VW Training May 22-25

So, I had to leave San Francisco one day early from the MSIM show so that I could fly back East to do some training with VW.  I am one of many who are trying for a position as a sales coach for VW. We met for a three day T3 in Virginia.

I flew from San Fran to Atlanta to Dulles. The flight was uneventful, not bad not good, just a flight. I arrived at Dullas somewhere around 9pm.

 "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain from the flight deck, for departure it looks like we're number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, ......... uh, we'll get outta here at some point."

 

This is a quarry in Atlanta that I fly over each time in and out of the airport. I think quarries look cool from the air. 

The hotel had a shuttle come pick me up from the airport. We stayed at the Hotel Sierra. I had never heard of them before, but as it turns out it was a pretty nice hotel. I would certainly stay there again.

The rooms were nice and the overall feel of the hotel was very European.

The training was great. It was much different than what I expected. I was anticipating a lot of brand marketing training and product knowledge. Boy was I way off.

This was more about personality types and how to read someones personality type and then adapt yourself to that type. Then the class went even further in that we learned how to see if we could tell if someone else, let say a salesperson, was properly reading and adapting to a potential customers personality type. And then based on weather they were or were not, we learned how to address this with the salesperson. Its called sales coaching. It's different than any type of work I have ever done.

We did a lot of role playing to see how each of us adapted. It was a lot more fun and interesting than I thought it would be. I am not usually a big fan of role playing because I think I suck at it, but I kind of enjoyed it this time.

Our instructor was great. He had a great method of teaching and facilitating a class. It kept the class entertaining, fun and educational over the three day period, which was great because if not taught properly, this stuff could get very boring very quick. But at no point through the three days was I bored.

We have to wait until next week to hear who passed the course.

Ill let ya know.


JM

May 18th – 22nd San Francisco

Back on the road it’s off to the West coast again. I am almost at 20k sky miles with Delta  and a few thousand with American and Continental. Getting close to those first class upgrades I believe J

We have already done San Francisco on the Main Street in Motion tour but this time we are going to be closer to the Bay area. The site is the old Aremeda Naval base that has been shut down for many years. Its right next to a shipyard too. I have never been to a shipyard before. These ships are HUGE!

Adrienne takes me to the airport and I get my goodbye hug and kiss that I love. As I get into the airport I see that my flight has been delayed. Oh no! Not me. I never have flight problems. Well, now I do J My plane has been delayed two hors because the pilots arrived late last night and they are required to be down for a certain amount of hours before they can fly again, or something like that. Either way, here I sit.

I don’t get mad or upset about it though because honestly, what can I do about it? Oh, nothing that’s right. So, I go to the counter and ask the lady if she thinks I will make my connection in Atlanta based on the estimated arrival time of my new flight schedule. “No way” she says. I laugh. So I asked her what I could do about it and she said, “give me a second and let me see what I can do”. She was able to book me on another flight that had me getting to San Francisco around 4pm rather than my original 1:30pm. But at least she was able to get me on a flight. She also gave me a $50 credit toward any flight within the next year as well as a $6 food voucher good in any airport restaurant. It wasn’t much but it got me a Venti Caramel Macchiato at Starbuck for free J

When I arrived in San Fran and got my rental I had to drive about an hour to get to the hotel. Well, that’s an hour when it’s not 5:30pm in the middle of the week in downtown. Can you say TRAFFIC? Lol. Again, nothing I can do about it so no need to get mad. (Right now my wife is thinking to herself as she reads this, “Wow, his med’s must have been working really good this day.”)

In my travels to the hotel I swung by the Golden Gate Bridge and snapped a few pictures.

Normally I would have gone to the site and gotten some of my set up done but due to my late arrival that was not possible. So I just stayed at the hotel.

The hotel was nice enough. As a matter of fact, I had actually stayed at this hotel before. I was doing a video shoot for the BMW 5 Series and we flew out of Oakland airport, which is right next to this hotel, so this was where we stayed.

A good nights sleep and off to the site in the morning.

Much to my surprise, when I get to the site I see that we will be having a coned course this time. There was a perimeter road that could have been used, but we had flocks of Canada Geese that were crossing the road and we figured if we killed a few by running them over, it probably wouldn't set the right image for an "environmentally friendly" vehicle. 

This means I have a LOT of work to do. I have to design a course that highlights the car and is safe and fun. Cone the course. And then lay chalk outlines of the course. All of this had to be done by 2 PM because I needed to be cleaned up and ready to do truck demonstrations to the dealers at 2:30! Ugh.

So I had some cones delivered to the Volt trailer and got busy. I managed to get  the course designed and all 328 cones in place by 2:00PM. I went and did the truck demos for the dealers and all went well with them. When I finished with that I was asked to do some on camera speaking for some videos that are being made for the MSIM event.

After the taping, I went back to the Volt trailer and finished setting up under the tent. All was finished by 5-ish and I headed back to the hotel.

