Soft Warehouse

I started my job after a great honeymoon in Hot Springs, AR…I had interviewed before the wedding and had been given a phone sales job…I didn’t have any experience with sales but, what drew my boss to me was that I knew the hardware inside and out…Plus, since I had a technical background I could talk “geek”…We had space for about 24 salespeople but, I don’t remember ever having all the cubes full…They sat me with a veteran sales guy named John for the first few days and he taught me quite a bit about closing…It wasn’t really necessary though because at the time the personal computer industry was exploding…It was all you could do to answer the phone…In the beginning, I spent the majority of my time working the queue, which was the general sales orders, mostly from individuals…We sold hardware, software, and accessories…If it was available, we had it for sale…It was fast-paced and high pressure, just the way I liked it…I was also lucky in that we had a pretty good group that watched out for each other.
If you read my earlier post about CCC, I mentioned J…He finished up there and was having trouble finding work so I set up an interview and he got hired…I have to set this up for you yo understand…SW sold more products at that time than any other company in the US…I came into work one day and noticed several brand new BMWs parked out in front of the office…When I asked my boss, he explained that we had sold the most copies of Lotus123 in the world…The cars were leased as a gift from Lotus for the executives…We also sold tons of Sony diskettes which caused Sony to send a wide variety of their products…These were all kept in a locked room and were used as rewards for, particularly good sales…One day, I remember it in particular because it was my birthday, one of the owners started collecting business cards in a box…When he told me there was going to be a drawing, I asked if it meant anything that it was my birthday…His reply was “no”…After we shutdown the phones, we all gathered and the owner announced that it would be a drawing for a trip to Hawaii…The card was pulled and my friend J was the winner…The next day J came over and explained that it was a trip for two an would I like to go…I called my new bride and she told me that I was not going to Hawaii without her…J took his brother.
I had been doing corporate sales for two years and had accounts like Blue Cross, Motorola, and GE when I was approached by G…He explained that we were coming out with our SW branded computer…One of the sales points was on-site service…He was forming a new group to troubleshoot the problems over the phone and then FedEx parts to resolve the problem…Since I was technical and had phone experience he wanted me on the team…Bear in mind that at the time Windows 3.0 had just come out…It was again a very challenging job to determine the problem over the phone…We developed a lot of tricks and techniques that help speed the calls up…Time was the enemy in any support call since there was always another customer waiting to be serviced…I thought it was great since I enjoyed the pressure and the day would fly by…Not long after that, We implemented a 900 pay per minute line for customers that didn’t have a service contract…G gave me about 4 guys and we were off and running…The pressure stepped up because they were paying $1.99/minute for expert advice…As a general rule, I would have us stop after 5 minutes if it looked like we would be taking a while to figure out the problem.
I have fond memories of my time with the company…We were more family than coworkers…We had a company basketball team…Numerous parties where the salespeople, technicians and main office folks would get together and socialize…The company had three stores when I started and expanded to 250 by the time I left…I got to travel to tech sales folks in different stores on how to sell on-site service and how it worked…All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.