Work Tales III

Soundstream Technologies, 1992 - 1998

My first job out of college was working for a small high-end consumer electronics manufacturer. The company only did ~$20 M per year in annual sales during my time there and the products were specialized but highly regarded. Specifically they manufactured car and home audio products, the former representing the majority of their business.

I had been pursuing this company for a year before finishing my BA in Montana. I put myself through college while working at an electronics retailer, a local specialty store in Missoula. We sold this particular brand of products and I must have seen more value in it than most because I sold more of it and was a huge proponent. I started looking into the company well before I finished my degree and finally a position became available and I pitched myself to try to get it with every name I could find in the company. I was given a phone interview which went well and then a live interview which went pretty well. Eventually, I got the job and moved to California.

After having been there for only two weeks I was told I'd be going to Virginia to meet with a few of the high profile Circuit City store salespeople and technicians. I was still pretty clueless about things, certainly large retailers. I took a down-to-earth approach with them and it must have gone reasonably well because I continued to work a lot with Circuit City and soon after was spending the vast majority of my time in the field. After 3 years or so I began visiting our European distributors and meeting with their retailers. This was the holy grail for me. Prior to these travels I had never been to Europe though I had always fantasized. Before long my passport was getting full of stamps and I was seeing places I could otherwise only imagined.

On one of my early trips I remember working with our Swedish distributor. I remember that we had recently announced and begun shipping a new line of products that was quite unique and reasonably priced. I had sat in on the distributor and his customer's meeting and I recall him presenting a very soft-sale with the customer. I had seen this in other encounters with his customers and at dinner I later told him that he might consider taking charge of the situation and help guide his customers in selling more product. Long story short, he got the idea and placed a huge order as a result of our discussion and began promoting the products far more aggressively. It ended up being good for everyone and he grew his business with existing customers and had more demand from new customers.

Moral of the story? If you have a good relationship with your customer you can say things more candidly than if you're exclusively formal and it could work out really well for everyone. Of course, you really have to have a good read on your business partners but sometimes you also have to take chances.