You know how people always say, "Count your blessings?" I do count everyday the blessings that fill my life. My family. My home. My friends. My job. My health. My sanity? OK, my sanity has been a little on edge lately. Let's go back a few weeks to the time when I was happily plugging along as a soon to be out-in-the-field wedding photography sales person.

Let's just say I came out of the training completely overwhelmed with the amount of information that I was expected to absorb in a two day period. First of all, the most intense brain activity I had five months prior to the training was this - what do I want to blog about today? Even then, that was a thought that didn't cross my mind daily. So, fast forward to my first sales presentation.

Thank goodness this was a very young couple who had not interviewed other prospective photographers. It worked to my benefit that they viewed me as the wedding photography expert, though I felt far from it. All I could think about was the Model Meeting format that my manager expected us to follow. It goes something like this:

* Introduction - Greet the clients, offer them some coffee, show them the DVD
* Probe & Connect - Ask questions about the day, get them to talk about themselves, find out as much as you can with as few questions possible. They are supposed to do the majority of the talking.
* Present Bella - Talk about the Bella concept, matching what you discovered to what Bella offers. This means you MUST TAKE GOOD, UNDERSTANDABLE NOTES. (I'm in trouble here!)
* Portfolio - Show them the portfolio of work, again connecting what you found out in stage two to pictures in the portfolio.
* Present albums - Tell them what is unique about each book (sounds easy enough)
* Present packages - Take everything you've found out and fit them to the package that best suits their needs (more connecting back to the info. gathering stage)
* Close the sale - Get the reservation, or, better yet, the 50% deposit

All the while I need to overcome objections. It's not as bad as it sounds, but the first few times I felt completely out of my league. I have never done outside sales before, though my preference has always been meeting people in person than dealing with them over the phone. And this is a much easier sell than newspaper advertising - that's a no brainer. What was I afraid of?

Anyway, this couple was so nice. Very friendly. Didn't realize that I had skipped a few steps and did them out of order. Guess what - I closed my first sale! Not only that, but I closed the next three sales. I was batting 1000! Until, and sales is a numbers game, I finally got up to bat and ended up hitting a fly ball that looked like it was going to a homerun but ended up being an out. Bummer! Not everyone will like you - or your product.

So, I've been plugging along. The first week of appointments was manageable. The second week went straight into overdrive. I went from 4 appointments the first week to 9 the second. The third week, which is this week, I've got 10. And it's not so much the number of appointments, it's the distance that I have to drive for each one.

I'll use this week to illustrate. Sunday I drove to Sunnyvale, which is about 11 miles from my house. That client was a no show. That evening, I drove to Newark, probably the same number of miles away. Another no show. UGH!

Monday, I drove to Oakland, 40+ miles away. This time I played safe and called the clients to let them know that "I might be a little late for the meeting because it will be traffic time and I'm driving from the South Bay... blah blah blah." It was a gentle way of giving them pre-appointment guilt trip. It worked - they showed up. And, they reserved their wedding date.

Tuesday night, back to Newark. I knew this client would show up. She was very good and followed up to let me know she'd be attending with her fiance. Unfortunately, they did not reserve their date. But I'm hopeful. Money is always the determining factor in these situations. And, their budget didn't accommodate what I was proposing. I'll go back to the drawing board with this one.

Wednesday night I drove to Castro Valley in traffic. That's about 30 miles from my home. Then, I had to go back to the South Bay, all the way to the Evergreen area in San Jose. Who are these people who schedule my appointments and are they not familiar with the layout of the Bay Area and the traffic situation? I am Chevron's best friend. I'm not going to boo-hoo too much about this, though, because I got one sale out of the evening.

I was off yesterday because my baby boy graduated from junior high. I think I was so frazzled that I didn't get all weepy eyed and emotional like I expected. That is another subject for another blog. I've got today off too, but instead of having a mental rest day, I've got to finish up all of this administrative stuff (logging in my calls, following up with clients, finishing proposals and contracts) that I haven't been able to do because I'm always on the road!

OK - enough ranting. My job - what a blessing.