This was the first time many of my Volt colleagues had right seated a coned course so we had a little meeting to discuss some of the positives and negatives of a closed course. The day ended up great. We had a few knuckleheads that tried to press the limits further than they were supposed to be pushed and the right seaters did a great job of handling the situations that they were presented with.

Saturday was a great day. The flow of participants stayed constant all day from about 9AM to 4:30 PM. In the little bit of downtime that we had in the early morning and at the end of the day, I decided to give the right seaters an opportunity to drive the Volt around the course and push the limits a little. To encourage them to push the limits of the car I decided to make a little competition out of it and bring out the stopwatch. What could possibly go wrong lol. Well nothing went wrong. Everyone did a great job and had a good time.

Saturday was my last day because I had to fly out Sunday to get to Virginia for a training class. So at the end of the day on Saturday we had a brief wrap up meeting and off I went.

I have to say that the team of people I have the opportunity to work with on this team is great. I am so thankful to have the work and to have it with people who are great to work with. It sure makes life easier.

Until next time………

JM

May 9th-17th Time off and Dylan's PROM! What a week.

Some time off that I had been looking forward too. Work has been great but I really miss my family, so I cherish my days at home. The best part about when I am home from this new job is that I don’t think about work when I am home. Work is left on the road and when I am home I am home. My days off are all about anything except work.  The exception to that would be any amount of time that I am looking for NEW work. This gig seems to be coming to a close fast so I have to be ready for something next. I do have something in the works though.  

The next few days off are going to be quite busy, it’s my oldest son’s senior prom this Saturday and we have (well, I should say that my wife has) plenty to do to prepare for it. I mean, it’s not that I wouldn’t help, but I really don’t have a clue what really needs to be done other than get Dylan’s tux from the rental place. Adrienne has already gone and picked it out while I was out of town so all I have to do is swing by and pick it up. The rest of the stuff is all the girly stuff so Adrienne is better suited for that. I think Adrienne and I are more anxious and excited about the prom than Dylan or Sara, his girlfriend, is. It just feels like one of those lifetime milestones that I guess a lot of teens just don’t understand at their age. But as a parent……..whew, it’s a big one. At least it is to me anyway. And I know it is to Adrienne.

So as Saturday approached, Adrienne finished the “girly” stuff with Sara and her mom. Saturday morning Dylan, Brandon and myself went to the rental place and picked up Dylan’s tux. Of course he went in and tried it on before we left with it. When he came out of the changing room………….wow………..really? When did my first-born become a man? And a very handsome young man at that.  I immediately sent a text to Adrienne telling her how great Dylan looked in his tux and told her that she did an AWESOME job picking it out.

After getting the tux we headed home and got ready for the afternoon. We were going to tale pictures at 4pm and they had dinner reservations at 7pm.

Close to four o’clock Sara and her parents came to the house so we could all go take the pictures. Sara looked incredible. And I know Dylan thought so too J This was the first time I had seen the dress and man my wife knows how to dress up a couple! I’m not gonna bother trying to describe it in text, you will see the pictures in a moment.

Shortly after four we left to go take pictures. We started in a little park in downtown Spartanburg. As we were heading there it didn’t look very promising outside as there were very ugly storm clouds approaching. We were able to get a few shots in and then the bottom fell out of the sky. We rushed back to the truck and headed to the Spartanburg Marriott to see of we could take some pictures in their lobby. Unfortunately they wanted to charge a pretty hefty sum for us to do that, however, just as we were denied that option, the sun came back out and presented us with a beautiful afternoon sky. This time we went to a different spot in downtown that Adrienne knew of. After we got all we thought we could get from there we moved to a church just up the street where Sara’s mom recommended we take a few pictures. All of the spots worked out great and we were happy with the pictures we ended up with. We wrapped up the shooting just in time to get the kids to their dinner reservations on time.

When the kids left to go to dinner, Sara’s parents offered to buy Adrienne and I dinner, so we took them up on it and went to one of Adrienne’s favorite places, The Beacon. I’m not a big fan of the place but it’s ok, everyone else seems to like it for reasons that are beyond my comprehension. But then again, so many things are in fact beyond my comprehension.

We had a good time at dinner hanging out and talking. Now it was time to go home and wait. Part excited, part nervous, the waiting is the worst. It’s prom night and there are so many things that can go wrong in so many areas. But alas, Dylan made it home, mildly after curfew (15 min.) not bad.  Now I could finally get some sleep.

The rest of my days off were pretty relaxing. Adrienne and I spent some time hanging out at the pool. I was able to go to Sunday school and church on Sunday, which I had been missing due to my work schedule. And I played a lot of driveway basketball with my boys. They let me win a few times of course, because they feel sorry for me because I am old and fat and out of shape. It’s all-good though; I just enjoy the time because I know it’s all coming to an end way too fast. Soon they will be off to college and starting lives of their own. I’m not quite ready for that like I thought I would be……..