Okay society you win- Diary of a fat boy

[boldie]

Great read Snatty...wish you'd post more though, I love them old "I used to sell crap and this is how I did it" stories.

[Claw75]

great stuff!

[Snatiramas]

Great read Snatty...wish you'd post more though, I love them old "I used to sell crap and this is how I did it" stories.

Ah it is a life problem......too much to do and too little time........or I am too lazy........or I like to take my time over posts.

Anyway this thread is all about long, slow meanderings through life so it is going to stay at one two posts per week max.........I am glad you like the stories though. It is amazing when you sit down and start each post how much I have to miss out.....maybe I should really look at doing a complete book

[Karabiner]

maybe I should really look at doing a complete book
[/quote]

Damn right you should, you can put me down for a copy.

[Snatiramas]

So as we now know there are most definitely nine steps to every sales call, well actually there are sixty three that is sixty three sub sections to the nine steps. You have to learn them all. You can be tested on them at any time. To start though you are given to the gentle care of a trainer.  You basically had to shadow them and they did the whole call. So what was a call?

Well firstly you had to sort out a day’s visits. This meant going to the large container of accounts and finding twelve accounts that were a) geographically suitable and b) had some sort of opportunity to sell something. It was as I was trying to find twelve accounts that I made my first discovery. They were not in any particular order. Six hundred multi coloured plastic folders randomly placed. Only one thing for it I turn the whole lot upside down and tip the contents onto the lounge floor at exactly the same time as the key goes into the lock of the front door signalling the return of the future Mrs. Snat. Now the lovely Anne Marie has come a long way in the last sixteen years. At this moment in time she was a little bit nuts about neat, tidy and order. When I mean a little bit nuts she was of course worse than that. I mean what sort of person pulls the spines of all the books out so that they are all level with the widest book.
This was still fairly early in our living together phase and you know what it is like. Not only that but I had moved into her territory and there had already been some conversations as regards squeezing the toothpaste from the middle, leaving my shoes in the middle of the lounge floor, a continuing weakness of mine and how much space I could have in the wardrobe. The great news was that Anne Marie was open to negotiating as a basic form of communication so we found middle ground.

Anyway here I am in a sea of plastic mayhem with my wife to be walking through the door. Honesty is the best policy. It is.......honestly. So I explained how I slipped and the box turned upside down and I would clear it up and sort it out at the same time and bless her to bits she kicked off her shoes and mucked in and it took us no time at all. So three hours later the files are all in good order and we have found twelve good calls. Now all I have to do is phone the first three calls.  I have to call three perfect strangers and book meetings to see them at 9am in the morning or 9.40 or 10.20. Now I have always had a healthy disdain for the telephone. Really not sure why, but I do like to be face to face with people.
Nothing for it so I phone the first pub and ask to speak to the licensee by name and explain that I am from Guinness and can I meet him at 9 in the morning and that I have a proposition for him that will increase his profits. He dwells for less than a nanosecond and gives me the best of all buying signals and tells me to “---- off”. He tells me why he isn’t going to go to bed in the early hours of the morning and get up to see a jumped up little ---- from Guinness. Well that went well. Better try number two. By some stroke of luck the licensee says yes no problem come on in and he will have the kettle on.

With my new found confidence I phone the next one and he says yes too. Then I phone a replacement for the one that said no. The replacement says yes and we are up and running. I need to make these phone calls every night. The first three calls of every day have to be booked in because the pubs are shut. A month or so in I realise that all you need to know is delivery day and their preferred time and make a note of it on the call record card and you will always get a yes.
So to my very first call. I have planned a day close to home and I pick my trainer Clive up from his hotel in Hendon at 8 am. Clive goes through his presenter and shows me how he is going to use it. We then go through my presenter and bless him Clive shows me what order it should be put in. So let’s go through the nine steps and what they involved as Clive and I walk into my first public house as a representative of Guinness.

Preparation involved having everything ready in your case. Point of sale. Wire clippers. Dummy font. Record card. In your car you had a whole load of other stuff. Beer mats, Bar towels, even drip trays. In fact your boot is full of crap. As is your garage. Clive and I are prepared. He has gone through everything that he is going to do in call. I am totally lost.
Approach was all about looking at the property on the way in and spot POS opportunities. Look at the bar area for font positioning and the opportunity of placing a dummy font. Check which bottled beers are on the shelf but most importantly introduce yourself to the licensee with a benefit statement. So in goes Clive with the little classic “Hi my name is Clive Shutt and I am going to show you how you could gain extra profit with Guinness products”. Now this is the nice licensee who promised a cup of tea and already a look of “do me a favour” shoots across his forehead. We move swiftly on to the outlet check at which point we are going to check the equipment in the cellar. It gives us a great opportunity to count the number of kegs in the cellar. Now this is exciting as I have never been in a pub cellar before. Okay it is not very exciting once I get down there but there are lots of tubes and bits and kegs and low pipes and manage to take the first of many bashes to the cranium.

