Have you ever had a situation from your past related to your sales role that still makes you laugh today?

Many years ago, my first sales job was working for a silver reclamation company. Prior to everything being digital, this company recovered silver from a film processor solution that could be found in what they called “darkrooms” within hospitals.

At that time, if a patient came to the hospital for an imaging exam, the medical equipment used would capture the image of a body part and it could be seen on a large 11 x 17 piece of film. The film was then hung on a lighted viewing box, that was located high on a wall, for the physician to view. The company that I worked for collected silver via what they called reclamation equipment, and then sold the silver to make company revenue. We shared the revenue with the hospitals that we worked with.

These large films were stored for several years within the hospital, typically in a hospital basement makeshift storage room or sometimes at an additional offsite storage location that the hospitals owned or rented. Smaller hospitals were often fortunate enough to house all their storage films within their hospital walls.

As our company grew and we established strong relationships with hospital administrators, we began to have managers of the hospital radiology departments ask us if we could provide staff to relocate films from their main storage areas in the department to a secondary area. It was at that time that I started transitioning from an inside sales representative to an outside sales representative. My first professional sales role was to make outbound sales calls to hospital radiology departments and set appointments up for my more experienced teammates to visit them, in hopes of acquiring new silver reclamation business.

As more inbound inquiries came to my phone, asking if someone from our company could provide a quote to the hospital radiology department head, to move radiology films from one location to another, I began scheduling appointments and became an outside sales representative.

Part of my new responsibilities including meeting with the potential new customer, doing a walk through of the steps needed to move records from one location to another, taking shelving measurements, looking at dock heights, being aware of receiving hours, understanding hallway and elevator accessibility to move heavy rolling carts, etc., and then preparing a quote for the project.

If our company proposal was accepted, I was supported by an internal operations team who then coordinated the number of people necessary to do the project, located moving carts and equipment necessary to move the radiology films, set up truck logistics, and made sure our moving crew teams could perform the project as outlined to our customer. One of my responsibilities was meeting our company moving crew at the hospital, early in the morning, to walk them through the project so they understood our daily expectations.

Depending on the volume of the films to move, projects could range from taking a day, taking a week, or taking a month or more to complete the project. These films were heavy, and the project could often be very labor intensive as these films had to be relocated & re-shelved in a particular order, so if needed, a hospital staff member could easily find a specific patient exam.

After I checked in with my company crew, I used to also take the hospital radiology department head on a walk thru of the project. This part of the process was key in keeping communication open and ensuring that we were all on the same page.

It was quite common for department heads to request that our moving crew arrive at the hospital in the early hours of the morning to move our equipment into the hospital basement, as to not take up the hospital receiving docks for too long of a time. Hospital receiving hours were often busy with limited hours, thus other hospital vendor partners needed this same space too.

I recall with inner silent laughter now, a time many years ago starting my very first moving project. I had made the sale, and it was a big sale. I felt proud and I was excited for the project to begin. The hospital was only 30 minutes from my home and so I decided to get up extra early to make sure that I was the first person to welcome my company teammates.

Upon their arrival to the hospital, I met them at the receiving dock and together, my crew of five people and I, did a walk thru of an empty storage room with an abundance of empty metal shelving in it. We took the elevator up two floors to the Radiology Department and I checked in with the lady at their front desk. She shared with me that their department head would be in within the next hour, but I had permission to take my teammates to the department storage area so they could begin the project.

The project began and within the hour, I asked if the department head had arrived. She had and so I walked to her office, knocked on her door, and we exchanged morning pleasantries. I asked if she had a few minutes to take a walk with me so I could confirm the project details and our plan for the day. She obliged and as we headed down the hallway towards the elevator, my heart started racing and I could feel my face turning red and flush. You see, her shoes had heels that made a loud noise with every step that she took, causing me to instinctively look down at her feet. When I looked at her shoes, I looked at my shoes. To my surprise and horror, I had two different shoes on my feet, one black shoe, and one navy blue shoe. Yes, they were similar in appearance but clearly two different styles of shoes and two different colors. This much older woman than I was now asking me a variety of questions about the project, and I couldn’t concentrate. I was laser focused that I had two different shoes on, and I didn’t want her to notice.

As a young inexperienced sales professional, I was panic stricken, not knowing whether to bring my two different shoes up or let it go. While the project had nothing to do with my dress attire, at that precise moment in time I thought it had everything to do with this project and if she brought to my attention my different two shoes, I would have no response, just a blank stare, I thought to myself. I was frozen momentarily in time in my mind.

Together we entered the elevator, and continued our conversation, with me still stuck on my shoes, and her appearing as if she hadn’t noticed. We arrived in the basement storage area and I explained where the films would be moved to, our plan to house the films on the open shelving, and I let her know that I would circle back with her at the end of the day with an update.

“Whew” I thought to myself, I dodged a bullet. She didn’t notice my shoes. I started thinking how if any of my teammates had noticed too. Then I quickly remembered that it was so dark when we met one another this morning, that they probably hadn’t. For the few minutes that we were in the lighted hospital walls, probably not too. As I started to calm down, I thought back to this morning and how I intentionally left my closet light off as to not wake others up at such an early hour. I had showered, put my clothes on in my one and only hallway bathroom at that time, put my makeup on, and grabbed my shoes from my closet with no light in our dark bedroom. Off I went to my car from there, stepping into each shoe as I exited the house.

Knowing that I was only 30 minutes from home, I decided that during the lunch hour I would race home, change one shoe out for the correct one, and head back to the hospital. I would forgo lunch in lieu of not embarrassing myself, or so I thought.

And so just ahead of 12 noon, I let my moving crew lead know that I was taking a lunch break. I got in my car and went a few miles above the speed limit to ensure that I was back by 1PM.
Once at my house, I got out of my car, had my key in hand ready to make this a 3-minute exchange, entered my house, headed straight to my bedroom closet, flipped the light switch on, and there they were, sitting ever so closely with one another, one left black shoe and one right navy-blue shoe. I took off my right black shoe, replaced it with the right navy-blue shoe and headed back to my car. Hurriedly I raced back to the hospital, feeling relieved that I now had two of the same shoes on my feet and that no one had noticed, albeit I was still feeling my own internal pressure of having to be back to the hospital by 1PM. I made it there just a few minutes after 1PM and I could breathe again.

The afternoon continued as planned with me monitoring the project and helping the crew with some of the proper filing of the films we were moving. At about 3:30 PM, our crew started packing up for the day and shortly they headed out.

I checked in with the same department head that I had done the project walk through earlier that morning.

“Do you have a few minutes to take a walk with me again?”, I asked.

“I want to show you our progress for the day and share our game plan for tomorrow.” I continued.
She asked me to give her just a couple of minutes and she would meet me by the elevator. Within a few minutes, she came to the elevator, I pushed the elevator down button, the door opened, and we got in. We were the only two in the elevator.
“How is your day going?”, I asked.
“Pretty good”, she said.
“How is your day going?”, she politely continued.

I responded that my day was fine and then within less than two minutes more of our conversation, I felt my face turning red and hot, with the same flush feeling that had come over me that morning.

“Didn’t you have two different shoes on this morning?”, she asked.

“Yes, I did”, I meekly responded. “I went back home and changed them during the lunch hour,” I said.

“Oh”, she said with puzzled smile, “I thought it was a new style that younger people were wearing these days. I was starting to think that maybe I needed to go shopping soon as my friends sometimes tell me that my wardrobe is out of date.”

Hmmm…….there is a lot to be said for the saying “walking in the shoes of others”.

Shoe Fiascos and a Rookie Mistake