Sales Meeting Antics

My occupation has many pros and cons. On the upside: I can manage my own schedule, I have the opportunity to work with products and companies that I am passionate about, I get to travel to destinations that normally would not be within my grasp. The Flipside: I'm gone all the time, seems like work is 24/7, no time for vacation. All in all, these even out and are pretty good trade offs. I love my job and the people it has brought into my life.

There is a lot of grey area when it comes to describing my position as a sales rep to someone outside of our industry. When diving into the answer of "What exactly do you do?" there are a number of quick phrases that I drop. The one that prompts a red flag seems to be the "Sales Meeting" bomb. Its when the outside sales team, and in house squad, get together and meet as a group. When explaining this to an outsider it seems simple and straightforward, encompassed around our products and sales projections. When showing pictures to an outsider it seems like a huge blowout party. Well, its a little bit of both. I'm going with "Business in the front, party in the back." Sales Meetings usually involve traveling to a destination(sometimes glamorous, most times not), going over upcoming products, talking about a strategy of how we will meet our projections, then going out that evening to try and erase any recollection of talking about work. These adventures have been some of the best/worst times of my life. The most enjoyable part,the majority of my closest compadres are there to share in all of my glorious wins and shameful losses. Since I seem to chronicle all of these trips with my camera I figured its best to share some of the memories. I will try and post these on the regular, cause trust me, they are gooooood.

Welcome to our first installment: My Inaugural Sales Meeting

Company: Electric
Place: Las Gavioatas, Mexico
Time: July 23-27, 2004
Descriptive Word of the Trip: Gnarly, Dangerous

My first, and absolutely most gnarly meeting I have ever been to. I will give you the quick rundown. Arrived at Electric around 10AM, supposed to be departing at noon. There was a delay in getting our three 15 passenger vans from the rental company. The collaborative solution to kill time was beer. Within minutes about ten 30 packs arrive. That killed about a half an hour. Once the vans are packed and ready we head for the boarder. Another 60 beers per van are consumed before the Boarder in addition to a bottle of Patron per vehicle. One quick stop right before we cross to get spray paint. Wait, spray paint? For What? Well, to paint the vans of course. Before I had time to process this each van had been marked with "Electric." We cross the boarder get settled into our houses and head to dinner. About two and a half minutes into dinner I am so intoxicated that I have to move my chair back and lose my shit under the table. I literally threw up all over our New England Reps shoe's. A quick cheer from everyone at the table, and a clean up in the bathroom, and I was back in action. We get back to the house and I am passed out on the couch. Bruns and one of our Euro distributors thinks that it would be funny to put the couch I was sleeping on out in the patio. It was awesome to wake up to about 1500 mosquito bites. That was just about the first 12 hours of the trip, the rest was a blur. I do remember that when we left to head back to the states each of the vans was a masterpiece. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I was officially jumped into the crew. Here are a few pictures that highlight the trip.