Confessions of a Serial Interviewer By Steven Ra Ga

2008-2010 – Rocks the master Photocopier company. For a time period when you went to make a photocopy you would say “I need to make and Rocks” it was a massive company that dominated the landscape for years. Until they lost the patient and competitors started popping up offering better machines at half the price.

Rocks was one of the first companies to offer incentive bonus’s to reps who sold the most machines in a month or year.

My mom was one of them, it started her career as a sales trainer, she was very good at her job and won a few trips for her and my dad.

Years later when I was 25 I got the same job except I worked for their reseller. I am good at sells but 100% commission is tough. It’s basically acting, you are just trying to convince the person to trust you enough to buy something they most likely need. Except you need people to sell too.

I was given a territory in the city that had very low yielding business. It was next to impossible to find companies that I could sell to.

I recall this one company I spent hours of my time trying to win over the woman that worked there, she was a former UN member and spoke 11 languages, we would chat every time I went to cold call that building but she would never buy. I think she was just lonely or something.

Nothing really note worthy happened while I worked there, except I developed a binge drinking habit. I would clock in at 9am hit the bar by noon and be in bed by 10pm drunk as a skunk. At first it was just Friday then it turned into Wednesday to Friday. no body cared about the job by the end of the 2 yr position, I barely made any money there, and if it wasn’t for my parents I would have taken on a lot of debt.

The only positive thing was I learned how to cold call and how to fail.

Only a fool will tell you cold calls work. They don’t. You want warm leads if possible, you want to book meetings and start their if you can, which typically starts with great marking to get clients to call you. Or come to you. Going after clients that’s hard, I meet people on interviews who always tell me the same story when they started with the company “10yrs ago” they were the #1 rep in the field. I always feel like saying “the world was a different place 10yrs ago”

I think next time I hear that I will just walk out of the interview. And be like “nope”

While working at Rocks in 2008 to 2010 I saw many things that made me rethink the way people interact.

It was a bull pen boiler room style situation where folks would steal from one another, and compete. So much that folks even would rig contests to get more commission.

One Christina’s party the office would play secret Santa. And someone gifted our sales trainer with a literal 2×4 (wood) that said “hacksaw Jim Dugan) on after a famous wrestler. This award later become known as the Dunce award given to the rep of the day who screwed up or got in trouble, it would lean against their desk as a reminder. One day we were in the bull pen, when there was a commotion at the window, someone’s Van was on fire and the police department had been called, it was a crazy sight. Moments later a rep came rushing into the office to describe the incident.

Apparently “Klog” a nickname for a rep was outside having a smoke when he left the cigarette lighter in his car on the seat which proceeded to burn while he was having a smoke, by the time he noticed it was too late. As the car started to burn I turned to one of our newest reps to send him outside with the hacksaw award, Klog had certainly earned it.