so, This is going to be a longer tale because it tells of a real turning about period in my life where I descovered some real truths about myself, about those I felt were good friends, and about loyalty to company and how that turned out. I think we can find parallels to our own lives in this story and it can help us grow as GOOD people coming out of sometimes such detructive and demoralizing circumstances that we wonder if we will every come back okay and the same person as before. For me, the answer is no, I am not the same person of before and that is sad in certain way becuase I LIKED alot of those parts of me that were there and no longer aren't. As to my new self, well the same applies, I have learned alot, and that is good, but the content of the knowlege consists mainly of how to protect myself both mentally, emotionally, and monetarily should that happen again. And were it not for 2 people from my old company, my faith in mankind, sorry to say would be at an all time low point. So I hope that any of you out there looking at this blog take the time to read it. I have put off telling this story, but I cannot and will not any longer. It is worth your time to read it and I may publish it in parts. Because I am just a "little guy" and will be tellling the whole truth, I will ensure that the "big guy" who has all kinds of resources that I don't will be getting full billing. Here at least on the web, I can hope others will google their names and read a little something about Karma.
I started at a company called Taylor Technologies about 9 years ago. At the time, I was fresh off being offered a Major account position in record time from a company that sold copiers and Fax machines. So really, I wasn't all that interested in TTI. But the Owner, Ken Taylor, had me drive up to the upper peninsula of Wisconsin and showed me his company. the main things Ken stressed to me were the "Family" atmosphere, and how we all pulled for one another, and of course that I would be making more money. Not seeing myself schlepping copiers my adult life (no offense to those who do, I have extreme respect for one of the hardest sales jobs there is), I decided to join the company. I was hired to sell Autodesk Software which is design and engineering software. I had many concerns about by primary competition being companies that sold the same thing and offered similar services. I certainly wanted to make a good living for my family and that was just a set up for price chopping, which was apparently such an issue that within the first week, my trainer, and the Civil software sales guy quit. Leaving me alone in an office that was on its last legs. Without boring you with all the details I came up with a program that I thought to advantages of some of the things that only our company had and helped to design some services I felt would be important based on client discussions. And now I was selling to both the engineering and Architectural market. Things really picked up on this new idea. After a short while I asked for our new sales person hire to actually be an assistant, she would work on Inside sales, helping out the new and old clients with the massive amount of daily things they needed, while I would concentrate on outside sales. A woman named cat that worked with our governmnet accounts fit the bill and she came to work for me after a year. I offered to a generous split of my compensation for her and she also received a base salaray from corporate. over the years we became very close friends. She always had my back and I always her. She was of a very sensitive nature, often assuming the worst about things and I believe that I accounted for balance in that relationship. Our arrangement worked so well that the other offices of the company came to duplicate it. The first 5 or so years so our office break one record after another, at times we accounted for more than 40-50% of the entire companies revenue. Mark Nichols was the vice president and reminded me alot of a friend I had in college, high strung and juggling too many things, but he always helped. I remember a few christmases where we were close to the elusive black and I faxed over an order that put us there and mark was thrilled. He was good people. during this time my program because more sophisticated and was dubbed for major accounts only. Ken and Mark ok'd my exclusivity to the program. WHich was a great thing about working for a small company. ken and I would have long talks on the phone and were very close. He would really take it personally if an employee left or would let incompetent ones stay way past there due. He was all heart it seemed. I trusted they and they trusted us.
However, around the five year mark Autodesk was asking about me and I agreed to talk, that is it. I had no intention of leaving a company that had been good to me. Frankly I was surprised because in my meetings with Autodesk, I probably came off as hostile at times. they wanted to tell us what to do and how to do it, and I was a company man. i defended TTI.
ken must have got wind of this because I left on a vacation to London I came back and I had a new boss!! not only that, but there was enough noise at Autodesk, that they never ended up pursuing me. I can only assume that it came from Ken.
I pushed and harried the new general managaer Greg Calcari far beyond any one in a corporate jobs reasonable expectation to do so, but throughout he remained calm and weathered my storm (toddler fit was more like it at times!). In the end, Greg because my most valued friend, ally and champion in the company.
I should mention that Cat and my relationship remained great. We used to have her over before she got a boyfriend and then she married a great guy pat, and we got together at times too. It was a perfect match for the most part. I recognized her value and fought for her with management many times, to get her a raise, twice, and also to make sure that others in the company who were giving her a hard time maybe got a little knocked down a peg. that is why to this day, I am stunned at her betrayal.
One of Ken Taylor's proudest proclamations was how he would never sell out. he had opportunities, but he wasn't about to take him. Also, he felt that he was very fair. There was a summer the company wasn't doing well and even though many people felt we were carrying too many technicians, can made us all take "furloughs" one week per month for the course of several months over the summer. Even the sales people. this was a demonstrations of Kens committment to everyone's value to the company. Every summer we all went up there for an entire week to have meetings and bond, and Ken apparantley really enjoyed his time with his employees. These times, I got the opportunity to speak to him more frequently, because after Ken had placed Greg, my primary discussion were with Greg. Greg proved to be much more than a nanny to me by the way, under his direction he built the most advanced and effective marketing team out of all the "resellers of Autodesk" which is what we were called.,
So here comes Phase II of the story,
2 years ago we were told that we were going to be sold to RAND IMAGINiT, a canadien based reseller that was buying up a number of reselllers in the country. This of course, blew most of us away. What about never selling out, and us all in it together? I could understand however that Ken was getting older and needed some sort of exit plan. Still I didn't like the way it was presented. I was most worried about the future of my Major Accounts plan. I had run into Imaginit across the country before, but they were weak competition and mostly came from the mechanical manufacturing side. here was their attempt to buy their way into architecture and engineering or AEC, which is was we did, and well, as we were the top reseller in our market. The company was run by two engineers, a Frank Baldessara and a Bob Heeg. they basically made all the decisions for the company with little input from others as I understood it. I very early on established our Major Account plan with Greg and we were told that we would be accomodated... Cat didn't seem so sure. In fact she was so unsure that she began making plans not only without me, but seemingly to do as much damage to me as possible. More coming...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment