I was only in sales a few weeks and dissolving rapidly.

I couldn’t get my arms around the idea of success in a huge territory of Arizona and New Mexico.

I didn’t know anyone out here and I damn sure didn’t know how to get from point A to point B.

I spent eight years on a distribution dock back east humping radioactive packages.

I didn’t even know how to fill out an expense report.

I called my boss one day and told him I was going to travel to Albuquerque and he said, quote, “What are you telling me for?”

Huh?

This was a little too much freedom for me.

I had always been considered a top performer in the company and had no idea how I would make a name for myself under these circumstances.

I thought I would be forgotten and any hard work I did would go unnoticed.

Until…

…the phone rang at midnight. It was the Syncor pharmacy manager who was very upset that his shipment of Thallium 201 was lost in transit.

This would have shut the city down and allowed the competition to swoop right in and grab the business.

This guy was not a Dupont fan to say the least.

No one in sales had any idea how exactly our product got to the customer.

Except me. 🙂

So I jumped in my trusty Taurus and headed for the airport with some blank bills of lading and Yellow III stickers taped to all sides of the car.

When I got there, the guy at Delta pointed to a mountain of missorted packages and told me “Good luck.”

Long story short, I found all the missing shipments and spent the night delivering product to Phoenix, Tuscon and all the way up to Flagstaff.

This event would mark the start of a very successful sales career for a guy who was embarrassed to say he worked on the dock. 🙂