After the excitement of the cellar we have to do a temperature check. So we have to ask our nice licensee to pour out a half of Guinness which to my gobsmacked amazement he does without question. Clive whips out his thermometer and bangs it in the Guinness (we will do a whole bit on temperature and why this is a complete and utter waste of time as regards quality in a later post) . We check the bottles of Guinness Original and Kaliber to make sure they are in date and the foils are in good nick. We get the pricing for all beers. We have a cup of tea made for us.

Then we get to the presentation. Clive does a wicked presentation. Honestly....no buts. It is really good. Slick with benefits on every point. He sells in a buy five cases get one case of Kaliber free deal. Gains agreement for a cooler under the bar and for POS renewal. Leaves half a dozen bar towels. We thank the landlord for his time and go back to the car to fill out the administration. This for me was amazing Clive had gone from presentation through close POS and departure drill so seamlessly that it was not discernible that there were any stages at all.

So as the week wears on I slowly but surely have to do more and more of each call and by the end of week two I am doing calls all on my own. Versed in the Guinness ways. Totally indoctrinated in a process that actually works. From here on in it is sixty calls a week. Forty selling hours a week and a shed load of paperwork in my own time. Next week’s Guinness instalment on Thursday is one of my top three most embarrassing moments ever so you just know it will have huge cringe worthy value.

So to fat club. Well there was no fat club for me last week as I was holidaying in sunny England.I will write up all about holidaying in England this Thursday. It will include the steamy thought of me writhing on a bed for four hours. No fat club this Thursday as I will be in Germany. What I do know is the following. The scales this morning read seventeen stones seven pounds. Now if they are to be believed that would be 67 pounds OMFG................

[tikay]

67 pounds! Almost without trying, of late.

Brilliant - like that Post.

Roll on Thursday.

[cia260895]

well done phil, wtg.......

I worked @ guiness park royal, (part of the office refurb job) about 17 years ago

salemen always left promotional stuff out, loads of it in boxes thx 

[Snatiramas]

well done phil, wtg.......

I worked @ guiness park royal, (part of the office refurb job) about 17 years ago

salemen always left promotional stuff out, loads of it in boxes thx 

That would be the marketing team...............useless sods.  Going to have a whole post based around a group who came up with the classic term paradigm shift....real rant to come

[Karabiner]

Sixty-seven pounds is a fantastic achievement already, already.

Another great post Phil.

I had to supress a couple of noos in the last few days as this thread was in the murky and unseemly depths of page two.

[The-Crow]

Well Done Phil,

When do you start maintenance , do you still dream of lettuce ?

from Crow

[Snatiramas]

Well Done Phil,

When do you start maintenance , do you still dream of lettuce ?

from Crow

I really haven't set myself a goal or a target in that way yet. I reckon I know when I will be ready and will go from there.....

[Snatiramas]

Of course the four hours of writhing on a bed was my own fault and was exceptionally painful. Rachel needed picking up from Hertford as she had deserted the family holiday to go on Brownie Pack Holiday. So the old snatmobile needed juice as bless them the company pay for my petrol. So I leave our lodge in South Cerney and drive the three miles to the local 24 hour Tesco. On the way in I spot a Macdonalds. I haven’t been into a Maccy D’s for a very very long time. I just couldn’t help myself. I know it is weak but I am just a flawed bloke trying to get some control of my life. So on this particular day I had no control. I did though have a quarter pounder with cheese and small fries.

So after the initial adrenaline surge of doing something naughty I am three quarters of my way through this taste sensation when I realise that the taste sensation is not that great. In fact for not that great read pretty unpleasant. Way too sweet. So I throw the last quarter in the bin with the fries. Now I really am sick. Throwing food away, what is that all about. Anyway full of guilt and petrol me and the snatmobile head back. About an hour later I feel a little weird, which then changes to continual gurgling and then moves on to gut wrenching pain. Five hours later the pain starts to recede. Now there are almost certainly a large number of reasons for this but I have decided to major in on the fact that I no longer like Macdonalds........now there’s a thought. Also I had no wish for any sort of Coke product. I used to drink about three cans a day. I have had no wish to drink it at any time on the diet.

So British holidays. We hadn’t done one for a while. Anne Marie likes the sun and can sit for hours. I end up reading endless books. Adam gets bored. So this year we took a four bedroom lodge on Summer Lake in South Cerney. It is part of the Cotswold lake complex and what an absolutely fabulous setting just four miles south of Cirencester. Wildlife everywhere none of which I could name except for the little bloody mosquito that decided to make a dot to dot picture on my leg which I dutifully managed to join up by vigorous scratching.

