Okay, so I’m not going to call out the company I met with today, because it was a “trainee” salesperson, and she was accompanied by a manager. I will question why they would ever think this trainee was ready to meet the public, but Bless Their Hearts for giving her a chance.
She called to say she was on her way, and would be there in ten minutes. Great! 30 minutes later, still no salesperson. She and her trainer/manager showed up about 40 minutes after her 10 minutes away call. Okay, so, no biggie. But, it went downhill from there.
I don’t like to slag another woman’s appearance, but I kid you not, a saleswoman for a window company was wearing heavy black liquid eyeliner, ridiculous inch long VERY fake eyelashes, over an inch long sparkly fake fingernails, dark lip liner with pale lipstick, lank dyed blonde hair with too much product, painted on black eyebrows. Her clothing was equally inappropriate. She looked like a cartoon character, though I’m not sure what sort of cartoon.
And still, this would have been a personal quirk, tolerable though very unprofessional, I’d totally not comment on her bizarre appearance if she really knew her shit. She did not know her shit. At all. It was painful. Even her sample window was assembled all ass-backward, she couldn’t reassemble it and her manager had to step in and fix it.
Her trainer/manager stepped in and saved the day, and the company is actually not out of the running for the windows. His presentation was professional and the company is good, though they will have to correct the estimate she created, because after I reviewed her scribbled poor handwriting I noticed that she’d left out the larger quarter round fixed window, so yeah. There is that too.
As they left she begged me for the sale and told me to give her a good review. I nodded and smiled and said I was getting other bids and check back in two weeks. I did take her manager’s card, if I do decide to go with them I’ll call him, though I do have to question the judgment of any company that thought she was ready to represent them and their product.
I am not a salesperson, God knows. I tried it briefly and hated it. I know how hard it is, especially if you are new. I never felt prepared enough, and over-prepared for everything, and it was stressful and I hated it, so I’ll give any new salesperson a lot of leeway for nerves in a presentation.
But she walked in entirely unprepared (though WAY over-prepared in makeup), and was even unable to demonstrate the sample window she’d assembled all wrong. It was a bad comedy skit, and if she’d been there alone I’d have had to politely ask her to leave. But her manager was nice and professional and fixed and demonstrated the window, and the windows really are awesome, so the company is not out of the running.
This took two hours out of my precious free time. I have to do this two more times before I pick a company, then run the condo board gauntlet, then the actual window installation timeline won’t be until late summer. This is fun.
I’m going to Magic Kingdom tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll even get on any rides, I may just walk around and eat lunch and clear my head for the coming week.
My favorite window sales story is the guy that started tearing up when I told him I was going to get other estimates. I felt bad as I watched him trudge to his car with his head down and his shoulders slumped, but his windows were a lot more expensive than the other estimates I got. I’ve replaced windows at two houses and getting the estimates each time was a pain. But totally worth the investment and the hassle.
I really am looking forward to new, attractive, energy-efficient windows. The process of getting them is very not fun. The more I think about that odd saleswoman, the more I question the company. How could anyone think she was ready to give a sales presentation? Didn’t anyone have her do a run-through of the basics first?
Good luck with the new windows. Hope that project is successful? You did give me a chuckle when you described the trainee, the makeup sounds ludicrous. You would love some of the young women who work at our local Petsmart their eye makeup is ridiculous, I wear minimal eye makeup and can’t even imagine the time it take to apply some of this stuff (actually don’t want to). Enjoy Magic Kingdom.
Nooo, really, no matter how elaborate the eye makeup of the girls at Petsmart, it cannot possibly equal the cartoon hooker look of this woman. Her eyelashes were AWNINGS surrounded by liquid eyeliner, her brows were painted into weird peaks, and she was wearing brown lip liner with pale peach lipstick. Her trainer was wearing a company polo and khakis, She was wearing a low-cut tank top and skin-tight pants. The inappropriate appearance was weird enough, but as I said, if she’d known her stuff and had done a professional presentation I’d have overlooked it as “quirky.” But she also had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Then she begged me for a good review and a sale, as if she had no idea how badly she had blown it. It was so weird.