the Vikes got their butts handed to them by the Raiders), and either go to Tijuana for a shopping trip or go deep sea fishing.
Guess where we went, and it wasn’t deep sea fishing which I always wanted to do!

When I got back, I requested an opportunity to run a “sales crew”. This was flatly denied on the basis that I was far too valuable where I was…so I went to work for one of my Phone Power customers, and that’s the next post.