So what did we do? Well having turned the Skoda into the Cooklins version of a Tour De France support  vehicle with four bikes on a roof rack we did loads of cycling. Mostly in the rain but as we all had waterproofs it really did not matter.  The kids went on a huge float pulled by a speedboat called an exscream which they loved and Adam later in the week found wake boarding being pulled by a cable which he enjoyed so much he did on four separate occasions. There was something strangely therapeutic in watching him set off perfectly, get round corners one and two but go into total wipe-out mode on turn three. It took him twenty minutes to get back from turn three. I sat and read my book which is currently Bill Bryson’s tome on Shakespeare.

The music played out of loudspeakers most of it new and by bands I did not know but I quite liked most of it and the regulars were really laidback and friendly. The only downside was the number of wasps. There were loads of them. After a while you realise that they leave you alone if you leave them alone and I started to relax. I sat back in my chair and watched my son struggling back to the dock with his kneeboard on his shoulder and rested my arms on the chair and duly crushed a wasp with my elbow. How lucky was that. The skin at the elbow is the least sensitive of all and it still irritated like buggery. By the end of the week Adam was doing lap after lap and enjoyed it so much that he has already dragged Rachel and myself up to Milton Keynes to have a go there.

I also managed to persuade the whole party that a trip to Symonds Yat, a full hour’s drive away was worth the effort. Well let me tell you it took some persuading. Anne Marie’s idea of walking in the country is anywhere laid with concrete. I mean I tried to get her to change her shoes and get some waterproofs but she just was not having any of it. We stop for lunch in Ross just round the corner from where I used to live in Redmarley d’Abitot. What a great name for a village. Anyway it looked like it was going to rain, no surprise there, and the doubters pushed one more time to abandon the trip………….this man was not for turning.

Onwards we go. At this point the sat nav decides to play a few games. Now all of you older members may well remember the first time I used the Sat Nav and got the car beached axle deep in sand in Spain. Well bugger me there is an East and West Symonds Yat and I am not sure which one to take. Purely by luck I take the right one but if you asked me now which one I took I could not tell you. We get to the car park and the heavens opened. I offer to Anne Marie that she can stay in the car and Adam and I will go up to the viewing point and come back but “she is here now”.

We stagger up the hill from the car. The downpour finishes and we reach the viewing point after five minutes uphill walking. There are so many views in Britain that absolutely take your breath away but let me tell you ladies and gentlemen this is right up amongst the very best. I will not spoil this thread with a photograph because no matter how good a photograph is, it just cannot take in the full majestic scenery, the way it plays on your other senses of sound and smell. We find a bench after moving to a second viewing point and just sit looking out over miles and miles of this green and pleasant land just totally at peace with the world.

Eventually we move on and walk for a couple of miles and of course Anne Marie’s shoes get ruined. Of course it is my fault. Why she is wearing £80 shoes to walk in the country I have no idea but I am so at peace at this moment in time I take it on the chin.  I will go back on my own soon and just sit quietly breathing in fresh cool air and watch the scenery for half a day or so.

It was a terrific holiday and the weather did not change that in any way. Adam thought it was the best ever and the only downer for me was that Rachel was not there for the whole week. I always miss the kids when they are away as they are such tremendous company.

So to fat club or rather not. As I write this I am back in Krefeld for a pan European meeting which will go on until Friday night. Not sure what my weight is but I do know this. I can lower the tray on the airplane seat and it doesn’t touch my stomach anymore…………..oh happy days.

[RED-DOG]

Please stop here snat. You're writing can't possibly continue at this standard and I've run out of superlatives.

[Snatiramas]

Please stop here snat. You're writing can't possibly continue at this standard and I've run out of superlatives.

I would stop honestly I would but not until I can eat what a normal person from the thin religion (aka the new inquisition) can eat. I have to join the thin religion as fat people never blame themselves, are lazy because they do not exercise, are a bad example, and should be put through terrible torture until they promise to change their ways. It is enough to make an aging rebel go "stuff it I am going back to the world of the big bloke". This week alone I had to listen to some prat from the Conservative party tell me how it is all fat peoples fault that they are fat. Of course it is and they all know it regardless of what they say but exactly how does ramming it down their throats inspire them to go and do something about it. Yet another sanctimonious politician who should go and do something more useful like become a traffic warden........anyway you really want to read next weeks post I think it might be reasonably funny. I just started writing it as I am stuck in a hotel room and I am bored of forecasting...............

[boldie]

Top posts again Snatty.

mcD gives me heartburn and stomach aches as well..and I've eaten some filth in my time..it must be evil.

Top effort and top writing