Today marks my sixth month of working at Schneiderman’s Furniture in Woodbury, Minnesota. Actually my sixth month was officially on April 27th but I was just too tired and more to the point, uninspired to write about the occasion then.I began my new career as a furniture salesman on the 27th October 2014.Prior to joining Schneiderman’s I had been in the hospitality and travel business, so retail sales was a new endeavor for me.

I began my two weeks of sales training on October 13th at the Lakeville offices. There were about 8 of us in the training class. Three of us were bound for the Woodbury showroom and the others bound for the remainder of our 6 stores in Rochester, Duluth, Plymouth, Lakeville and Roseville.

Training was somewhat redundant as the first week was devoted in its entirety to teaching us how to become sales-people. Redundant? Well considering you had to have a sales background to get hired, one would have thought that sales was a given.
The piece that none of us but one had was experience selling furniture. Alas only a day or two the following week was allotted to product knowledge. One of the days was allotted to computer training i.e. actually entering an order into the inventory management system. And this was bizarre to say the least; three people crowded round one computer and the instructor telling what he was doing on his screen so that we could follow along.
I remember doing a LinkedIn update saying that I was attending sales training and furthermore that it was the best training I had ever received. this was quickly followed up by Larry S. the owner of the family business saying thank you and that he would like to get together to talk about LinkedIn sometime. What Larry did not know is that the message was not really aimed at Schneiderman’s. It was aimed at a previous employer whose V.P. of Sales, Rick M. was a total diploma-mill moron who thought he was the only person who really knew how sales worked. But that’s another story.

Look out tomorrow for more rambling and the dish on my life as a furniture salesman.