I always hated sales.

All the smarmy marketing buzzwords, the phony rah rah, the corny training videos and the constant push for more, more, more.

I loved the position, the money, the independence, the travel, the company car and of course, the constant boinking of secretaries. 🙂

But all the rest would hit my gag reflex.

What I did to gain all the business was treat my existing customers like they hit the lottery.

There were country dance lessons, lobsters flown in from Boston, cook outs, I hosted events that would be like comedy shows, I graduated all the brand new techs that would soon be my customers.

It was Jimmy Buffet concerts in rented buses every year.

And the news traveled fast.

I traveled with a laptop and a guitar.

I held babies at Baptisms.

Any restaurant with a piano in the lobby was fair game.

All my customers knew the words to “Let Me Jump Your Bones.”

All the female techs in Albuquerque became the “Bonettes”and sang backup at Society of Nuclear Medicine meetings.

All my managers were definitely on Xanax. 🙂

I have pulled customers kids off of drugs and even had to bail one out.

I accompanied female techs to court for their divorce.

I would have lunches delivered and then show up to kill with my crazy jokes.

Half the city had my Amex number so they could order lunch while I was out of town.

(My yogurt enema story brought a whole department down in Vegas)

I held deep secrets that would be divulged after too much to drink.

I was everybody’s confidant.

It was nights, weekends and all occasions.

Nothing that required a package insert. 🙂

I never spent a Christmas at my own home.

My customers did the selling. My phone was always ringing on Monday mornings.

Non customers were feeling left out of the Dupont experience.

It was all basic street sense. Courtesy of the rough and tumble streets of Boston.

Emotional intelligence that didn’t come from Wharton.

I could walk in a room and the fish would stop swimming.

I became part of the fabric of the nuclear medicine community.

I knew everybody, from janitors to CEOs.

I knew when all the big deals were going down and who was doing who.

I knew things that could topple hospital systems.

I built customer’s first web sites and owned the domain names for years. (Until lawyers started calling) 🙂

I never had to pitch my product. Thank God.

To prove my point, after ten years, they had the sales force take a very basic product knowledge test.

I failed.

The top rep in the country couldn’t pass a basic Cardiolite test?

Yup!

Nobody but me could believe it.

But that’s between us. 🙂