A friend of mine had heard about another friend of ours who had had recently come to be involved in this really lucrative and exciting business. He said that we should meet up with him and see what this business opportunity was. He was super excited to do this and I was pretty naive (read: dumb) so I agreed to meet up. Our friend suggested that rather than the 3 of us meeting that we should instead come to this office building to meet his contact (Business Dude). Whatever, just tell me where to be and what time to be there. (Note: that's 4 uses of the word "meet" in one tiny paragraph. What an excellent vocabulary, Mark. Actually the whole paragraph is poorly written and confusing. Meh, I'm too lazy to fix it now.)
We met with the Business Dude and he was impressive to the 1991 me. He looked completely legit with a dark suit, nice hairdo, and rented office space. He even had a big wooden desk and framed pictures on his walls. Clearly, this guy had made it so I should listen up and pay attention here. He went on to explain what the product was and how the business ran. We were to give people the opportunity to experience the superior quality of NSA Water Filters and at the same time let them in on the rewarding and financially liberating world of sales! He showed us how our friend had sold X amount of filters and was now moving on to amass his own team of sales guys (a.k.a. the two of us. Oh man, what a poor choice he was making). The Business Dude said things like "You can make your own hours! Work as much or as little as you want! These things sell themselves!", which to a guy like me who was lazy and unmotivated that's the equivalent of saying "It's like college where no one really cares if you do the assigned work or not. It's totally up to you and your well-defined work ethic. Go get 'em tiger!". Business Dude assured us that this model was working for him, would soon work for our other friend and could, in fact, work for us.
What I should have said was "No, I'm not interested in being a marketing/sales dude. I'm more of an introverted cube-jockey kind of guy. Got any jobs like that around here in this one-room office?" But what I did was sign up on the spot. I also purchased the sales starter kit which included a couple of the sink filters, some pamphlets, a video tape of a woman who was entirely way too excited about the virtues of filtered water, and some freebie give-away things (pens, stickers and shit like that). Did I mention that I had to borrow money off my friend in order to buy this kit? I went to a sales meeting/cult-like motivational speech thing at a local hotel and listened to person after person get up and tell their remarkable stories of success selling these
I went home that night all psyched up about my new found fast-track to wealth. All I had to do was sell hundreds of water filters and filter-related products to all the people I knew while I recruited them to be in my sales crew. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, except the fact that 2 of my friends were already doing the exact same thing and hitting up the very same, now rapidly dwindling supply of peeps. Ah shit. Plus, I have a full-time job and no car. Pfffffffth. Whatever. What I decided to do was to install one of the filters on the kitchen faucet in my apartment and then take the only other one in the kit and install it in my parents' apartment. What a brilliant marketing plan: Put the product where the least amount of people will see it. I think this is the same way Dyson sold all those vacuums. I could be wrong about that.
About 2 weeks later I was contacted by Business Guy. He was just checking in to see how amazingly successful I was by now. I explained that I had not exactly had the rapid rise to success that everyone had expected of me but to rest assured, I was certainly massively qualified to run my own off-shoot of this business. It would only be a couple more weeks before I found my groove. Business Guy also wanted to know if I needed any more filters or other things that he could sell to me (no, I didn't pick up on this red flag). I bought a couple more filters from him (along with a couple of the portable models which, he told me a little too quickly, could be used to filter your own urine into potable drinking water. Um, ok...I'll take your word for it mister). I failed to ask him if there was any kind of training or management support for a dumb-dumb like me out there in the field. Basically, I just said "yes" a lot on the phone and went blindly forward. I was 4 weeks and a few hundred dollars into this deal and had nothing to show for it.
The next several weeks resulted in zero water filter sales for Team Mark. Actually, I'm not sure I can legally call it a team since I was the only member. My friend who had joined up with me had also not had much success. One of the biggest hurdles that we both faced was that these things were fairly pricey (I believe they were in the $200 range) and everyone we knew were Po' Folk who didn't mind drinking water straight from the tap. This was 1991 remember so the whole filtered\bottled water thing hadn't really taken off (that's it! we were AHEAD of our time!!). I floundered around with this "business" eating at my tiny budget for another week or so and then I made the call to the friend who got me into this whole mess in the first place. "Look man," I explained. "I'm not going to do this anymore. I haven't sold one filter thing and I can't afford to buy samples and supplies." He made a last-ditch effort to front me some filters and other supplies to keep my sinking business afloat until the sales started pouring in but I turned him down. "I quit man. I'm done." He hung up on me and I don't think I've spoken to him since. Ah well. At least I had good drinking water for another 5 months until the filter clogged up and it stopped working.
1 comment:
LOL - I love that the "company" gave O.J. Simpson an endorsement deal about 5 months before he sliced a few unfortunate folks....hmmmm. Maybe we've even stumbled upon the reason Simpson lost his shit in the first place!
Found on O.J.'s answering machine June, 1994: "Hey O.J., it's Jay from NSA? Yeah, thanks for all the work you've been doing for us. It's been working out great! Now, about our agreement...did you sign up anybody else for sales, er, marketing work? And you still owe us 5 grand for the last shipment of water filters. Alright buddy, get me back asap!"
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