Fight For a Case of Champagne

Picture of a Ikea-fabric as I didn’t have that of a champagne.

Within the last year, I’ve come to realize that I have potential for sales. And I’m not talking about retail sales but BIG time sales. Apparently I have likable personality and I’m talkative, which are useful qualities in a sales person. It always wasn’t so. I’ve always been sales and commercial minded, even when I was in art school because money, hello, you need it, but being social? No, hell, to, the, no.

I follow quite a few business people on Twitter because I like to learn from and about them. Some I even would LOVE to work for. Crazy, right? Today, one company named Myyntipumppu, which is a consulting company for sales, linked to a little competition they are having. The competition is called “Why The Sales Won’t Happen?” and you have to give a story about disastrous sales or strategies. The winner will get a case of champagne for Mayday-celebrations. Anyhoo, here’s my story (in English, at the site it’s in Finnish):

When small things create a massive negative cashflow…Once upon a time, when I was a young and a foolish thing, I worked at Ikea Recovery. Recovery is the Find-section where they sell displayed, returns, and other damaged goods. My job was to assemble the furniture and the “real” sales people then displayed them. Back then, the Find-section at this particular branch was very small, so the built furniture piled up in the back where I worked. In the previous Ikea where I worked abroad didn’t have that problem because over there the Find-corner was as it sounded like. Tables, mattresses, chairs, etc were piled on each other and merchandise moved, because customers actually could see the items. So where did this Finnish procedure came from? Let’s see…

One day, I received two same tables on the back. Other one had more scratches than the other and subsequently other had more discount than the other. Because the space was running out in the back, I asked the “real” sales clerk to take them out on the floor because there was space for multiple tables. No can do, was the answer.

- Why not?

- Well…when the customer sees the prices, they get confused and won’t buy either.

-??? It doesn’t matter for anyone else but the first client. He can decide himself which deal is better and the rest won’t even know there has been another table.

- Yeah, well but still.

Week later I got fired for being “not suitable for the work in Finland”.

If you want to vote for me, you can find my story in the comments in HERE. Just click the thumbs up on my comment like this:

You can click this image too get there.

You can recognize it by my logo and the name NiinaMaria. Thank you very much indeedy already in advance.

Thrifty Finn- Here’s looking at you kid.